Obviously little comment is needed from a compiler. Here both the
beginner and the practised writer have the best advice from those best
qualified to give it--those who have proved their theories by success.
The road to that success is no more a common one than it is a royal one.
What serves one writer best, serves another little, not at all or very
ill. The beginner's own intelligence must choose for him among all these
offerings of advice the ones best adapted to his own particular case.
Taken as a whole, the advice given is invaluable--stimulative and
soundly helpful. But the test of its value to any writer must lie in his
own discriminating judgment based on a sure knowledge of his own gifts,
weaknesses and habits.
Since it is brought out so forcefully in one of the answers and
forcefully enough in so many others, one point deserves notice. An
answerer gives, as his advice to experienced writers, "For God's sake
don't talk so _much_!" It may sound flippant. It may sound presumptuous,
since to some experienced writers this man may be unknown. Almost
certainly it will not be taken seriously by those who most need to heed
the advice. Knowing the man, I know it is not flippant; knowing his
work, I know it is not presumptuous, for he has gifts of expression that
most of our best known writers can never attain. There can be no doubt
of the soundness of his advice or of the need of it. That it should be
given so many times in these answers is particularly significant.
There is frequent discussion of the difference between literature and
"magazine fiction" including what is found between book-covers. It is a
hardy analyst who would attempt drawing a definite and final line of
demarkation between the two, but one easy distinction may be made.
Literature expresses what needs to be expressed; the greater part of our
magazine fiction expresses too largely for the sake of hearing itself
talk prettily and a great deal, or because its authors have found they
can get money and popularity and standing from a gift of cultured, or
mere taking, gab. This is perhaps even more true of established
authors--yea, even some of our most famous--than it is of our beginners.
I do not mean that all of them analyze the situation and follow the
method as conscious policy. It would be more hopeful if this were the
case. The bulk of them are proudly content under the amazing delusion
that what they write has literary quality. It hasn't. The best that can
be said of it is that it is fool's gold, for it glitters exceedingly
despite its lack of worth. It is, for the most part, words only.
Generally beautiful words or amusing words or very scholarly words, all
skilfully and pleasingly joined together, sprinkled heavily with a cheap
cologne giving off a strong smell suggestive of literary quality and
interspersed with modest little cries of "Note the genius in this turn
of phrase! And, prithee, do not miss the scholarly distortion of this
simple sentence or the very literary vagueness in the expression of this
elementary and commonplace idea! Behold, too, how the really skilled
hand can stretch this infinitesimal atom of material into pages of
exquisite and delightful reading! How crudely would one lacking literary
gift have set it forth in a few plain words! And, pardon, reader, but
you haven't been so dull as to miss noting the heights of sophistication
from which your author looks contemptuously down upon the puppets he
moves with careless skill upon his board, upon the board and even upon
the very moving?"
Or perhaps such cries are omitted and the reader merely confronted with
an army of words marching impressively in literary formation without
worthwhile distinction, carrying no baggage and with no literary reason
for marching at all.
Yes, I'm bitter. And very, very sick at the stomach. For most critics
call this procession of words literature, and most of the public meekly
accept the dictum. Worse, it becomes a model for other writers. And all
the time it builds up the ruinous idea that literature is something
apart from life and reality, incompatible with simplicity and
naturalness, an inorganic thing of exotic plumage, something not
everlastingly dependent upon the anxiously exact adaptation of
expression to something worth expressing.
In our answers above I have in more than one place omitted the name of
one of the best known American magazines because of unfavorable mention.
In one case part of an answer was omitted bodily because its whole point
was the advice to practised writers not to read that magazine or the
work of a certain well-known writer not included among our answerers.
The reasons for that advice were not stated, but that magazine is
perhaps the chief exponent of the surface-glitter and infinitely wordy
type of story, shaped editorially with no consideration of real literary
worth or anything else except large popular sales and adherence to a
formal morality rather lacking in ethics. Yet it is a strong factor in
providing standards for critics lacking any of their own, in influencing
both editors and writers toward similar material and in lowering the
tastes and standards of the general reading public.
Unfortunately it is not the only exponent of the over-written story. You
find them in most of our best magazines, in the school of realism as
well as that of idealism or romanticism. If you doubt, analyze one of
them. Remove the word-wrappings and search beneath. You will find, quite
often, incident, sometimes a great deal of it; sometimes a real plot,
though generally a threadbare and slight one. But in most cases you will
find little structure worthy of the name, sometimes because there is
nothing much with which to construct and sometimes because if the author
had ability for structure he would not prostitute himself on that kind
of story. You may find caricature, even characterization done with a
clumsy brush in gaudy colors and jutting outline, but no
characterization that warrants the story's existence on that score.
Color very probably--a whole box of colors melted under a forced draft.
Probably so much setting that the photography of it contributes much of
the illusion of the story's being literature. Other things, of similar
quality and degree. But literature? Not even a chemist's trace.
I am heartily glad some of our answerers turned the light where it is
needed. Probably the chief weaknesses in present-day American fiction
are three in one: