WHY AUTHORS GO WRONG
AND
OTHER EXPLANATIONS
WHY AUTHORS
GO WRONG
AND OTHER EXPLANATIONS
BY
GRANT M. OVERTON
AUTHOR OF “THE WOMEN WHO MAKE OUR NOVELS”
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
MOFFAT, YARD & COMPANY
1919
COPYRIGHT, 1919,
BY
MOFFAT, YARD & COMPANY
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. WHY AUTHORS GO WRONG 1
II. A BARBARIC YAWP 25
III. IN THE CRITICAL COURT 39
IV. BOOK “REVIEWING” 51
V. LITERARY EDITORS, BY ONE OF THEM 103
VI. WHAT EVERY PUBLISHER KNOWS 119
VII. THE SECRET OF THE BEST SELLER 145
VIII. WRITING A NOVEL 173
WHY AUTHORS GO WRONG
AND
OTHER EXPLANATIONS
WHY AUTHORS GO
WRONG
AND OTHER EXPLANATIONS
I
WHY AUTHORS GO WRONG
The subject of _Why Authors Go Wrong_ is one to answering which a
book might adequately be devoted and perhaps we shall write a book
about it one of these days, but not now. When, as and if written the
book dealing with the question will necessarily show the misleading
nature of Mr. Arnold Bennett’s title, _The Truth About an Author_--a
readable little volume which does not tell the truth about an author
in general, but only what we are politely requested to accept as the
truth about Arnold Bennett. Mr. Bennett may or may not be telling the
truth about himself in that book; his regard for the truth in respect
of the characters of his fiction has been variable. Perhaps he is more
scrupulous when it comes to himself, but we are at liberty to doubt it.
For a man who will occasionally paint other persons--even fictionary
persons--as worse than they really are may not unnaturally be expected
to depict himself as somewhat better than he is.
We must not stay with Mr. Bennett any longer just now. It is enough
that he has not been content to wait for the curtain to rise and has
insisted on thrusting himself into our prologue. Exit; and let us get
back where we were.
We were indicating that _Why Authors Go Wrong_ is an extensive subject.
It is so extensive because there are many authors and many, many more
readers. It is extensive because it is a moral and not a literary
question, a human and not an artistic problem. It is extensive because
it is really unanswerable and anything that is essentially unanswerable
necessitates prolonged efforts to answer it, this on the well-known
theory that it is better that many be bored than that a few remain
dissatisfied.
2
Let us take up these considerations one by one.
It seems unlikely that any one will misunderstand the precise subject
itself. What, exactly, is meant by an author “going wrong”? The
familiar euphemism, as perhaps most frequently used, is anything but
ambiguous. Ambiguous-sounding words are generally fraught with a deadly
and specific meaning--another illustration of the eternal paradox of
sound and sense.
But as used in the instance of an author, “going wrong” has a great
variety of meanings. An author has gone wrong, for example, when he has
deliberately done work under his best; he has gone wrong when he has
written for sentimental or æsthetic reasons and not, as he should, for
money primarily; he has gone wrong when he tries to uplift or educate
his readers; he has gone wrong when he has written too many books,
or has not written enough books, or has written too fast or not fast
enough, or has written what he saw and not what he felt, or what he
felt and not what he saw, or posed in any fashion whatsoever.
Ezra Pound, for example, has gone atrociously wrong by becoming a
French Decadent instead of remaining a son of Idaho and growing up to
be an American. Of course as a French Decadent he will always be a
failure; as Benjamin De Casseres puts it, “the reality underlying his
exquisite art is bourgeois and American. He is a ghost materialized by
cunning effects of lights and mirrors.”
3
Mr. Robert W. Chambers went wrong in an entirely different fashion. The
usual charge brought against Mr. Chambers is that he consented to do
less than his best because it profited him. This is entirely untrue.
Mr. Chambers’s one mistake was that he did not write to make money.
Every writer should, because writing is a business and a business is
something which can only be decently conducted with that end in view.
Fancy a real estate business which should not be conducted to make
money! We should have to stop it immediately. It would be a menace to
the community, for there is no telling what wickedness of purpose might
lie behind it. A business not conducted primarily to make money is not
a business but a blind; and very likely a cover for operations of a
criminal character. The safety of mankind lies in knowing motives and
is imperilled by any enterprise that disguises them.
And so for Mr. Chambers to refrain deliberately from writing to make
money was a very wrong thing for him to do. Far from having a wicked
motive, he had a highly creditable motive, which does not excuse him in
the least. His praiseworthy purpose was to write the best that was in
him for the sake of giving pleasure to the widest possible number of
his readers. There does not seem to be much doubt that he has done it;
those who most disapprove of him will hardly deny that the vast sales
of his half a hundred stories are incontestable evidence of his success
in his aim. But what is the result? On every hand he is misjudged
and condemned. He is accused of acting on the right motive, which
is called wrong! He is not blamed, as he should be, for acting on a
wrong motive, which would, if understood, have been called right! What
he should have done, of course, was to write sanely and consistently
to make money, as did Amelia Barr. Mrs. Barr was not a victim of
widespread contemporary injustice and Mr. Chambers is and will remain
so.
Take another illustration--Mr. Winston Churchill. One of the ablest
living American novelists, he has gone so wrong that it cannot
honestly be supposed he will ever go right again. His earlier novels
were not only delightful but actually important. His later novels are
intolerable. In such a novel as _The Inside of the Cup_ Mr. Churchill
is not writing with the honorable and matter-of-course object of
selling a large number of copies and getting an income from them; he is
writing with the dishonorable and unavowed object of setting certain
ideas before you, the contemplation of which will, in his opinion, do
you good. He wants you to think about the horror of a clergyman in
leading strings to his wealthiest parishioner. As a fact, there is no
horror in such a situation and Mr. Churchill cannot conjure up any.
There is no horror, there are only two fools. Now if a man is a fool,
he’s a fool; he cannot become anything else, least of all a sensible
man. A clergyman in thrall to a rich individual of his congregation
is a fool; and to picture him as painfully emancipating himself and
becoming not only sensible but, as it were, heroic is to ask us to
accept a contradiction in terms. For a fool is not a man who lacks
sense, but a man who cannot acquire sense. Not even a miracle can make
him sensible; if it could there would be no trouble with _The Inside
of the Cup_, for a miracle, being, as G. K. Chesterton says, merely an
exceptional occurrence, will always be acquiesced in by the intelligent
reader.
4
It would be possible to continue at great length giving examples of
authors who have gone wrong and specifying the fifty-seven varieties
of ways they have erred. But the mere enumeration of fallen authors
is terribly depressing and quite useless. If we are to accomplish any
good end we must try to find out why they have allowed themselves to be
deceived or betrayed and what can be done in the shape of rescue work
or preventive effort in the future. Perhaps we can reclaim some of them
and guide others aright.
After a consideration of cases--we shall not clog the discussion with
statistics and shall confine ourselves to general results--we have been
led by all the evidence to the conclusion that the principal trouble
is with the authors. Little or none of the blame for the unfortunate
situation rests on their readers. Indeed, in the majority of cases the
readers are the great and unyielding force making for sanity and virtue
in the author. Without the persistent moral pressure exerted by their
readers many, many more authors would certainly stray from the path of
business rectitude--not literary rectitude, for there is no such thing.
What is humanly right is right in letters and nothing is right in
letters that is wrong in the world.
The commonest way in which authors go wrong is one already stated: By
ceasing to write primarily for money, for a living and as much more as
may come the writer’s way. The commonest reason why authors go wrong in
this way is comical--or would be if it were not so common. They feel
ashamed to write for money first and last; they are seized with an
absurd idea that there is something implicitly disgraceful in acting
upon such a motive. And so to avoid something that they falsely imagine
to be disgraceful they do something that they know is disgraceful; they
write from some other motive and let the reader innocently think they
are writing with the old and normal and honorable motive.
So widespread is this delusion that it is absolutely necessary
to digress for a moment and explain why writing to make money is
respectable! Why is anything respectable? Because it meets a human
necessity and meets it in an open and aboveboard fashion without
detriment to society in general or the individual in particular. All
lawful business conforms to this definition and writing for money
certainly does. Writing--or painting or sculpturing or anything
else--not done to make money is not respectable because (1) it meets no
human necessity, (2) it is not done openly and aboveboard, (3) it is
invariably detrimental to society, and (4) it is nearly always harmful
to individuals, and most harmful to the individual engaged upon it.
It is useless to say that a man who writes or paints or carves for
something other than money meets a human necessity--a spiritual
thirst for beauty, perhaps. There is no spiritual thirst for beauty
which cannot be satisfied completely by work done for an adequate and
monetary reward. And to satisfy the human longing for the beautiful
without requiring a proper price is to demoralize society by showing
men that they can have something for nothing.
5
Now it is just here that the moral pressure of the great body of
readers is felt, a pressure that is constantly misunderstood by the
author. So surely as the writer has turned from writing to make money
and has taken up writing for art’s sake (whatever that means) or
writing for some ethical purpose or writing in the interest of some
propaganda, though it be merely the propaganda of his own poor, single
intellect--just so surely as he has done this his readers find him
out. Whether they then continue to read him or not depends entirely on
what they think of his new and unavowed (but patent) motive. Of course
readers ought to be stern; having caught their author in a wrong motive
they ought to punish him by deserting him instantly. But readers are
human; they are even surprisingly selfish at times; they are capable of
considering their own enjoyment, and, dreadful to say, they are capable
of considering it first. So if, as in the case of Mr. Chambers, they
find his new motive friendly and flattering they read him more than
ever; on the other hand, if they find the changed purpose disagreeable
or tiresome, aiming to uplift them or to shock them unpleasantly or
(sometimes) to make fun of them, they quit that author cold. And
they hardly ever come back. Usually the author is not perspicacious
enough to grasp the cause of the defection; it is amazing how seldom
authors think there can be anything wrong with themselves. Usually the
abandoned author goes right over and joins a small sect of highbrows
and proclaims the deplorable state of his national literature. “The
public be damned!” he says in effect, but the public is not damned, it
is he that is damned, and the public has done its utmost to save him.
Sometimes an author deliberately does work that is less than his
best, but he never does this with the idea of making money, or, if he
entertains that idea, he fools no one but himself. There are known and
even (we believe) recorded instances of an author ridiculing his own
output and avowing with what he probably thought audacious candor:
“Of course, this latest story of mine is junk--but it’ll sell 100,000
copies!”
It never does. The author is perfectly truthful in describing the book
as worthless. If he implies as he always will in such a case that he
deliberately did less than his best he is an unconscious liar. It was
his best and its worthlessness was solely the result of his total
insincerity. For a man or woman may write a very bad book and write it
with an utter sincerity that will sell hundreds of thousands of copies;
but no one can write a very fine book insincerely and have it sell.
The author who thinks that he has written a rather inferior novel for
the sake of huge royalties has actually written the best he has in
him, namely, a piece of cheese. The author who has actually written
beneath his best has not done it for money, but to avoid making money.
He thinks it is his best; he thinks it is something utterly artistic,
æsthetically wonderful, highbrowedly pure, lofty and serene; he scorns
money; to make money by it would be to soil it. What he cannot see is
that it is not his best; that it is very likely quite his worst; that
when he has done his best he will unavoidably make money unless, like
the misguided mortal we have just mentioned, deep insincerity vitiates
his work.
We are therefore ready, before going further, to formulate certain
paradoxical principles governing all literary work.
6
To understand why authors go wrong we must first understand how authors
may go right. The paradoxical rules which if observed will hold the
author to the path of virtue and rectitude may be formulated briefly as
follows:
1. An author must write to make money first of all, and every other
purpose must be secondary to this purpose of money making.
The paradoxy inherent in this principle is that while writing the
author must never for a single moment think of the money he may make.
2. Every writer must have a stern and insistent moral purpose in his
writing, and especially must he be animated by this purpose if he is
writing fiction.
The paradoxy here is that never, under any circumstances, may the
writer exhibit his moral purpose in his work.
3. A writer must not write too much nor must he write too little. He is
writing too much if his successive books sell better and better; he is
writing too little if each book shows declining sales.
This may appear paradoxical, but consider: If the writer’s work is
selling with accelerated speed the market for his wares will very
quickly be over-supplied. This happened to Mr. Kipling one day. He had
the wisdom to stop writing almost entirely, to let his production fall
to an attenuated trickle; with the result that saturation was avoided,
and there is now and will long continue to be a good, brisk, steady
demand for his product.
On the other hand, consider the case of Mrs. Blank (the reader will
not expect us to be either so ungallant or so professionally unethical
or so commercially unfair as to give her name). Mrs. Blank wrote a
book every two or three years, and each was more of a plug than its
predecessor. She began writing a book a year, and the third volume
under her altered schedule was a best seller. It was also her best
novel.
7
Then why? why? why? do the authors go wrong? Because, if we must say
it in plain English, they disregard every principle of successful
authorship. When they have written a book or two and have made money
they get it into their heads that it is ignoble to write for money
and they try to write for something else--for Art, usually. But it
is impossible to write for Art, for Art is not an end but a means.
When they do not try to write for Art they try to write for an Ethical
Purpose, but they exhibit it as inescapably as if the book were a
pulpit and the reader were sitting in a pew. Indeed, some modern
fiction cannot be read unless you are sitting in a pew, and a very
stiff and straight backed pew at that; not one of these old fashioned,
roomy, high walled family pews such as Dickens let us sit in, pews
in which one could be comfortable and easy and which held the whole
family, pews in which you could box the children’s ears lightly without
doing it publicly; no! the pews the novelists make us sit in these
days are these confounded modern pews which stop with a jab in the
small of your back and which are no better than public benches, but are
intensely more uncomfortable--pews in which, to ease your misery, you
can do nothing but look for the mote in your neighbor’s eye and the
wrong color in your neighbor’s cravat.
Because--to get back to the whys of the authors--because when they are
popular they overpopularize themselves, and when they are unpopular
they lack the gumption to write more steadily and fight more gamely
for recognition. We don’t mean critical recognition, but popular
recognition. How can an author expect the public, his public, any
public to go on swallowing him in increased amounts at meals placed
ever closer together--for any length of time? And how, equally, can an
author expect a public, his public, or any public, to acquire a taste
for his work when he serves them a sample once a week, then once a
month, then once a year? Why, a person could not acquire a taste for
olives that way.
8
We have no desire to be personal for the sake of being personal, but
we have every desire to be personal in this discussion for the sake
of being impersonal, pointed, helpful and clear. It is time to take a
perfectly fresh and perfectly illustrative example of how not to write
fiction. We shall take the case of Mr. Owen Johnson and his new novel,
_Virtuous Wives_.
Mr. Johnson will be suspected by the dense and conventional censors
of American literature of having written _Virtuous Wives_ to make
money. Alackaday, no! If he had a much better book might have come
from his typewriter. Mr. Johnson was not thinking primarily of
money, as he should have been (prior to the actual writing of the
story). He was filled with a moral and uplifting aim. He had been
shocked to the marrow by the spectacle of the lives led by some New
York women--the kind Alice Duer Miller writes discreetly about. The
participation of America in the war had not begun. The performances of
an inconsiderable few were unduly conspicuous. Mr. Johnson decided to
write a novel that would hold up these disgusting triflers (and worse)
to the scorn of sane and decent Americans. He set to work. He finished
his book. It was serialized in one of the several magazines which have
displaced forever the old Sunday school library in the field of Awful
Warning literature. In these forums Mr. Galsworthy and Gouverneur
Morris inscribe our present-day chronicles of the Schoenberg-Cotta
family, and writ large over their instalments, as part of the editorial
blurb, we read the expression of a fervent belief that Vice has never
been so Powerfully, Brilliantly and Convincingly Depicted in All Its
Horror by Any Pen. But we divagate.
Mr. Johnson’s novel was printed serially and appeared then as a book
with a solemn preface--the final indecent exhibition, outside of the
story itself, of his serious moral purpose. And as a book it is failing
utterly of its purpose. It has sold and is selling and Mr. Johnson is
making and will make money out of it--which is what he did not want.
What he did want he made impossible when he unmasked his great aim.
The world may be perverse, but you have to take it as it is. The world
may be childish, but none of us will live to see it grow up. If the
world thinks you write with the honest and understandable object of
making a living it attributes no ulterior motive to you. The world
says: “John Smith, the butcher, sells me beefsteak in order to buy Mrs.
Smith a new hat and the little Smiths shoes.” The world buys the steaks
and relishes them. But if John Smith tells the world and his wife
every time they come to his shop: “I am selling you this large, juicy
steak to give you good red blood and make you Fit,” then the world and
his wife are resentful and say: “We think we don’t like your large,
juicy steaks. We are red blooded enough to have our own preferences.
We will just go on down the street to the delicatessen--we mean the
Liberty food shop--and buy some de-Hohenzollernized frankfurters, the
well-known Liberty sausage. To hell with the Kaiser!” And so John Smith
merely makes money. Oh, yes, he makes money; a large, juicy steak is a
large, juicy steak no matter how deadly the good intent in selling it.
But John Smith is defeated in his real purpose. He does not furnish the
world and his wife with the red corpuscles he yearned to give them.
9
At this juncture we seem to hear exasperated cries of this character:
“What do you mean by saying that an author must write for money first
and last and yet must have a stern moral purpose? How can the two be
reconciled? Why must he think of money until he begins to write and
never after he begins to write? We understand why the moral object must
not obtrude itself, but why need it be there at all?”
Can a man serve two masters? Can he serve money and morality? Foolish
question No. 58,914! He not only can but he always does when his work
is good.
A painter--a good painter--is a man who burns to enrich the world with
his work and is determined to make the world pay him decently for it.
A good sculptor is a man who has gritted his teeth with a resolution
to give the world certain beautiful figures for which the world must
reward him--or he will know the reason why! A good corset manufacturer
is a man who is filled with an almost holy yearning to make people more
shapely and more comfortable than he found them--and he is fanatically
resolved that they shall acknowledge his achievement by making him rich!
For that’s the whole secret. How is a man to know that he has painted
great portraits or landscapes or carved lovely monuments or made
thousands shapelier and more easeful if not by the money they paid him?
How is an author to know that he has amused or instructed thousands if
not by the size of his royalty checks? By hearsay? By mind reading? By
plucking the petals of a daisy--“They love me. They love me not”?
Every man can and must serve two masters, but the one is the thing that
masters him and the other is the evidence of his mastery. Every man
must before beginning work fix his mind intently upon the making of
money, the money which shall be an evidence of his mastery; every man
on beginning work and for the duration of the work must fix his mind
intently and exclusively on the service of morality, the great master
whose slave he is in the execution of an Invisible Purpose. And no man
dare let his moral purpose expose itself in his work, for to do that
is to do a presumptuous and sacrilegious thing. The Great Moralizer,
who has in his hands each little one of us workers, holds his Purpose
invisible to us; how then can we venture to make visible what He keeps
invisible, how can we have the audacity to practice a technique that He
Himself does not employ?
For He made the world and all that is in it. And He made it with a
moral end in view, as we most of us believe. But not the wisest of
us pretends that that moral object is clearly visible. It does not
disclose itself to us directly; we are aware of it only indirectly; and
are influenced by it forevermore. If the world was so made, who are
we that think ourselves so much more adroit than Him as to be able to
expose boldly what He veils and to reveal what He hath hidden?
There are those, of course, who see no moral explanation of the
universe; but they are not always consistent. There is that famous
passage of Joseph Conrad’s in which he declines the ethical view
and says he would fondly regard the panorama of creation as pure
spectacle--the marvellous spectacle being, perchance, a moral end in
itself. And yet no man ever wrote with a deeper manifestation and a
more perfect concealment of his moral purpose than Conrad; for exactly
the thing to which all his tales are passionate witnesses is the
sense of fidelity, of loyalty, of endurance--above all, the sense of
fidelity--that exists in mankind. Man, in the Conradist view, is a
creature of an inexhaustible loyalty to himself and to his fellows.
This inner and utter fidelity it is which makes the whole legend of
_Lord Jim_, which is the despairing cry that rings out at the last
in _Victory_, which reaches lyric heights in _Youth_, which is the
profound pathos of _The End of the Tether_, which, in its corruption
by an incorruptible metal, the silver of the mine, forms the dreadful
tragedy of _Nostromo_. An immortal, Conrad, but not the admiring and
passive spectator he diffidently declares himself to be!
10
Have we covered all the cases? Obviously not. It is no more possible
to deal with all the authors who go wrong than it is to call all
the sinners to repentance. But sin is primarily a question between
the sinner and his own conscience, and the errors of authors are
invariably questions between the authors and the public. The public
is the best conscience many an author has; and the substitution of a
private self-justification for a public vindication has seldom been a
markedly successful undertaking in human history. Yet there is a class
of writers for whom no public vindication is possible; who affect,
indeed, to scorn it; who set themselves up as little gods. They are the
worshippers of Art. They are the ones who not only do not admit but
who deliberately deny a moral purpose in anything; who think that a
something they call pure Beauty is the sole end of existence, of work,
of life, and is alone to be worshipped. It is a cult of Baal.
For these Artists despise money, and in despising money they cheapen
themselves and become creatures of barter. They sneer at morality and
reject it; immediately the world disappears: “And the earth was without
form, and void.” They demoralize honest people with whom they come
in contact by demolishing the possibly imperfect but really workable
standards which govern normal lives--and never replacing them. What
is their Beauty? It is what each one of them thinks beautiful. What
is their Art? It is what each cold little selfish soul among them
chooses to call Art. What is their achievement? Self-destruction. They
are the spiritual suicides, they are the moral defectives, they are
the outcasts of humanity, the lepers among the workers of the world.
For them there can be neither pity nor forgiveness; for they deny the
beauty of rewarded toil, the sincerity of honest labor, the mystical
humanity of man.
Of them no more. Let us go back in a closing moment to the
contemplation of the great body of men and women who labor cheerfully
and honorably, if rather often somewhat mistakenly, to make their
living, to do good work and make the world pay them for it, yet leaving
with the world the firm conviction that it has had a little the better
of the bargain! These are the authors who “go wrong,” and with whose
well-meant errors we have been dealing, not very methodically but
perhaps not unhelpfully. Is there, then, no parting word of advice we
can give our authors? To be sure there is! When our authors are quite
sure they will not go wrong, they may go write!
A BARBARIC YAWP
II
A BARBARIC YAWP
It was the handy phrase to describe Walt Whitman: The “barbaric yawp.”
In its elegant inelegance the neatly adjectived noun was felt to be
really brilliant. Stump speakers “made the eagle scream”; a chap like
Whitman had to be characterized handily too.
The epigrammatic mind is the card index mind. Now the remarkable thing
about the card index is its casualty list. People who card index things
are people who proceed to forget those things. The same metal rod
that transfixes the perforated cards pierces the indexers’ brains. A
mechanical device has been called into play. Brains are unnecessary any
more. The day of pigeonholes was slightly better; for the pigeonholes
were not unlike the human brain in which things are tucked away
together, because they really have some association with each other.
But the card index alphabetizes ruthlessly. Fancy an alphabetical brain!
Epigrams are like that. A man cannot take the trouble to think; he
falls back on an epigram. He cannot take the trouble to remember and so
he card indexes. The upshot is that he can find nothing in the card
index and of course has no recollection to fall back on. Or he recalls
the epigram without having the slightest idea what it was meant to
signify.
But this is not to be about card indexes nor even about epigrams. It is
to be a barbaric yawp, by which it is to be supposed was once meant the
happy consciousness and the proud wonder that struck into the heart of
an American poet. Whitman was not so much a poet as the chanteyman of
Longfellow’s Ship of State. There was an hour when the chanteyman had
an inspiration, when he saw as by an apocalyptic light all the people
of these United States linked and joined in a common effort. Every man,
woman and child of the millions tailed on the rope; every one of them
put his weight and muscle to the task. It was a tremendous hour. It was
the hour of a common effort. It was the hour for which, Walt felt, men
had risked their lives a century earlier. It was a revealed hour; it
had not yet arrived; but it was sure to come. And in the glow of that
revelation the singer lifted up his voice and sang.... God grant he may
be hearing the mighty chorus!
2
America is not a land, but a people. And a people may have no land and
still they will remain a people. There has, for years, been no country
of Poland; but there are Poles. There has been a country of Russia for
centuries, but there is to-day no Russian people. What makes a people?
Not a land certainly. Not political forms nor political sovereignty.
Not even political independence. Nor, for that matter, voices that
pretend or aspire to speak the thoughts of a nation. Poland has had
such voices and Russia has had her artists, musicians, novelists, poets.
The thing that makes a people is a thing over which statesmen have
no control. Geography throws no light on the subject. Nor does that
study of the races of man which is called anthropology. It is not
a psychological secret (psychology covers a multitude of guesses).
Philosophy may evolve beautiful systems of thought, but systems of
thought have nothing to do with the particular puzzle before us.
The secret must be sought elsewhere. Is it an inherited thing, this
thing that makes a people? That can’t be; ours is a mixed inheritance
here in America. Is it an abstract idea? Abstract ideas are never
more than architectural pencillings and seldom harden into concrete
foundations. Is it a common emotion? If it were we should be able to
agree on a name for it. Is it an instinct? An instinct might be back of
it.
What is left? Can it be a religion? As such it should be easily
recognizable. But an element of religion? An act of faith?
Yes, for faith may exist with or without a creed, and the act of faith
may be deliberate or involuntary. Willed or unwilled the faith is
held; formulated or unformulated the essential creed is there. Let us
look at the people of America, men and women of very divergent types
and tempers far apart; men and women of inextricable heredities and
of confusing beliefs--even, ordinarily, of clashing purposes. Each
believes a set of things, but the beliefs of them all can be reduced
to a lowest common denominator, a belief in each other; just as the
beliefs of them all have a highest common multiple, a willingness to
die in defence of America. To some of them America means a past, to
some the past has no meaning; to some of them America means a future,
to others a future is without significance. But to all of them America
means a present to be safeguarded at the cost of their lives, if need
be; and the fact that the present is the translation of the past to
some and the reading of the future to others is incidental.
3
We would apply these considerations to the affair of literature; and
having been tiresomely generalizing we shall get down to cases that
every one can understand.
The point we have tried to make condenses to this: The present is
supremely important to us all. To some of us it is all important
because of the past, and to some of us it is of immense moment because
of the future, and to the greatest number (probably) the present is of
overshadowing concern because it _is_ the present--the time when they
count and make themselves count. It is now or never, as it always is in
life, though the urgency of the hour is not always so apparent.
It was now or never with the armies in the field, with the men training
in the camps, with the coal miners, the shipbuilders, the food savers
in the kitchens. It is just as much now or never with the poets, the
novelists, the essayists--with the workers in every line, although they
may not see so distinctly the immediacy of the hour. Everybody saw the
necessity of doing things to win the war; many can see the necessity
of doing things that will constitute a sort of winning after the war.
There is always something to be won. If it is not a war it is an after
the war. “Peace hath its victories no less renowned than war” is a fine
sounding line customarily recited without the slightest recognition of
its real meaning. The poet did not mean that the victories of peace
were as greatly acclaimed as the victories of war, but that the sum
total of their renown was as great or greater because they are more
enduring.
4
Now for the cases.
It is the duty, the opportunity and the privilege of America now, in
the present hour, to make it impossible hereafter for any one to raise
such a question as Bliss Perry brings up in his book _The American
Spirit in Literature_, namely, whether there is an independent American
literature. Not only does Mr. Perry raise the question, but, stated
as baldly as we have stated it, the query was thereupon discussed,
with great seriousness, by a well-known American book review! We are
happy to say that both Mr. Perry and the book review decided that
there _is_ such a thing as an American literature, and that American
writing is not a mere adjunct (perhaps a caudal appendage) of English
literature. All Americans will feel deeply gratified that they could
honorably come to such a conclusion. But not all Americans will feel
gratified that the conclusion was reached on the strength of Emerson,
Lowell, Longfellow, Whittier, Holmes, Whitman, Poe and others of the
immortal dead. Some Americans will wish with a faint and timid longing
that the conclusion might have been reached, or at least sustained,
on the strength of Tarkington, Robert Herrick, Edith Wharton, Mary
Johnston, Gertrude Atherton, Mary S. Watts, William Allen White, Edgar
Lee Masters, Amy Lowell, Edna Ferber, Joseph Hergesheimer, Owen Wister
and a dozen or so other living writers over whose relative importance
as witnesses for the affirmative we have no desire to quarrel. Mr.
Howells, we believe, was called to the stand.
If we had not seen it we should refuse to credit our senses. The idea
of any one holding court to-day to decide the question as to the
existence of an independent American literature is incredibly funny.
It is the peculiarity of criticism that any one can set up a court
anywhere at any time for any purpose and with unlimited jurisdiction.
There are no rules of procedure. There are no rules of evidence. There
is no jury; the people who read books may sit packed in the court
room, but there must be no interruptions. Order in the court! Usually
the critic-judge sits alone, but sometimes there are special sessions
with a full bench. Writs are issued, subpœnas served, witnesses are
called and testimony is taken. An injunction may be applied for, either
temporary or permanent. Nothing is easier than to be held in contempt.
5
The most striking peculiarity of procedure in the Critical Court is
with regard to what constitutes evidence. You might, in the innocence
of your heart, suppose that a man’s writings would constitute the only
admissible evidence. Not at all. His writings have really nothing to
do with the case. What is his Purpose? If, as a sincere individual,
he has anywhere exposed or stated his object in writing books counsel
objects to the admission of this Purpose as evidence on the ground that
it is incompetent, irrelevant and immaterial; and not sound Art. On the
other hand if, as an artist, he has embodied his Purpose in his fiction
so that every intelligent reader may discover it for himself and feel
the glow of a personal discovery, counsel will object to the admission
of his books as evidence on the ground that they are incompetent,
irrelevant and immaterial; and not the best proof. Counsel will demand
that the man himself be examined personally as to his purpose (if he
is alive) or will demand a searching examination of his private life
(if he be dead). The witness is always a culprit and browbeating the
witness is always in order. I am a highbrow and you are a lowbrow; what
the devil do you mean by writing a book anyway?
Before the trial begins the critic-judge enunciates certain principles
on which the verdict will be based and the verdict is based on those
principles whether they find any application in the testimony or not.
A favorite principle with the man on the bench is that all that is
not obscure is not Art. It isn’t phrased as intelligibly as that,
to be sure; a common way to put it is to lay down the rule that the
popularity of a book (which means the extent to which it is understood
and therefore appreciated) has nothing to do with the case, tra-la,
has nothing to do with the case. Another principle is that sound can
be greater than sense, which, in the lingo of the Highest Criticism,
is the dictum that words and sentences can have a beauty apart from
the meaning (if any) that they seek to convey. And there really is
something in this idea; for example, what could be lovelier than the
old line, “Eeny, meeny, miny-mo”? Shakespeare, a commercial fellow who
wrote plays for a living, knew this when he let one of his characters
sing:
“When that I was and a little tiny boy,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
A foolish thing was but a toy,
For the rain it raineth every day.”
And a little earlier in _Twelfth Night_:
“Like a mad lad,
Pare thy nails, dad;
Adieu, goodman devil.”
Which is not only beautiful as sound, but without the least sense
unless it hath the vulgarity to be looked for in the work of a
mercenary playwright.
6
But the strangest thing about the proceedings in the Critical Court
is their lack of contemporary interest. Rarely, indeed, is anything
decided here until it has been decided everywhere else. For the
great decisions are the decisions of life and not decisions on the
past. A man has written twenty books and he is dead. He is ripe for
consideration by the Critical Court. A man has written two novels
and has eighteen more ahead of him. The Critical Court will leave
him alone until he is past all helping. It seems never to occur to
the critic-judge that a young man who has written two novels is more
important than a dead man who has written twenty novels. For the young
man who has written two novels has some novels yet to be written;
he can be helped, strengthened, encouraged, advised, corrected,
warned, counselled, rebuked, praised, blamed, presented with bills of
particulars, and--heartened. If he has not genius nothing can put it
in him, but if he has, many things can be done to help him exploit it.
And a man who is dead cannot be affected by anything you say or do; the
critic-judge has lost his chance of shaping that writer’s work and can
no longer write a decree, only an epitaph.
To be brutally frank: Nobody cares what the Critical Court thinks
of Whitman or Poe or Longfellow or Hawthorne. Everybody cares
what Tarkington does next, what Mary Johnston tackles, what the
developments are in the William Allen White case, what becomes of
Joseph Hergesheimer, whether Amy Lowell achieves great work in that
contrapuntal poetry she calls polyphonic prose. On these things depend
the present era in American literature and the possibilities of the
future. And these things are more or less under our control.
The people of America not only believe that there is an independent
American literature, but they believe that there will continue to be.
Some of them believe in the past of that literature, some of them
believe in its future; but all of them believe in its present and its
presence. Their voice may be stifled in the Critical Court (silence
in the court!) but it is audible everywhere else. It is heard in the
bookshops where piles of new fiction melt away, where new verse is in
brisk demand, where new biographies and historical works are bought
daily and where books on all sorts of weighty subjects flake down from
the shelves into the hands of customers.
The voice of the American people is articulate in the offices of
newspapers which deal with the news of new books. It makes a
seismographic record in the ledgers of publishing houses. It comes to
almost every writer in letters of inquiry, comment and commendation.
What, do you suppose, a writer like Gene Stratton-Porter cares whether
the Critical Court excludes her work or condemns it? She can re-read
hundreds and thousands of letters from men and women who tell her how
profoundly her books have--tickled their fancy? pleased their love of
verbal beauty? taxed their intellectuals to understand? No, merely how
profoundly her books have altered their whole lives.
Hear ye! Hear ye! Hear ye! The Critical Court is in session. All who
have business with the court draw near and give attention!
IN THE CRITICAL COURT
III
IN THE CRITICAL COURT
_The Critical Court being in session, William Dean Howells, H. W.
Boynton, W. C. Brownell, Wilson Follett and William Marion Reedy
sitting, the case of Booth Tarkington, novelist, is called._
COUNSEL FOR THE PROSECUTION: If it please the court, this case should
go over. The defendant, Mr. Tarkington, is not dead yet.
Mr. HOWELLS: I do not know how my colleagues feel, but I have no
objection to considering the work of Mr. Tarkington while he is alive.
Mr. FOLLETT: I think it would be better if we deferred the
consideration of Mr. Tarkington until it is a little older.
COUNSEL FOR THE DEFENSE (_in this case Mr. Robert Cortes Holliday,
biographer of Tarkington_): “It”?
Mr. FOLLETT: I mean his work, or works. Perhaps I should have said
“them.”
Mr. HOLLIDAY: “They,” not “them.” Exception. And “are” instead of “is.”
Gentlemen, I have no wish to prejudice the case for my client, but I
must point out that if you wait until he is a little older he may be
dead.
Mr. BOYNTON: So much the better. We can then consider his works in
their complete state and with reference to his entire life.
Mr. HOLLIDAY: But it would then be impossible to give any assistance to
Mr. Tarkington. The chance to influence his work would have passed.
Mr. BROWNELL: That is relatively unimportant.
Mr. HOLLIDAY: I beg pardon but Mr. Tarkington feels it rather important
to him.
Mr. BOYNTON: My dear Mr. Holliday, you really must remember that it is
not what seems important to Mr. Tarkington that can count with us, but
what is important in our eyes.
Mr. HOLLIDAY: Self-importance.
Mr. BOYNTON (_stiffly_): Certainly not. Merely self-confidence. But
on my own behalf I may say this: I am unwilling to consider Mr.
Tarkington’s works in this place at this time; but I am willing to
pass judgment in an article for a newspaper or a monthly magazine or
some other purely perishable medium. That should be sufficient for Mr.
Tarkington.
Mr. FOLLETT: I think the possibility of considering Mr. Tarkington must
be ruled out, anyway, as one or more of his so-called works have first
appeared serially in the _Saturday Evening Post_.
Mr. HOLLIDAY (_noting the effect of this revelation on the members of
the court_): Very well, I will not insist. Booth, you will have to get
along the best you can with newspaper and magazine reviews and with
what people write to you or tell you face to face. Be brave, Tark, and
do as you aren’t done by. After all, a few million people read you
and you make enough to live on. The court will pass on you after you
are dead, and if you dictate any books on the ouija board the court’s
verdict may be helpful to you then; you might even manage the later
Henry James manner.
CLERK OF THE COURT (_Prof. William Lyon Phelps_): Next case! Mrs.
Atherton please step forward!
Mrs. ATHERTON (_advancing with composure_): I can find no one to act
for me, so I will be my own counsel. I will say at the outset that I
do not care for the court, individually or collectively, nor for its
verdict, whatever it may be.
Prof. PHELPS: I must warn you that anything you say may, and probably
will, be used against you.
Mrs. ATHERTON: Oh, I don’t mind that; it’s the things the members of
the court have said against me that I purpose to use against them.
Mr. BROWNELL: Are you, by any chance, referring to me, Madam?
Mrs. ATHERTON: I do not refer to persons, Mr. Brownell. I hit
them. No, I had Mr. Boynton particularly in mind. And perhaps Gene
Stratton-Porter. Is she here? (_Looks around menacingly_). No. Well, go
ahead with your nonsense.
Mr. HOWELLS (_rising_): I think I will withdraw from consideration of
this case. Mrs. Atherton has challenged me so often----
Mr. BOYNTON: No, stay. _I_ am going to stick it out----
Mr. FOLLETT: I think there is no question but that we should hold the
defendant in contempt.
Mrs. ATHERTON: Mutual, I assure you. (_She sweeps out of the room and a
large section of the public quietly follows her._)
CLERK PHELPS: Joseph Hergesheimer to the bar! (_A short, stocky fellow
with twinkling eyes steps forward._) Mr. Hergesheimer?
Mr. HERGESHEIMER: Right.
Mr. REEDY: Good boy, Joe!
Mr. FOLLETT: It won’t do, it won’t do at all. There’s only _The Three
Black Pennys and Gold and Iron_ and a novel called _Java Head_ to go
by. _Saturday Evening Post._ And bewilderingly unlike each other. Seem
artistic but are too popular, I fancy, really to be sound.
Mr. HERGESHEIMER: With all respect, I should like to ask whether this
is a court of record?
Mr. HOWELLS: It is.
Mr. HERGESHEIMER: In that case I think I shall press for a verdict
which may be very helpful to me. I should like also to have the members
of the court on record respecting my work.
Mr. BOYNTON: Just as I feared. My dear fellow, while we should like to
be helpful and will endeavor to give you advice to that end it must
be done unobtrusively ... current reviews ... we’ll compare your work
with that of Hawthorne and Hardy or perhaps a standard Frenchman. That
will give you something to work for. But you cannot expect us to say
anything definite about you at this stage of your work. Suppose we were
to say what we really think, or what some really think, that you are
the most promising writer in America to-day, promising in the sense
that you have most of your work before you and in the sense that your
work is both popular and artistically fine. Don’t you see the risk?
Mr. HERGESHEIMER: I do, and I also see that you would make your own
reputation much more than you would make mine. I write a story. I risk
everything with that story. You deliver a verdict. Why shouldn’t you
take a decent chance, too?
Mr. FOLLETT: Why should I take any more chances than I have to with my
contemporaries? I pick them pretty carefully, I can tell you.
Mr. HERGESHEIMER: I shall write a novel to be published after my death.
There was Henry Adams. He stipulated that _The Education of Henry
Adams_ should not be published until after his death; and everybody
says it is positively brilliant.
Mr. FOLLETT (_relieved_): That is a wise decision. But don’t be
disheartened. I’ll probably be able to get around to you in ten years,
anyway. (_Mr. Hergesheimer bows and retires._)
CLERK PHELPS: John Galsworthy!
Mr. FOLLETT (_brightening_): Some of the Englishmen! This is better!
Besides, I know all about Galsworthy.
Mr. GALSWORTHY (_coming forward_): I feel much honored.
COUNSEL FOR THE PROSECUTION: If the court please, I must state that for
some time now Mr. Galsworthy has been published serially in a magazine
with a circulation of one digit and six ciphers. Or one cipher and six
digits, I cannot remember which.