"It has been caused chiefly by the magazines. The modern magazines have
done two important things for fiction--they have brought it within every
one's reach, and they have increased the prices paid to the authors,
thus enabling them to make a living by devoting themselves exclusively
to writing."
"But it has been said," I ventured, "that a writer, no matter how
talented he may be, cannot make a comfortable living out of writing
fiction unless he is most extraordinarily gifted with ideas, and that,
therefore, a writer takes a tremendous risk if he throws himself upon
literature for support."
"How is a writer going to get ideas for stories," asked Mr. Beach, in
turn, "unless he uses ideas? The more ideas a man uses, the more ideas
will come to him.
"The imaginative quality in a man is like any other quality; the more it
is functioned the better it is functioned. If you fail to use any organ
of your body, nature will in time let that organ go out of commission.
"It is just the same with imagination as with any organ of the body. If
a writer waits for ideas to come to him and ceases to exercise his
imagination, his imagination will become atrophied. But if he uses his
imagination it will grow stronger and ideas will come to him with
increasing frequency."
Mr. Beach is an enthusiastic advocate of the moving picture. In the
course of his discussion of it he advanced an interesting theory as to
the next stage of its development.
"The next use of the moving picture," he said, "will be the editorial
use. We have had the moving picture used as a comic device, as a device
to spread news, and as an interpreter of fiction. But as yet no one has
endeavored to use it as a means to mold public opinion in great vital
issues of the day.
"Of course, it has been used educationally, and as part of various
propaganda schemes. But it will be used in connection with great
political problems. It will become the most powerful of all influences
for directing public opinion in politics and in everything else.
"It will play a mighty part in the thought of the country and of the
world.
"I have seen men and women coming from a great moving-picture show
almost hysterical with emotion. I have heard them shout and stamp and
whistle at what they saw flashed before them on a white sheet as they
never did in any theater.
"What a strong argument 'The Birth of a Nation' presents! Now, suppose
that same art and that same equipment were used to present arguments
about some political issue of our own time, instead of one of our
fathers' time. What a force that would be!"
_WHAT IS GENIUS?_