Only a few years ago Fannie Hurst's name was unknown to most readers.
But in a surprisingly short time Miss Hurst's short stories, especially
her sympathetic and poignantly realistic studies of the life of the
Jewish citizens of New York, have earned for her popular as well as
critical approval.
Fannie Hurst's fame has been won almost entirely through the most widely
circulated weekly and monthly magazines. And yet when I talked to this
energetic young woman the other morning in her studio in Carnegie Hall,
I found her attitude toward the magazines anything but friendly. She
accused them of printing what she called "chocolate-fudge" fiction. And
she said it in a way which indicated that chocolate fudge is not her
favorite dish.
"I do not feel," she said, "that the American magazine is exerting
itself toward influencing our fiction for the better. In most cases it
is content to pander to the untutored public taste instead of attempting
anything constructive.
"The magazine public is, after all, open to conviction. But phlegm and
commercialism on the part of most of our magazines lead them to give the
public what it wants rather than what is good for it.
"'If chocolate-fudge fiction will sell the magazine, give 'em chocolate
fudge!' say editors and publishers. Small wonder that American
fiction-readers continue bilious in their demands. Authors, meanwhile,
who like sweet butter on their bread--it is amazing how many
do--continue to postpone that Big Idea, and American fiction pauses by
the wayside."
"What is the remedy for this condition, Miss Hurst?" I asked. "Would
matters be better if the writers did not have to comply with the demands
of the magazines--if they had some other means of making a living than
writing?"
Miss Hurst did not answer at once. At length she said, thoughtfully:
"It would seem that to escape this almost inevitable overlapping of
bread and sweet butter the writer of short stories should not depend
upon the sale of his work for a living, but should endeavor to provide
himself with some other source of income.
"Theoretically, at least, such a condition would eliminate the
pot-boilers and safeguard the serious worker from the possibility of
'misshaping' his art to meet a commercial condition.
"I say theoretically because from my own point of view I cannot conceive
of short-story writing as an avocation. The gentle art of short fiction
consumes just about six hours of my day at the rate of from twenty to
twenty-five days on a story of from eight to ten thousand words. And
since I work best from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., I can think of no remunerative
occupation outside those hours except cabaret work or night clerking."
"What about present-day relationship between American publishers and
authors?" I asked, "Do you think they are all they should be?"
"American publishers and authors," Miss Hurst replied, "to-day seem to
be working somewhat at cross-purposes, owing partially, I think, to the
great commercial significance that has become attached to the various
rights, such as motion-picture, serial, dramatic, book, etc., and which
are to be reckoned with in the sale of fiction.
"There is little doubt that authors have suffered at the hands of
publishers on these various scores, oftener than not the publisher and
not the author reaping the benefits accruing from the author's ignorance
of conditions or lack of foresight.
"The Authors' League has been formed to remedy just that evil--and it
was a crying one.
"On the other hand, it is certain that fiction-writers are better paid
to-day than ever in the history of literature, and if a man is writing a
seventy-five-dollar story there is a pretty good reason why.
"I feel a great deal of hesitancy about the present proposed affiliation
of authors with labor. There is so much to be said on both sides!
"If the publisher represents capital and the author labor, my sympathies
immediately veer me toward labor. But do they? That same question has
recently been thrashed out by the actors, and they have gone over to
labor. Scores of our most prominent American authors are of that same
persuasion.
"I cannot help but feel that for publisher and author to assume the
relationship of employer and employee is a dangerous step. All forms of
labor do not come under the same head. And I am the last to say that
writing is not hard labor. But Cellini could hardly have allied himself
with an iron-workers' guild. All men are mammals, but not all mammals
are men!
"It seems doubly unfortunate, with the Authors' League in existence to
direct and safeguard the financial destiny of the author, to take a step
which immediately places the author and publisher on the same basis of
relationship that exists between hod-carrier and contractor.
"As a matter of fact, I am almost wont to question the traditional lack
of business acumen in authors. On the contrary, almost every successful
author of my acquaintance not only is pretty well able to take care of
himself, but owns a motor-car and a safety-deposit box at the same time.
And I find the not-so-successful authors prodding pretty faithfully to
get their prices up.
"The Authors' League is a great institution and fills a great need. It
was formed for just the purpose that seems to be prompting authors to
unionize--to instruct authors in their rights and protect them against
infringements.
"Why unionize? Next, an author will find himself obliged to lay aside
his pen when the whistle blows, and publishers will be finding
themselves obliged to deal in open-shop literature."
"And what effect are the moving pictures going to have on fiction?" I
asked. "Will it be good or bad?"
"Up to the present," Miss Hurst replied, "moving pictures have, in my
opinion, been little else than a destructive force where American
fiction is concerned. Picturized fiction is on a cheap and sensational
level. Even classics and standardized fiction are ruthlessly defamed by
tawdry presentation. With the mechanics of the motion picture so
advanced, it is unfortunate that the photoplay itself is not keeping
pace with that advancement.
"Motion pictures are in the hands of laymen, and they show it. The
scenario-writers, so-called 'staff writers,' have sprung up overnight,
so to speak, and, from what I understand, when authors venture into the
field they are at the mercy of the moving-picture director.
"Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett could not endure to sit through the
picture presentation of _Little Lord Fauntleroy_, so mutilated was it.
"Of course, scenario-writing is a new art, and this interesting form of
expression has hardly emerged from its infancy. Except perhaps in such
great spectacles as 'The Birth of a Nation,' where, after all, the play
is not the thing."
I asked Miss Hurst if she agreed with those who believe that Edgar Allan
Poe's short stories have never been surpassed. I found that she did not.
"I should say," she said, "that since Poe's time we have had masters of
the short story who have equaled him. Poe is, of course, the legitimate
father of the American short story, and, coupled with that fact, was
possessed of that kind of self-consciousness which enabled him to
formulate a law of composition which has not been without its influence
upon our subsequent short fiction.
"But in American letters there is little doubt that in the last one
hundred years the short story has made more progress than any other
literary type. We are becoming not only proficient, but pre-eminent in
the short story. I can think off-hand of quite a group of writers, each
of whom has contributed short-story classics to our literature.
"There are Robert Louis Stevenson, Henry James (if we may claim him),
Bret Harte, Mark Twain, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, O. Henry, Richard
Harding Davis, Jack London, and Booth Tarkington. And I am sure that
there are various others whose names do not occur to me at this moment."
"You mentioned O. Henry," I said. "Then you do not share Katharine
Fullerton Gerould's belief that O. Henry's influence on modern fiction
is bad?"
"I decidedly disagree," said Miss Hurst, with considerable firmness,
"with the statement that O. Henry wrote incidents rather than short
stories, and is a pernicious influence in modern letters. That his
structural form is more than anecdotal can be shown by an analysis of
almost any of his plots.
"But it seems pedantic to criticize O. Henry on the score of structure.
Admitting that the substance of his writings does rest on frail
framework, even sometimes upon the trick, he built with Gothic skill and
with no obvious pillars of support.
"Corot was none the less a landscape artist because he removed that
particular brown tree from that particular green slope. O. Henry's
facetiousness and, if you will, his frail structures, are no more to be
reckoned with than, for instance, the extravagance of plot and the
morbid formality we find in Poe.
"The smiting word and the polished phrase he quite frankly subordinated
to the laugh, or the tear with a sniffle. Just as soon call red woolen
underwear pernicious!
"The Henry James school has put a super-finish upon literature which, it
is true, gives the same satisfying sense of wholeness that we get from a
Greek urn. But, after all, chastity is not the first and last requisite.
O. Henry loved to laugh with life! It was not in him to regard it with a
Mona Lisa smile."
Miss Hurst has confined her attention so closely to American
metropolitan life that I thought it would be interesting to have her
opinion as to the truth of the remark, attributed to William Dean
Howells, that American literature is merely a phase of English
literature. In reply to my question she said:
"I agree with Mr. Howells that American literature up to now has been
rather a phase of English literature. His own graceful art is an example
of cousinship. American literature probably will continue to be an
effort until our American melting-pot ceases boiling.
"_David Copperfield_ and _Vanity Fair_ come from a people whose lineage
goes back by century-plants and not by Mayflowers. Theodore Dreiser and
Ernest Poole, sometimes more or less inarticulately, are preparing us
for the great American novel. When we reach a proper consistency the
boiling is bound to cease, and, just as inevitably, the epic novel must
come."
_THE NEW SPIRIT IN POETRY_