By George W. Cable.
In a certain fine and true sense books of imaginative writing--and the
present writer cannot undertake to speak of any others--are not built,
but born. Nevertheless, there has always been an unlucky tendency on
the part both of writers and readers to overstate this non-mechanical
nature of poetic works, whether in prose or verse, and to give the
processes of this production that air of mystery--not to say
miracle--in which art is always tempted to veil its methods. There is
an anatomy of the book, which is not its life, but is just as real as
its life, and only less essential. There is an architecture awaiting
the book while it is still in its author's brain; and for want of due
regard to this architecture's laws, for want of a sound and shapely
anatomy, many a book misses the success--not commercial only, but
spiritual as well--which the amount of toil and talent spent on it
ought to earn. And now that reading has become so democratic that the
fortunes of a book of the imagination are largely in the hands of the
Crowd, which cares nothing and feels nothing as to grace of form and
tone in what it reads, the commercial risk in the physical deformities
of a book is not so great as the risk of its spiritual failure. Now,
too, that the magazines have made it so very desirable to the author
that his work should be printed first in them, their mechanical
limitations, which are legion, bear upon the author and often seem to
him (and his personal friends) to bear cruelly. This difficulty is not
a flattering or gentle discipline, nor are its discriminations always
good or always bad. It works almost as crudely as that of the stage
works on the theatrical dramatist. A cunning subservience to it covers
a multitude of sins, and often achieves for the literary craftsman
place and preference over the truer artist, if he overlooks the need
of being also a craftsman. Yet it is the hard demand, not of the
magazines alone, but of every highest interest, that the cure for this
injustice be found in the truest artist making himself also the
cunningest craftsman. "He that would be first among you let him be the
servant of all."
Well, then, what are some of these mechanical rules of construction?
The space here allowed--see there, for instance!--gives room for but a
hint or two; but, first of all, an author should know before the
actual constructure of his creation begins to rise, how long it is to
be. Of course he would like to say he cannot tell; that he is in the
hands of his muse, and all that; but the truth is, his "artistic
temperament" is trying to shirk the drudgery of the engineering
problem involved. It is far better for him as an artist that he should
thoroughly solve that problem; it will take time and labor, but it
need not waste them. The length of his work will, or should, depend
upon the breadth of it; by which we mean that a certain fulness of
treatment involves a certain length. For instance, one cannot
reasonably hope to keep a story short if it is about several persons
and involves a conflict of their characters or fates. That is the
second necessity; the length must be planned in proportion to the
breadth. But, thirdly, both length and breadth should be governed by
the importance, the dignity, the substantial value, the business, the
substance, the spiritual stuff, of which the projected book is to
consist. Hence the writer of true literary conscience will put the
first, as above named, last, and the last first: spiritual substance,
then breadth, then length.
In order to make fairly sure of these essentials, as well as for other
reasons, the author should have a clear determination of all the main
features of the structure he proposes to raise. Especially the bridge
should not be itself begun until its builder knows very definitely
where and how it is to reach the other shore; nothing between the
beginning and the end is so important to be sure about from the
beginning, as the end. There is a great difference among writers as
to the sense of need for a complete preliminary framework on which to
build. But beyond doubt many feeble, many abortive, results come of
having too little preparatory framework, too slender a scenario, to
use a playwright's word which authors and editors are borrowing more
and more.
It seems good that a literary artist should always write for himself.
Yet, of course, he should write unselfishly; we may say he would do
well always to aim at the entertainment of the noblest minds, even
when he does not exhort their loftiest moods. But he certainly
achieves much besides if, while he does these things, at the same time
and in the same doing he entertains the great commonalty of readers.
If he does this, and all the more if he has the rare genius to do all
these in one, his books, we may almost say, _ought_ to go first
through the magazines. If he wants them to do so, then it will be a
godsend to himself as well as to the editors if he will lay his plans,
as far as they have any arithmetical character (and they can have
much), according to the magazines' mechanical exigencies. He should
know just how much of any magazine page his own typewritten pages will
occupy; how many of its own pages that magazine commonly allows to
writings of the kind he proposes to offer--how many yearly, and how
many monthly; and so on. It is well that he should know the best time
of the magazine's business year in which to seek to arrange with
them. To a certain degree magazines actually "lay in stock" for a
coming season and after that, for a time, are languid buyers.
Be it understood that these remarks are as impromptu as a letter, and
are intended only as hints and pointers. Yet much as they leave
unstated, let a word be said as to the relation of the author to his
book after he and all the later artisans of it have done their several
parts in its building, and it is built. The care of the edifice ought
still to be, far more than it commonly is, in the author's hands. The
publisher has the fortunes of hundreds of works to promote and keep in
repair; the author has but his own. Even an author may say that any
publisher is glad to have suggestions from any author as to plans for
keeping the children of that author's own brain alive in the world.