WHY “BAD” NOVELS SUCCEED AND “GOOD” ONES FAIL
_The First May Have No Literary Quality, but They Have a Genuine
Quality--Power of Construction the Main Thing in Story-Writing--
Literary Reviews of Novels are Regarded as of Little Value by
Publishers--Odd Incidents and Facts in the Business._
A report on the manuscript of a novel made by a “literary” reader
not long ago ended with this sentence: “This novel is bad enough to
succeed.” He expressed the feeling of a great many literary persons
that fiction often succeeds in the market in proportion to its
“badness.” And surely there are many instances to support such a
contention from the “Lamplighter” to “When Knighthood Was in Flower.”
But the “literary” view of fiction is no more trustworthy than the
“literary” view of politics or of commerce; for it concerns itself more
with technique than with substance.
It is a hard world in which “Knighthood,” “Quincy Adams Sawyer”
and “Graustark,” to say nothing of “The One Woman,” “Alice of Old
Vincennes” and a hundred more “poor” books make fortunes, while Mr.
Howells and Mr. James write to unresponsive markets and even Mr.
Kipling cannot find so many readers for a new novel as Mr. Bacheller of
“Eben Holden.” It seems a hard world to the professional literary folk;
but the professional literary folk would find it a hard world anyhow;
for it has a way of preferring substance to color. And novels, after
all, have less to do with literature than they have to do with popular
amusement.
Heaven forbid that I should make defence of bad writing, or of
sensational literature, or of bad taste, or of any other thing that is
below grade; but, as between the professional literary class, and the
great mass of men who buy “Eben Holdens” and “David Harums” the mass of
men have the better case.
Why does a man read a novel? Let us come down to common-sense. He seeks
one of two things--either a real insight into human nature (he got that
in “David Harum”) or he seeks diversion, entertainment. A writer’s
style is only a part of the machinery of presentation. The main thing
is that he has something to present. Even though I am a publisher I
think that I know something about literary quality and literary values,
and it must be owned at once that hardly one in a dozen of the very
popular recent novels has any literary quality. But every one of them,
nevertheless, has some very genuine and positive quality. They were
not written by any trick, and their popularity does not make the road
to success any easier to find. They have qualities that are rarer than
the merely literary quality. Mr. Henry James’s novels have what is
usually called the literary quality. Yet half the publishing houses in
the United States have lost money on them, while the publisher and the
author of “Richard Carvel” and “The Crisis” and “The Crossing” made a
handsome sum of money from these books, which have no literary style.
This does not mean a whining confession that “literature” does not pay.
For my part I cannot weep because Mr. James and Mr. Howells do not
find many readers for their latest books. They find all they deserve.
Mere words were never worth much money or worth much else. But, while
Mr. Churchill is not a great writer (since he has no style), and while
few persons of the next generation of readers (whereby I mean those of
year after next) are going to take the trouble to read his books, yet,
for all that, they have a quality that is very rare in this world, a
quality that their imitators never seem to see. They have construction.
They have action. They have substance. A series of events come to pass
in a certain order, by a well-laid plan. Each book makes its appeal as
a thing built, finished, shapen, if not well-proportioned, substantial.
It is a real structure--not a mere pile of bricks and lumber. The
bricks and lumber that went into them are not as fine nor as good as
somebody else may have in his brickyard and his lumber pile. But they
are put together. A well shapen house of bad bricks is a more pleasing
thing than any mere brick-pile whatever.
I recall this interesting experience of a man whose novels are now
fast winning great popular favor. He sat down and wrote a story and
sent it to a publisher. It was declined. He sent it to another.
Again it was declined. Then he brought it to me. (He told me of the
preceding declinations a year later). I told him frankly that it lacked
construction. I supposed that that was the last that I should see of
him. But about a year later he came again with another manuscript and
with this interesting story.
“Like a fool,” said he, “I simply blazed away and wrote what I supposed
was a novel. Nobody would publish it. When you said that it lacked
construction, I went to work to study the construction of a novel. I
analyzed twenty. I found a dozen books on the subject which gave me
some help. But there are few books that do help. I constructed a sort
of method of my own.”
That man yet has no sense of literary values, as they are usually
considered. The only good quality of his style is its perfect
directness and clearness. He writes blunt, plain sentences. But every
one of them tells something. He does not bother himself about style,
nor about literary quality. He fixes his mind on the story itself, to
see that it has substance, form, action, proportion. And he worked out
this new novel with these qualities in it.
It was a dime novel in praise of one of the cardinal Christian
virtues--very earnest, very direct. But the persons in it were real.
They not only said things, they did things; and many of the things
they did were interesting. One of our salesmen was asked to read the
manuscript. “It’ll sell,” said he. Our literary adviser said that it
was a bald moral Sunday school play. “You could put it on the stage
by cutting it here and there,” he declared. “But it has no literary
quality.” Both were right. The book has sold well. It has amused and
interested its tens of thousands.
The author’s next book after that was very much better. Having learned
something of the art of construction he began to think of such a
detail as style. He re-wrote the book to make it “smooth.” But the
point is, he first paid attention to his construction and made sure
that he had a story to tell.
The enormous amount of waste work done by unsuccessful novel writers
is done without taking the trouble first to make sure that they have a
story to tell.
Few persons have any constructive faculty. This is the sad fact that
comes home at last to a man who has read novels in manuscript for many
years. A publisher comes to look for construction in a novel before he
looks for style or literary quality.
This confession is enough to provoke the literary journals to condemn
the publishers as mere mercenary dealers in sensational books. Yet,
while a book that is well constructed may not be “literature,” very few
books have a serious chance to become literature unless they have good
construction.
I, for one, and I know no publisher who holds a different opinion, care
nothing for the judgment of the professional literary class. Their
judgment of a novel, for instance, is of little value or instruction.
It may be right--often it is. It may be wrong. But whether right or
wrong (and there is no way that I know to determine finally whether any
judgment be right or wrong) it is of no practical value. A literary
judgment of a new novel cannot affect the judgment that men will form
of it ten years hence. Therefore it is of no permanent value. Neither
can it affect the sales of a new novel. It is therefore of no practical
importance for the moment. I look upon reviews of novels as so much
publicity--they have value, as they tell the public that the book is
published and can be bought, and as they tell something about it which
may prod the reader’s curiosity. Further than this they are of no
account. Not one of the three publishers whose personal habits I know
as a rule takes the trouble to read the reviews of novels of his own
publishing.
Novel making, then, is an industry, and the people who make them best
concern themselves very little about what is usually meant by “literary
values,” and very little about their popularity. The writers who
deliberately set out to write novels of great popularity have almost
always missed it. The industry is an art, also, but it is not an art
of mere fine writing. It is chiefly an art of construction--an art of
putting things in due proportion. This assumes, of course, that the
novelist has things to put.
The truth is, the delicate and difficult art of finding out just what
the public cares for--the public of this year or the public of ten
years hence--has not been mastered by many men, whether writers or
publishers. If you find out what the great public of today wants,
you are a sensationalist. If you find out what the great public of
ten or twenty years hence will want, you are a maker or a publisher
of literature. And the public of the future is pretty sure to want
something different from the public of today.
Within six months after the publication of a popular novel the
publisher of it (other publishers, too) will receive a dozen or a
hundred stories that have been suggested by it. Many an author of
such a manuscript will write that he has discovered the secret of
the popular book’s success and that he has turned it to profit in
his own effort. Such letters are singularly alike. The writers of
them regard success as something won by a trick, as a game of cards
might be won. These remind one, too, of the advertisements of patent
medicines--except that the writers of them are sincere. They believe
heartily in their discovery. Thus every very popular novel gives a
great stimulus to the production of novels. “To Have and To Hold”
brought cargoes of young women for colonists’ wives to hundreds of
amateur story writers.
But stranger than the popularity of very popular novels, or than the
utter failure of merely “literary” novels, is the moderate success of a
certain kind of commonplace stories. I know a woman of domestic tastes
who every two years turns off a quiet story. She has now written a
dozen or more. They are never advertised. But they are well printed and
put forth by one of our best publishers. The “literary” world pays no
heed to her. Her books are not even reviewed in the best journals. They
lack distinction. But every one is sure to sell from ten to fifteen
thousand copies. No amount of advertising, no amount of noise could
increase the number of readers to twenty-five thousand; and there is no
way to prevent a sale of from ten to fifteen thousand copies. Why this
is so is one of the most baffling problems of psychology. But it is the
rule. Authors of novels are known and rated among publishers as ten
thousand, or twenty-five thousand, or fifty thousand, or one hundred
thousand writers. Book after book reaches a certain level of popularity
and--stops. Mr. Marion Crawford, Mr. Hopkinson Smith, Miss Wilkins--all
these have their more or less constant levels.
The lay world has no idea of the number of novels that fail. There are
one-book authors all over the country. The publishers’ hope always is
that a new writer who makes a pretty good novel will do better next
time. Thus the first book is accepted for the sake of the next one. The
first fails, and the second is not wanted. There are dozens and dozens
of such cases every year. The public doesn’t know it, for the very
abyss of oblivion is the place where a dead novel falls. Nobody knows
it--that is the tragedy--but the publishers and the author.
A case came to light a little while ago of a man who had years ago
written novels that failed. He had been forgotten. But he took a new
start. Yet he feared that his first failures would damn him with the
publishers. He took another name, therefore. Not even his publishers
knew who he really was. He succeeded and he concealed his identity
until he died.
The publisher’s loss on an unsuccessful novel may be little or big.
All publishers lose much on unsuccessful ventures in fiction, chiefly
on young authors who are supposed to have a future, or on old authors
who have a “literary” reputation and have reached that ghostly period
of real decline when they walk in dreams from one publishing house to
another.
But there is generally a reason for success or for failure. The
trouble is that the reason often does not appear soon enough. The
chief reason for the success of a novel is the commonplace one that it
contains a story. It may be told ill or it may be told well, but there
is a story. And the chief reason for failure is the lack of a story.
A novel may be ever so well written,--if it have no story, the public
will not care for it.
I wonder if there be any light in this very obvious discovery. Simple
as it seems, it costs every publishing house a pretty penny every
year to find it out; and as soon as we find it out about one writer
we forget it about another! It is a great truth that does not remain
discovered.