There has been a good deal of mysticism in the public prints
lately--emanations from Point Loma, perhaps; subtle propaganda.
They are interesting, these men with the wide eyes. They write about
a multitude of things; they are masters of glowing phrases, golden
wordings, witchery of thought.
Eternally invincible are they, being very nebulous and vague. So
lofty are their ideals and visions that never by any chance can they
be brought down to concrete wordings. Fixed in the abstract, they
leave to their readers the interpretation of these sacred
thought-gems.
Fine fluidity rounds the paragraphs, and a wizardry of poeticism
gilds the pages, until any central idea is lost in dazzled wonder at
the pyrotechnics. The type of writing is intoxicating but not tonic.
It is impressionistic and owns a very vague sense of philology; "vers
libre" is a case in point. Art or music may legally convey
impressions, but the business of words is to convey thought; each
word in the language is an historical entity. When words are so
cleverly conjoined as to present only an impression, something is
amiss.
Our mystics have some central thought, spread it across scores of
pages, and lose it; they are style et praeterea nihil. They won't
play to the gallery, preferring the circle. As a matter of fact,
they have no hope of ever reaching the gallery.
It is the great mass of our fiction magazines that reflect the
gallery, the vox populi. Magazinedom is aligned in favor of the
story related with an artful simplicity--the clear word!
The clear word; that is the thing! The forthright, honest word,
signifying something foursquare and definite! When Snorri quilled
that great chronicle, the Heimskringla, his words fitted like a
mosaic; he left us a perfect example of the clear word.
A work of literature creates a character, then evolves it through the
stress of exterior circumstances. The magazine story takes its
character ready-made, evolving a plot through the stress of that
character upon exterior circumstances. If we regard this as
cheapening of a noble art, and decidedly infra dig., then recollect
how our grandsires applied like terms to Dumas and other masters.
The past twenty years have here evolved a type of magazine that
serenely ignores the ranting of the Elder Brethren. It has created a
writer as peculiar to this country as is the feuilletoniste to
France. These magazines of fiction have filled a gap; and they have
been eagerly acclaimed by the reading public.
This reading public, not being confined to the New England states but
being comprised largely of hoi polloi, does not want character
studies. It wants a well-ordered, wholly false and often absurd
plot-scheme, progressing in a straight line instead of by zigzag
dashes, as in life; but it demands that this plot-scheme be
plausible, intricate and fascinating.
A new fiction magazine makes its curtsey by deploring these facts and
apologetically devotes its pages only to the highest forms of
writing. Stuff! Why cringe to the Elder Brethren? An editor
interprets the wishes of the public; he is not to suit his own whims,
but to make money for the owners.
The public knows what it wants, and will pay to get it. The mystics
may become the oracles of new cults, may set about remaking their own
petty worlds after their hearts' desires; but they cannot make a
living by the quill. Even the music critics have come from their
misty pinnacles.
Simplicity has cash value. That is why the magazines pay such
excellent prices for the clear word--which is the hardest of all to
write.