VERBOTEN
The field of the short story is first of all the field of the magazine.
To be a successful story writer requires a comprehensive knowledge
of the policies and preferences of the various periodicals that buy
stories. It is natural to assume that literary agents, commercial
critics, and teachers should be well aware of these editorial policies
and preferences, and should make every effort to inspire the amateur
with the respect and deference due such essential knowledge. We use
this knowledge to stem any inclination to mischief. We hold it aloft,
over the heads of the unmanageable ones, threatening them with failure,
unless they become manageable. Thus we preserve the dignity of the
profession and help stragglers on their weary pilgrimage to the golden
calf.
For us the task is after all an easy one. It is but necessary to
tabulate the good old taboos as to the content of our stories and
then be-write and be-lecture them to make our words impressive. We do
that in our teaching of photoplaywriting; we do it in the teaching of
fiction-writing. But no one has ever seriously labeled the photoplay
as it is finally produced on the screen as a form of literature, while
our fiction undeniably is a form, if not _the_ form, of our national
literature. It behooves us, therefore, to bring forward all the pomp
and pride and glory we are capable of and point out the peculiar
characteristics that distinguish our fiction as a national product from
the fiction of other nations. And we usually find it more advisable
to do it by the negative method of pointing out what our fiction is
not rather than by the positive method of pointing out what it is.
Crystallizing the more-important undesirable and therefore absent
elements in our fiction into single words, we can say that it is not
_pessimistic_; that it is not _lewd_; that it is not _irreverent_; that
it is not “_red_”; that it is not _un-American_.
This does not mean that our literature abstains from all discussion of
the topics of pessimism, sex, religion, politics and economics, and
Americanism. It is merely the extent to which they are discussed and
the angle of discussion that elevate our fiction to a position of what
passes for national expression. Like the vicious circle that governs
photoplay scripts--adaptation of fiction stories being adapted in turn
from the screen and re-adapted back again into scripts--our opinions
on the phenomena of life are adaptations of the opinions imprisoned
within covers of best sellers and our million-and-more-circulation
magazines, only the circle is somewhat more complicated. Scripts
are written to meet the prejudices of all moving-picture patrons;
stories, to meet the needs of a particular type of reader. And this
much must be said for our magazines: The variety of types has made
possible whatever untrammelled literature we have. For after all there
is a wide difference between the moral tone of _Harper’s_ and the
arch-sophistication of the _Smart Set_, or between the big-business
glorification of the _Saturday Evening Post_ and the _New Success_ and
the artistic quiet and rebelliousness of the _Dial_ and the _Little
Review_.
Whatever untrammelled literature we have, however, is little enough.
The tone-givers, the guides, the molders are the magazines of power
with public opinion and millions of dollars behind them, with
unbreakable traditional prejudices and taboos. And so long as the
humblest critic and the highest-paid institutional authority unite in
upholding these traditional taboos as glittering marks of Americanism,
public opinion will continue to demand a literature that is for the
most part infantile, insipid and lifeless. The generations that rise
to pound the typewriter keys in the production of stories are for the
most part imbued with this negative conception of our literature and
unquestionably the most dangerous instrument for the perpetuation of
this degrading conception is the literary teaching profession. Again,
in not a single textbook on story-writing have I been able to find an
intelligent, fearless analysis of our national taboos and their effect
of sterility upon our literature. I have found warnings and admonitions
and scarecrows. “Thou shalt not!” is the sum and substance of our
learned attitude on these mummifying influences. The vacillating feet
of the aspirant are directed toward the proper, well-trodden roads at
the very outset, and the punishment for straying is stressed to the
point where it requires a superhuman courage to brave it.
1. _Optimism_
Our first dictate is “Thou shalt not be morbid!” Depressing stuff
may be characteristic of the Russians, the Germans, the French, the
Italians, the Scandinavians, but not of the Americans. Ours is a young
country, a free country, a happy country, full of the joy of existence.
Ours is a hopeful people, cheerful and gay and proud; glad to be alive.
“People have all the gloom they want,” says the editor of _The American
Magazine_ in his “Fourteen Points” to contributors. “They manufacture
it on their own premises. You cannot sell them gloom. What they want
to buy is a cure for their gloom. They don’t want to buy more gloom.”
And Dr. Frank Crane in his ever-buoyant style exclaims: “_The Saturday
Evening Post_ and _The American Magazine_ have what I call ‘good
literature.’”[18]
Since salability is the only criterion of worth, any story that
violates our fundamental optimistic tone is at once intercepted,
revamped, “improved” or pronounced hopeless and condemned to
extinction. “Not salable,” is a phrase as ominous as a jury’s “Guilty!”
on a charge of murder in the first degree, and the only appeal possible
is for the defendant to plead a sudden seizure of passionate desire
to “pack up his troubles in his old kit bag and smile, smile, smile!”
And so the law of supply and demand operates once more. The “calamity
howler” is eliminated and the man or woman with the “smile that won’t
come off” gets to the top. American literature becomes enriched by the
advent of another “genius” imbued with the gospel that “life is great
fun, after all!”
That no literature can thrive on such a barren optimism seems
to be a statement so obvious as to challenge even the mere
ordinary intelligence offering it. Yet pedants carry forward this
optimism-tradition and preach, and lecture, and prate about the spirit
of America, and threaten and punish and outlaw the few unfortunate
rebels. What literature can a country produce which refuses to take
even the most timid peep at life as it is, which shuts its eyes in
very horror at the most fundamental problems of the land, which does
not brood, contemplate or inquire, which does not know the benediction
of a tear or the relief of a sigh? Can a steady diet of sugar produce
anything more invigorating than diabetes? And literary sugar is what
we think and preach and worship. All heroines are pretty; all heroes
succeed; all complications are solved; wedding bells ring; promotions
are given out; only bad people die young; the good live to a mellow age
of four score and ten; life is a fairy-tale in which all the fairies
are sweet young things waving magic wands over honest young brokers of
their choice; the world, and America especially, is a Vale of Tempe
where limousines are passed out as the reward of virtue and endeavor
and where successful matches are consummated.
Our writers must be either inanimate machines or sorry human beings
trained to suppress their instincts and moods. They must be on
their guard not to succumb to the “blues”; quick to inhibit any sad
reflection or discouraging thought. “If you can’t see the sun is
shining,” wrote one editor very bluntly, rejecting a “depressing”
story, “take Epsom salts and sleep it over.” And whether they are
drowsy or not, sleep it over our writers must. Those who suffer with
insomnia find their good neighbors either snoring peacefully or
stamping about in infuriated protest. Our writers must sift their
experience; if it is tragic or insufficiently uplifting they must
dispatch it to oblivion. It is really most advisable not to draw upon
experience at all. Not of such stuff can optimistic fiction be made.
For is there life without tears and heartache and doubt; without
innumerable deaths of precious fragile dreams; without graying of
heads; without perplexity? Hence arises what Van Wyck Brooks calls “the
doctrine of the fear of experience.... It assumes that experience is
not the stuff of life but something essentially meaningless; and not
merely meaningless but an obstruction which retards and complicates our
real business of getting on in the world and getting up in the world,
and which must, therefore, be ignored and forgotten and evaded and
beaten down by every means in our power.”[19]
Here again the inconsistency in our theory of optimistic fiction is
glaring. We shriek anathemas at any native product that repudiates it,
yet we bow with respect to importations. We acclaim all the morbid
geniuses of Europe; we accord their works places of special privilege
in our curricula; we consider it a mark of culture to mention the
titles of at least a half-dozen depressing books. Even our most
respectable magazines are proud on occasion to publish a story by an
eminent European author with the flamboyant legend placed upon it or
boxed in the center of its first page by the editor: “No one but Gorki
(or Maeterlink, or D’Annunzio, or D. H. Lawrence, or whoever else it
might be) would have the courage to write a story such as this, and no
magazine in America but _The_---- would have the courage to publish
it.” The same legend is placed sometimes upon the work of a native
writer, but after reading the story one finds that either the writer
did not dare, after all, or that the editor of the brave magazine
edited the contribution; that both the writer and the worthy editor had
been so frightened at the mere flap of a wing that they had to offer an
apology for attempting to soar.
This inconsistency is particularly reflected in our current criticism
and literary textbooks. With the same breath a reviewer will praise
Dostoyevski and chastise some native youngster for his horrible
morbidity. In the same chapter the text will refer to Chekhov and
Maupassant and Zola and Poe with almost cringing reverence and
eloquently preach the gospel of cheap optimism as the supreme message
of the story writer. And the young would-be procures copies of the
great masters, reads them, and comes back perplexed. “Why do _they_
write about such horrid things?” asks one young student. I look into
her large, innocent eyes and smile. The Great Creator must have been in
a diplomatic mood when he invented a smile. I glance down at my copy
of _The Literary News_, lying on my desk and note that an editor of a
prominent and liberally-paying magazine is in the market for “stories
of rapid action--cheery short stories, encouraging, helpful--the kind
that makes the world better,” and I proceed to discuss how this kind of
story is written....
2. _Sex_
Of all our taboos none has contributed so large a share in keeping our
literature swathed in baby blankets as that on sex. In its essence
it is merely a direct irradiation of taboo No. 1 on optimism. If
everything in the universe is good and beautiful and holy and the
writer’s business is to chant incessant halleluiahs, then sex is all
of these and must be treated reverently. Its unsavory aspects as well
as those leading to unhappiness must be passed by, and since in the
muddled world we are living in sex has felt most severely the combined
forces of bigotry, suppression and inhibition, of pathologic social and
moral conditions, its aspects are most frequently unsavory and unhappy
and therefore must be either ignored entirely or made savory and happy.
We have a hoary phrase perpetually playing upon our glib lips--it is
to the effect that we are a “clean-living, moral people.” The phrase
itself has long lost its meaning, even to the most uninformed of
citizens, but it has remained a sacred fetish forever, it seems.
Again it is not in the total abstaining from any treatment of sex that
our taboo is expressed, but in our peculiar angle of treatment. Total
abstaining were indeed impossible, for any literature, and least of all
for our literature. The truth is that ours is, in the main, essentially
a sex-literature--largely because of our “reverent” attitude.
Strong elemental forces long suppressed erupt in irrepressible,
if furtive, curiosity. No country on earth can boast of as many
periodicals specializing in the risque, the sexually-sensational, the
cheaply suggestive, as the land of the “clean-living.” The fact is
incontrovertible. Where there is a continued supply there must be a
continued demand. Our publishers know their market. Even the titles of
a host of our periodicals exploit, not too artistically, this crude
reaction of a sex-conscious people. “Saucy Stories,” “Breezy Stories,”
“Snappy Stories,” “Live Stories,” “Droll Stories,” “The Parisienne,”
“True Stories,” “The Follies,” “Telling Tales,” “Secrets,” “I Confess,”
“True Confessions,” “High Life,” “Hot Dog,”--these are some of the
titles that wink mischievously at the purchaser timid with guilt. But
the purchaser is rarely pleased with his dissipation. He finds the
wine exceedingly mild. Most of the stories under the suggestive cover
bearing the inviting title and a still more inviting pretty girl,
usually attired in very becoming _négligé_, are, after all, “clean.”
And this “cleanness” is the characteristic blight of nine-tenths
of our entire literature. It is vulgar with the lowest kind of
sex-consciousness but it doesn’t go “too far.” It is the “cleanness” of
our moving pictures. Is there any reason why a production entitled “Du
Barry” in Europe should be rechristened to read “Passion” for American
exhibition? Is there any reason why Barrie’s “Admirable Crichton”
should become “Male and Female” as a photoplay? Is there any reason for
such titles as “Sex,” “The Restless Sex,” “His Wedded Wife,” “The First
Night,” “The She Woman,” “The Leopard Woman,” “Wedded Husbands,” “Why
Wives Go Wrong,” “Forbidden Fruit,” “The Primrose Path,” “What Happened
to Rosa,” “Why Change Your Wife?” “The Woman Untamed,” etc., etc? It
surely does not require an erudite psychoanalyst to find the reason for
this avalanche of suggestiveness.
Perhaps, if they deemed it wise to speak, our motion-picture producers
could shed some light on the subject. Seemingly their opinion of our
“clean-living, moral people” is not very flattering. And their judgment
is substantially founded upon the generous reports they receive from
the distributing exchanges.
Here, too, carefully as the titles are selected the pictures themselves
are “clean.” If they were not, the various Boards of Censorship would
have seen to it that they become so. At most a director will manage
to show the heroine plunging into her morning’s rose-water bath, as in
“Male and Female,” for instance, or an exotic harem partially disrobing
for a cold dip into the perfumed waters of the Rajah’s pool, as in
“Kismet.” Whether the scenes are vitally necessary to the unfolding of
the plot is immaterial. They constitute an irresistible attraction in
themselves, and must be smuggled in, if possible. A couple of feet of
nakedness results in thousands of dollars’ worth of advertising.
What is true of the moving pictures is equally true of our spoken
stage. Think of “Twin Beds” and “Up in Mabel’s Room” and “Parlor,
Bedroom and Bath” and “Mary’s Ankle” and “Nighty, Nighty” and
“Scrambled Wives” and “Ladies’ Night in a Turkish Bath” and
“Getting Gertie’s Garter” and the various “Follies” and “Scandals”
and a hundred-and-one other titles which were surely chosen for a
purpose--the same purpose which impelled some years ago the manager
of the old Academy of Music in New York to advertise a stock company
production of Daudet’s “Sapho” as the “greatest immoral play ever
written.” And again the plays themselves are not remotely as licentious
as the titles would intimate.
What, then, is this “cleanness” of ours? What are its impositions and
how far can they be stretched? The answer is simple and more than a
trifle sad. Our “cleanness” excludes serious thought. “Something
audacious suits us, but nothing salacious,” writes one editor of a
well-known publication of the frothy type. “Salacious” stands for
thought, reflection, analysis. A little suggestiveness, a hint, a
double-edged joke, a farcical situation, a vulgar thrust, will do.
But a deep, sincere analysis, a fearless uncovering of a cowering
conscience--that is salacious, immoral, lewd, unclean. That accounts
for the free and open dissemination of so much debasing, lurid stuff
and the hypocritical suppression of Dreiser and Cabell. That accounts
for the popularity of Bertha M. Clay _et al._ and the unpopularity
of Sherwood Anderson _et al._ Sex is a fit subject to jest about, to
inject breezily as a gently-naughty stimulant. Sex as an elemental
force which shapes the lives of men and women, which actuates their
struggles in this terrestrial sphere of ours, making for success or
failure, for happiness or despair, for sinner or saint, is vile,
lascivious, and therefore taboo.
The literary teaching profession has not passed this degrading scene
unnoticed. It has broken up in two camps. The great mass of instructors
have simply adopted the position that a writer must give whatever is
demanded of him. Would a tailor refuse to accept an order calling for
a fabric he personally does not approve of and a fashion he detests?
Granted that this is not a particularly lofty conception of literary
art, it is still less pernicious than the conception held by the
smaller group of so-called idealists in the profession. To these the
sex aspect of our literature calls for stormy denunciation. They would
impress upon the future writer the sanctity of his mission. The pen
must not be polluted. Sex must be left alone entirely. The moral tone
must be preserved in all productions. Laws for the ruthless suppression
of the unclean must be fought for and their enactment obtained.
What these honest Puritans cannot understand is that the entire
class of bawdy, sex-reeking literature is a product of the very laws
they have been fortunate enough to have enacted; that the complete
abolition of these laws and the absolute cessation from persecution
in the interests of morality of any expression of sex would purge our
literature of the curse as nothing else. If any one could purchase
a mature, intelligent literary expression of the mysterious passion
that animates nature and moves the world, the profane effusions of
shriveled minds would appear shocking and abhorrent by comparison. All
literature that has ever been written has dealt directly or indirectly
with the relation of men and women--for the very trite reason that all
life that has ever been lived has been the life of this relation of
men and women. To place the yellow ticket of evil upon this relation
as a literary subject is to degrade it beyond words of contempt. The
prevailing spectacle of our literary sewage is perfectly natural: the
thought of uncleanness wrapped around the stuff of life is bound to
pollute it.
But the pernicious influence of this immoral taboo goes beyond its
direct inhibition of the most legitimate of themes. It perpetuates
an æsthetic literary tenet which is a relic of the Age of Darkness.
It is to the effect that the morality or unmorality of its contents
determines the value of a literary production. “It is a shame that such
splendid writing should be wasted on such an atrocious theme,” said
a sweet little lady student apropos Sherwood Anderson’s “The Other
Woman.”[20] The remark at once characterized her as a member of the
Second-Grade Bigots. The First-Grade Bigots would not permit themselves
to see any excellences in a work so pronouncedly unorthodox. When
cornered, the little lady admitted that there might be sound psychology
in Anderson’s story--and a large measure of unsavory truth. “But why
choose such horrid themes when there are so many nice, clean ones?”
It is the cry of all Pollyanna-nurtured readers. It’s the cry of the
author of “Pollyanna” herself. “Is there, then, no human experience
that deals with the good, the happy, the beautiful?” she asks, in a
circular issued by her publishers. “Are joy, faith and purity utterly
illogical? Is only the thunder-cloud real?--the sunshine a sham?”
In such cases argument is impossible. The criterion of moral and
optimistic content is deep-rooted and well-nourished by authority. Is
it not largely this same criterion that for more than a half century
prevented the acceptance by the Judges of Walt Whitman as a poet, and
that is excluding the name of Theodore Dreiser from its rightful place
in our scholarly histories of the modern American novel?
To counteract this blind perpetuation of a fallacious doctrine
demands a complete severance with old school criticism and old-age
pedagogy. Not until authority-worship is mightily shaken can this
be accomplished. But that would be a hopeless task to undertake.
The great mass must have and will have its Great Authorities to bow
to. It is easier than to depend upon one’s own critical faculties.
Besides, habit has become second nature. We have always been taught
that knowledge is merely to know where to find what we want to know.
No, we must be merciful; our literary apostles must remain. But among
them there are those that are blind with senility and those that are
glowing with fresh vision. Let us follow the more musical of the new
criers until they, in their turn, reach their dotage and truth turns
to ashes in their toothless mouths. In no other way can we hope to
uproot the puerile beliefs that art can be judged by its optimistic
or uplifting message, by its morality, or by any other of, what Joel
Elias Spingarn terms, the “Seven confusions.” We have not yet reached
the stage where the relativity of the term “morality” can be discussed
with impunity and to any considerable advantage. But we can bring to
bear upon a rising generation of readers and writers all the force of
our warm logic to combat the notion that any standard of morality, no
matter how sublime, has any determining value in art. We can insist
that a story might be entirely devoid of any moral significance and yet
be an immortal masterpiece; that the whole notion is merely another
one of the confusions we have inherited from an age which was too busy
developing the raw resources of a vast young continent--a task which
necessitated the invocation of Providential aid--to pay attention to
literature.
“To say that poetry (or any other art) is moral or immoral is as
meaningless as to say that an equilateral triangle is moral and an
isosceles triangle immoral. Surely we must realize the absurdity of
testing anything by a standard which does not belong to it or a purpose
for which it was not intended. Imagine these whiffs of conversation at
a dinner table: ‘This cauliflower would be excellent if it had only
been prepared in accordance with international law.’ ‘Do you know why
my cook’s pastry is so good? He has never told a lie or seduced a
woman.’ But why multiply obvious examples? We do not concern ourselves
with morals when we test the engineer’s bridge or the scientist’s
researches; indeed we go farther, and say that it is the moral duty of
the scientist to disregard morals in his search for truth. As a man he
may be judged by moral standards, but the truth of his conclusions can
only be judged by the standard of science.... Art is expression, and
poets succeed or fail by their success or failure in completely and
perfectly expressing themselves. If the ideals they express are not
the ideals we admire most, we must blame not the poets but ourselves;
in the world where morals count we have failed to give them the proper
material out of which to rear a nobler edifice. To separate art and
morality is not to destroy moral values but to augment them--to give
them increased powers and a new freedom in the realm in which they have
the right to reign.”[21]
3. _Religion_
It is literally true that American literature is not irreverent.
The penalty for meddling with religion in any unconventional way is
contemptuous obscurity. But meddling with religion in a way that brings
out its blessings to humanity is praiseworthy and leads to opulence and
glory. For that reason nine-tenths of our literature has a strain of
religious righteousness running through it. In the main the specters
of Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards still hover over our literary
output, imparting to it a theological tint. Our fictionists are still
obsessed with the idea that a story or a novel must preach, must
instill the right kind of ideals, must exert a redeeming influence
upon its reader. To be sure, the experienced ones among them are fully
aware of the dangers of obvious moralizing, but they have mastered the
devious ways of preaching without arousing the reader’s suspicion that
he is being preached to.
It is this last point--the devious ways of unsuspected preaching--that
my profession is concerned with. Either we are altogether silent on the
subject of religion in literature, deeming it too ticklish a subject
upon which to commit ourselves, or we are zealous in our efforts to
perpetuate the tradition that literature must complement the work of
the church, only in a less outspoken way. Perhaps we do not do it
consciously but the results obtained are the same. We merely advise
students as to what subjects may be exploited and what subjects may
not. Surely a subject bordering on the atheistic could never be made
salable; not more than two or three periodicals would be open to such
a story--and these of the obscure, “freaky” kind. Without a doubt even
such a mild story as Balzac’s “An Atheist’s Mass” could never have seen
the light of publication in an American periodical. The fact that
the hero remains unconverted to the end would be fatal. We may write
a story about an atheist, and have written such, but in our story,
when the dénouement comes, the hero must exclaim to the assembled
multitude, that he had tried to live without God and had found it
unprofitable. The fact that there might be some poor wretch of a hero
in this queer wide world who would not issue such a proclamation does
not detract from the urgency of such a dénouement. It is one of our
devious ways; without it the story can hope to travel no farther than
the return-to-author basket. The characters we create must ultimately
come to know God and the church--or they never come to know the reader.
It is doubtful if an American Flaubert could hope for as cordial a
reception of an atheistic character of his as the French have accorded
the mediocre M. Homais of “Madame Bovary” fame.
It is far from my purpose to leave the implication that literature
should preach atheism; but neither should it preach religion, theology,
or anything else, for that matter, except in so far as life itself is
a sermon to whomever it pleases to view it as such. “As a rule we may
say that nothing in the world improves one less than sermonizing books
and conversations; nothing is more wearisome, quite apart from the fact
that nothing is more inartistic.... We do not demand of an author that
he should work to make us better.... All that we can demand of him
is that he work conscientiously.”[22] The moment an author stoops to
uplift us he loses his balance as an artistic observer, recorder, and
interpreter.
The attitude of our literature toward religion is based on a churchy
interpretation of life and character which was unconsciously but none
the less comprehensively expressed in a magazine article by Dr. Frank
Crane. “Church people,” he wrote, “as a rule, pay their debts, observe
the decencies of life, are clean of mind and body, cultivate those
qualities that make for a successful and contented life, and get along
together peacefully. And, as a rule, the embezzlers, thugs, drunkards,
harlots, rascals, adulterers, gamblers, and swindlers do not cultivate
church-going to any great extent.”[23]
This is a safe and sane doctrine to embrace when writing fiction for
the popular magazines. Our editors, almost universally, have embraced
it, and even though the Reverend Doctor specifically states that
he speaks of people “as a rule,” which would permit of exceptions,
editors at large will not recognize the existence of such exceptions.
Truth does not count and experience is an illusion. If a writer has in
his life had the misfortune of coming across a man or woman who was
kind, charitable, gentle, moral, and noble and yet instead of being
affiliated with a church was a member of the Secular League and a
subscriber to the Truth Seeker he would best suppress the latter two
points. If a writer has read statistics of extra-generous donations
made to various church funds and has found among the names of donors
not a few of universally notorious embezzlers, he must ignore the fact,
if only in the interests of his career. His motto must be: Never write
anything about church that could not be turned into an advertisement of
the institution. If the motto conflicts with life, scratch life.
And yet religion, like sex, is one of the basic forces of life; it has
helped to shape the course of human history and civilization. To deny
the artist the prerogative to touch upon it unless it be in praise
is to deny him the means to probe the human soul. To compel him to
accept any institution as infallible and therefore beyond question of
imperfection is to fetter his spirit. That a man who is a respected
member of a respected church cannot be a thief in his business life or
a brute at home is a more prostituting doctrine, the more so if not
actually believed in but adopted for commercial purposes only, than
any harlot was ever guided by, because it is so flagrantly contrary to
truth. That the call of sex can never prove stronger than the holiest
of religious precepts is a malicious canon of hypocritical dogmatism.
This is the natural stuff of literature--the dramatic conflicts and
seeming paradoxes, physical, psychic and intellectual, the eternal
clash of nature and dogma, of passion and idea, of man and the world.
Puny fledgelings come to us for instruction in aerial literary
navigation and we look in the tome of Thou Shalt Nots and clip their
weak little wings. “Never dare to lift yourself more than a yard
above the earth,” we admonish; “and you’ll find it easier if you use
this trick and that,” we add. If, perchance, one of them after awhile
finds the fawning breath of the earth too close and spreads its wings
and begins to soar up into the clear ether we shrug our shoulders
compassionately and say to the rest: “Another young bird gone wrong.”
It has broken the limits of our taboos; it has tasted the wine of pure
ozone; it has heard the call of exploration; it has turned irreverent.
Should it succeed in growing a few dazzling feathers by the time it
comes back in sight we may meet it with music and shout to it the
hospitality of our gardens--as a mark of our ability to appreciate fine
feathers; but more frequently we let it starve to death and keep the
music for a touching funeral. During their lifetime we have nothing to
do with the irreverent....
4. _Social and Political Problems_
No literature is more afraid of a courageous presentation of the social
welter which America, in common with all the rest of the world, is
undergoing in this age of reconstruction, than American literature.
Not that it entirely fails to touch upon the mighty problems that have
shaken our national life, but it still clings to an ancient sense of
delicacy and an orthodox point of view which determines what may and
may not be said. Whether a writer really subscribes to the point of
view which colors nearly all of our efforts is immaterial; in order
to sell his product he must adopt it, irrespective of any protesting
personal scruples he might feel. Thus we find our literature, with the
exception of a small and highly unprofitable part, expressing no more
advanced views on the social phenomena of the day than our forefathers
held, and most frequently less advanced.
The editor of _The Coming Nation_, discussing the kind of stories that
are not wanted by film companies, mentions, among others, stories
“where the hero arises and makes a soap-box speech on Socialism
converting all by-standers.”[24] This statement applies with equal
force to our magazine fiction as well. That no respectable editor of a
fiction periodical will take such stories is a fact universally known
among people acquainted with prevailing policies of our magazines.
There would be nothing sinister in this policy, it would even be
highly laudable, were it based on the logical assumption that men’s
minds are not so easily swayed and that therefore no audience of
by-standers can be converted by a single speech. But it is based on
no such reasoning. The fact is that the story depicting a speaker
converting by a few eloquent phrases, let us say, a body of strikers,
to the employer’s point of view, impelling them to forsake their
scheming leaders, tainted by European gold, of course, and return to
work will and does find a ready market. Even the lack of story values
are frequently overlooked where such a fictive incident occurs. The
greatest of our national weeklies and monthlies will open their columns
to the padded dissertation in story disguise on the unreasonableness of
workingmen, or the inefficiency of government control of industries, or
the blessings of a Big Business Administration.
What really determines the policy of exclusion of certain topics or
angles of presentation is the safe-guarding of the interests of the
big advertisers and the personal prejudices of the publishers. Our
experienced writers, as well as the instructors of student-writers who
know their business, know these prejudices perfectly. They know that
popular views “get by” even if the artistry is not so very obstrusive.
They know that unless one can fall in with the established views of
the great majority it is best to leave social and political problems
alone and to write about the South Seas, or Alaska, or the romantic
story of John Jones, Jr., a son of a village blacksmith, who, after
many thrilling hardships finally married Ivy Van Schyler, the pampered
heiress of noble lineage and a huge block of sound railroad stock. They
even know such small details as that if a hero uses soap, it is best
not to mention it by an existing brand, for it may offend advertisers
trying to fasten upon the public rival brands; that “talking machine”
is safer than “Victrola” or “Grafonola” or any other patented name;
that, in a word, no free advertising be given any company, thus causing
other advertisers to complain. They know that it is dangerous to make
a character intimate that his health has been impaired as a result of
drinking too much ginger-ale, or taking headache powders, or yeast, or
tobacco, or anything else, for that matter, that advertisers sell. It
makes no difference whether a writer has accumulated a fund of personal
observation to corroborate his statement. There are people who are
trying to sell these products and will surely lodge a protest with the
advertising manager of the publication in which such a story appears.
In fact, numerous cases where such inadvertent remarks have resulted in
diminished advertising space are on record.
It is to the interest of these same all-powerful advertisers to see
that no aspersions be cast in our magazine fiction upon the inalienable
rights and dignities of Business and that no dangerous views be
expressed which might sway a vigilantly guarded public mind in
undesirable directions. Existing social and political institutions may
be defended in our fiction but not attacked or criticized; their merits
may be extolled, but their demerits must not be betrayed to an innocent
world. Private property is sacred; the State is always right--except
when it attempts to interfere with Property; then a thinly veiled story
decrying this interference as autocratic, tyrannous and un-American
might get by and bring a fair price. Progress is a generality that
affects us but little; the laws of change are suspended when applied to
our literary reactions to our social life. Other nations may develop
new schools of fictionists, young, virile, boldly speaking their minds
on the moot problems of the day. We have no room for such impudence.
Our literature is “pure,” level-headed, conservative. Some isolated
muck-rakers appear here and there, but we give them no outlet for their
muck-raking, and they must either reform or perish or, at best, when we
are helpless to prevent it, get a measure of barren notoriety.
An army officer, an advanced student, once handed in a splendidly
written story of army life, in which he gave a graphic portrayal of
court-martial proceedings. The apathy and criminal nonchalance with
which helpless boys were sentenced to long-term imprisonment, in
the name of discipline, was so artistically woven into a thrilling
plot that it made interesting reading even to the most avid fiction
devotees. Yet the story had gone the rounds of nearly all the
paying magazines without finding a market. A few friendly editors
wrote the author personal letters, one editor going so far as to
express his appreciation of the work, but admitting that the story
was deemed “unavailable because it does not meet with the policy of
this publication.” I supplied the discouraged author with a list of
unconventional publications--for fortunately we do have a fighting
number of them with us--that might welcome his story but could afford
to pay either very little or not at all. He refused to waste his work
on the “freaks,” and wanted to know if he could not revise the story
to make it salable to a standard magazine. I told him that elimination
of all incidents reflecting unfavorably upon the administration of law
in our army would undoubtedly help. He protested that the incidents
had been taken from life and held out for a while, but finally he
succumbed to his intense desire to “get in.” The story was revised
and made perfectly harmless--“sweet” and happy; it sold on its first
trip. The officer has never again attempted to use life as a basis
for fiction--indiscriminately. It was his first altercation with
policies--and probably his last. It requires greater powers than he was
blessed with to put up a more valiant resistance.
It is a sad comment on education that under existing circumstances,
instructors of writers are obliged to help undermine this natural
resistance a few rebellious spirits occasionally display. One whose
entire stock in trade is a knowledge of markets and policies and an
ability to expound existing standards is not in a very advantageous
position to encourage disregard of immutable taboos. We must say, on
reading a story which is off-standard, that it won’t sell, and why.
We must formulate and enforce the rules that make for “success” in
fiction writing. We must be vestals of the sacred fires. I am aware
that “vestals” is not exactly the right word one should use in this
connection; perhaps another word connoting less virtue would be more
apt. But, after all, most of us are honest, and zealously believe that
the fires are sacred and must not be allowed to go out or be polluted.
Vision? Well,--aren’t the blind happy?
5. _Americanism_
As applied to our literature the term American has come to mean
everything and anything. It compliments the mediocre twaddle of
mediocre minds. To earn the compliment a story must be neither sad nor
“fresh” nor irreverent nor “red.” It must not be burdened with too much
thought or sincere emotion. It must have no glimmer of an original
idea. It must “kiss the hand that feeds it,”--which means in this case
that it must breathe a sweet humility to all our institutions, from
the First Law of the land to the American Legion and Babe Ruth. It
must be “glad to be alive and carry on”--everything that is old and
respectable and decrepit and green with mold.
Let a piece of literary art reflect an unhackneyed thought, let it
break any one of our ancient taboos, let it dare to belittle any one of
our glorified generalities and dogmas--and it is promptly howled down
as un-American. The literature of every other country on earth affords
an interpretative and critical view of the psychology of the national
mind it reflects, while American literature is least reflective of the
American national mind, except in one particular: its cringing fear
of the truth. Were it not for this fear to face the truth, and the
inability of the average American to stand criticism, the great bulk
of our “literature” would find no buyers and its content would undergo
a radical change. It is this national trait that has given rise to the
sublime injunction, “Don’t knock!” We may have heard of Matthew Arnold,
but surely never of his heretic doctrine that literature is a criticism
of life. To us literature is largely a matter of so many words at so
much per word, or so many hugs and kisses and careers attained per
magazine page.
Is it to be wondered at that with us we have the interminable problem:
What shall we write about? With one of the largest countries in the
world in which to live; with over one hundred millions of people
living and working and battling and dreaming all about us; with a
multitude of perplexing problems, international, national, municipal,
class, clan, and individual, clamoring for solution; with a rich,
ever-shifting panorama of a young, virile, national existence before
us; with a million comedies and a million tragedies avidly looking at
our typewriter keys--with all this to be had for the taking, isn’t it
pathetically absurd that we must voyage the seven seas and scour all
the corners of the earth in search of material? Open any magazine any
month and note the proportion of stories located in far, out-of-the-way
places. Even our best writers are following this romantic bent.
Twenty-five per cent. of the stories contained in O’Brien’s “Year-book”
for 1919 had a foreign setting; his “Year-book” for 1920 contained
over thirty per cent. of stories with foreign settings--mostly exotic
and bizarre. No serious objections could be taken to transcribing
the life of foreign places, if we had first become aware of our own.
But we have not. We hunt for foreign material simply because we are
afraid to sift our own. We are only now beginning to realize that our
young continent--this huge, crude meltingpot--is filled with brass
and copper and gold, and that these metals are melting and fusing
into some homogeneous substance, which we vaguely term America. We
want this burst of consciousness to grow and sweep us along to great
revelations, but a false pride and obsolete traditions and hypocritical
dogmas are blocking the way. Parrot-like we shout from pulpit and
rostrum and cathedra the old banality: “Boost! All the world loves a
booster!” And because we like to be loved we dare not touch upon the
wounds of life--the hunger, the passions, the buffets, the defeats
that purge its sordidness, gild its drabness, and actuate us to nobler
aspirations.
We pride ourselves that we have developed the short story to
perfection. It has become our national form of literary expression. It
has reached an unparalleled vogue. But, in truth, if we are entitled
to pride, it is on account of our remarkable achievement of an ability
to tell an entertaining tale without telling anything worth while.
Paradoxically, we squeeze amusement out of nothing. We have attained
an excellence of workmanship without the least depth of substance.
But I am anticipating. This phase of the subject is so important that
it deserves a chapter for itself, which it will receive later on. The
real perfection of our short story is yet to come. The signs are that
it is having its birth pangs at this time. Writers of rich promise
have come to the fore recently--and here and there a magazine, either
new or an old one with a new policy, to receive their product. Our
perfected short story will be bold, fearless, vital; beating with
the vigorous pulse of a giant nation stretching its limbs. It will be
truly American--optimistic, with the rugged optimism of a Walt Whitman;
brave, with the courage of an impetuous youth; rich, with the colors of
a fertile soil and a blending humanity. Perhaps our short story is to
fulfill the hopes H. G. Wells once had for the novel:
“The novel,” he wrote in _An Englishman Looks at the World_, “is to be
the social mediator, the vehicle of understanding ... the criticism of
laws and institutions and of social dogmas and ideas.... We are going
to write ... about the whole of human life. We are going to deal with
political questions and religious questions and social questions ...
until a thousand pretenses and ten thousand impostures shrivel in the
cold clear air of our elucidations.... Before we have done we will have
all life within the scope of the novel.”
A lofty assignment, this, for a form of literature that is rooted, as
our short story always has been, in the precept that to be interesting
it must eschew reality. But we can carry it out--and will. Our pioneers
are already on the trail--weak as yet, not a full-grown Chekhov among
them--but gaining in hardihood, and singing. The hordes behind them are
waiting in safety; let the trail become a bit smoother, the hardships
lessened, and they will follow. In the meantime who that is filled
with that eternally human envious admiration for pluck can keep back
his “Good cheer!” and “Godspeed!”?