,,why ,,authors ,,go ,,wrong ,,and ,,other ,,explanations ,,why ,,authors ,,go ,,wrong ,,and ,,other ,,explanations ,,by ,,grant ,m4 ,,overton ,,author ,,of 8,,the ,,women ,,who ,,make ,,our ,,novels0 ,illustration ,,new ,,york ,,moffat1 ,,yard ,,company #aiai ,,copyright1 #aiai1 ,,by ,,moffat1 ,,yard ,,company ,,contents ,,chapter ,,page ,i4 ,,why ,,authors ,,go ,,wrong #a ,,ii4 ,a ,,barbaric ,,yawp #be ,,iii4 ,,in ,,the ,,critical ,,court #ci ,,iv4 ,,book 8,,reviewing0 #ea ,v4 ,,literary ,,editors1 ,,by ,,one ,,of ,,them #ajc ,,vi4 ,,what ,,every ,,publisher ,,knows #aai ,,vii4 ,,the ,,secret ,,of ,,the ,,best ,,seller #ade ,,viii4 ,,writing ,a ,,novel #agc ,,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 days1 but not now4 ,when1 as and if written the book dealing with the question will necessarily show the misleading nature of ,mr4 ,arnold ,bennett's title1 ,the ,truth ,about an ,author--a readable little volume which does not tell the truth about an author in general1 but only what we are politely requested to accept as the truth about ,arnold ,bennett4 ,mr4 ,bennett may or may not be telling the truth about himself in that book2 his regard for the truth in respect of the characters of his fiction has been variable4 ,perhaps he is more scrupulous when it comes to himself1 but we are at liberty to doubt it4 ,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 is4 ,we must not stay with ,mr4 ,bennett any longer just now4 ,it is enough that he has not been content to wait for the curtain to rise and has insisted on thrusting himself into our prologue4 ,exit2 and let us get back where we were4 ,we were indicating that ,why ,authors ,go ,wrong is an extensive subject4 ,it is so extensive because there are many authors and many1 many more readers4 ,it is extensive because it is a moral and not a literary question1 a human and not an artistic problem4 ,it is extensive because it is really unanswerable and anything that is essentially unanswerable necessitates prolonged efforts to answer it1 this on the well-known theory that it is better that many be bored than that a few remain dissatisfied4 #b ,let us take up these considerations one by one4 ,it seems unlikely that any one will misunderstand the precise subject itself4 ,what1 exactly1 is meant by an author 8going wrong08 ,the familiar euphemism1 as perhaps most frequently used1 is anything but ambiguous4 ,ambiguous-sounding words are generally fraught with a deadly and specific meaning--another illustration of the eternal paradox of sound and sense4 ,but as used in the instance of an author1 8going wrong0 has a great variety of meanings4 ,an author has gone wrong1 for example1 when he has deliberately done work under his best2 he has gone wrong when he has written for sentimental or sthetic reasons and not1 as he should1 for money primarily2 he has gone wrong when he tries to uplift or educate his readers2 he has gone wrong when he has written too many books1 or has not written enough books1 or has written too fast or not fast enough1 or has written what he saw and not what he felt1 or what he felt and not what he saw1 or posed in any fashion whatsoever4 ,ezra ,pound1 for example1 has gone atrociously wrong by becoming a ,french ,decadent instead of remaining a son of ,idaho and growing up to be an ,american4 ,of course as a ,french ,decadent he will always be a failure2 as ,benjamin ,de ,casseres puts it1 8the reality underlying his exquisite art is bourgeois and ,american4 ,he is a ghost materialized by cunning effects of lights and mirrors40 #c ,mr4 ,robert ,w4 ,chambers went wrong in an entirely different fashion4 ,the usual charge brought against ,mr4 ,chambers is that he consented to do less than his best because it profited him4 ,this is entirely untrue4 ,mr4 ,chambers's one mistake was that he did not write to make money4 ,every writer should1 because writing is a business and a business is something which can only be decently conducted with that end in view4 ,fancy a real estate business which should not be conducted to make money6 ,we should have to stop it immediately4 ,it would be a menace to the community1 for there is no telling what wickedness of purpose might lie behind it4 ,a business not conducted primarily to make money is not a business but a blind2 and very likely a cover for operations of a criminal character4 ,the safety of mankind lies in knowing motives and is imperilled by any enterprise that disguises them4 ,and so for ,mr4 ,chambers to refrain deliberately from writing to make money was a very wrong thing for him to do4 ,far from having a wicked motive1 he had a highly creditable motive1 which does not excuse him in the least4 ,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 readers4 ,there does not seem to be much doubt that he has done it2 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 aim4 ,but what is the result8 ,on every hand he is misjudged and condemned4 ,he is accused of acting on the right motive1 which is called wrong6 ,he is not blamed1 as he should be1 for acting on a wrong motive1 which would1 if understood1 have been called right6 ,what he should have done1 of course1 was to write sanely and consistently to make money1 as did ,amelia ,barr4 ,mrs4 ,barr was not a victim of widespread contemporary injustice and ,mr4 ,chambers is and will remain so4 ,take another illustration--,mr4 ,winston ,churchill4 ,one of the ablest living ,american novelists1 he has gone so wrong that it cannot honestly be supposed he will ever go right again4 ,his earlier novels were not only delightful but actually important4 ,his later novels are intolerable4 ,in such a novel as ,the ,inside of the ,cup ,mr4 ,churchill is not writing with the honorable and matter-of-course object of selling a large number of copies and getting an income from them2 he is writing with the dishonorable and unavowed object of setting certain ideas before you1 the contemplation of which will1 in his opinion1 do you good4 ,he wants you to think about the horror of a clergyman in leading strings to his wealthiest parishioner4 ,as a fact1 there is no horror in such a situation and ,mr4 ,churchill cannot conjure up any4 ,there is no horror1 there are only two fools4 ,now if a man is a fool1 he's a fool2 he cannot become anything else1 least of all a sensible man4 ,a clergyman in thrall to a rich individual of his congregation is a fool2 and to picture him as painfully emancipating himself and becoming not only sensible but1 as it were1 heroic is to ask us to accept a contradiction in terms4 ,for a fool is not a man who lacks sense1 but a man who cannot acquire sense4 ,not even a miracle can make him sensible2 if it could there would be no trouble with ,the ,inside of the ,cup1 for a miracle1 being1 as ,g4 ,k4 ,chesterton says1 merely an exceptional occurrence1 will always be acquiesced in by the intelligent reader4 #d ,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 erred4 ,but the mere enumeration of fallen authors is terribly depressing and quite useless4 ,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 future4 ,perhaps we can reclaim some of them and guide others aright4 ,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 authors4 ,little or none of the blame for the unfortunate situation rests on their readers4 ,indeed1 in the majority of cases the readers are the great and unyielding force making for sanity and virtue in the author4 ,without the persistent moral pressure exerted by their readers many1 many more authors would certainly stray from the path of business rectitude--not literary rectitude1 for there is no such thing4 ,what is humanly right is right in letters and nothing is right in letters that is wrong in the world4 ,the commonest way in which authors go wrong is one already stated3 ,by ceasing to write primarily for money1 for a living and as much more as may come the writer's way4 ,the commonest reason why authors go wrong in this way is comical--or would be if it were not so common4 ,they feel ashamed to write for money first and last2 they are seized with an absurd idea that there is something implicitly disgraceful in acting upon such a motive4 ,and so to avoid something that they falsely imagine to be disgraceful they do something that they know is disgraceful2 they write from some other motive and let the reader innocently think they are writing with the old and normal and honorable motive4 ,so widespread is this delusion that it is absolutely necessary to digress for a moment and explain why writing to make money is respectable6 ,why is anything respectable8 ,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 particular4 ,all lawful business conforms to this definition and writing for money certainly does4 ,writing--or painting or sculpturing or anything else--not done to make money is not respectable because 7#a7 it meets no human necessity1 7#b7 it is not done openly and aboveboard1 7#c7 it is invariably detrimental to society1 and 7#d7 it is nearly always harmful to individuals1 and most harmful to the individual engaged upon it4 ,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 beauty1 perhaps4 ,there is no spiritual thirst for beauty which cannot be satisfied completely by work done for an adequate and monetary reward4 ,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 nothing4 #e ,now it is just here that the moral pressure of the great body of readers is felt1 a pressure that is constantly misunderstood by the author4 ,so surely as the writer has turned from writing to make money and has taken up writing for art's sake 7whatever that means7 or writing for some ethical purpose or writing in the interest of some propaganda1 though it be merely the propaganda of his own poor1 single intellect--just so surely as he has done this his readers find him out4 ,whether they then continue to read him or not depends entirely on what they think of his new and unavowed 7but patent7 motive4 ,of course readers ought to be stern2 having caught their author in a wrong motive they ought to punish him by deserting him instantly4 ,but readers are human2 they are even surprisingly selfish at times2 they are capable of considering their own enjoyment1 and1 dreadful to say1 they are capable of considering it first4 ,so if1 as in the case of ,mr4 ,chambers1 they find his new motive friendly and flattering they read him more than ever2 on the other hand1 if they find the changed purpose disagreeable or tiresome1 aiming to uplift them or to shock them unpleasantly or 7sometimes7 to make fun of them1 they quit that author cold4 ,and they hardly ever come back4 ,usually the author is not perspicacious enough to grasp the cause of the defection2 it is amazing how seldom authors think there can be anything wrong with themselves4 ,usually the abandoned author goes right over and joins a small sect of highbrows and proclaims the deplorable state of his national literature4 8,the public be damned60 he says in effect1 but the public is not damned1 it is he that is damned1 and the public has done its utmost to save him4 ,sometimes an author deliberately does work that is less than his best1 but he never does this with the idea of making money1 or1 if he entertains that idea1 he fools no one but himself4 ,there are known and even 7we believe7 recorded instances of an author ridiculing his own output and avowing with what he probably thought audacious candor3 8,of course1 this latest story of mine is junk--but it'll sell #ajj1jjj copies60 ,it never does4 ,the author is perfectly truthful in describing the book as worthless4 ,if he implies as he always will in such a case that he deliberately did less than his best he is an unconscious liar4 ,it was his best and its worthlessness was solely the result of his total insincerity4 ,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 copies2 but no one can write a very fine book insincerely and have it sell4 ,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 him1 namely1 a piece of cheese4 ,the author who has actually written beneath his best has not done it for money1 but to avoid making money4 ,he thinks it is his best2 he thinks it is something utterly artistic1 sthetically wonderful1 highbrowedly pure1 lofty and serene2 he scorns money2 to make money by it would be to soil it4 ,what he cannot see is that it is not his best2 that it is very likely quite his worst2 that when he has done his best he will unavoidably make money unless1 like the misguided mortal we have just mentioned1 deep insincerity vitiates his work4 ,we are therefore ready1 before going further1 to formulate certain paradoxical principles governing all literary work4 #f ,to understand why authors go wrong we must first understand how authors may go right4 ,the paradoxical rules which if observed will hold the author to the path of virtue and rectitude may be formulated briefly as follows3 #a4 ,an author must write to make money first of all1 and every other purpose must be secondary to this purpose of money making4 ,the paradoxy inherent in this principle is that while writing the author must never for a single moment think of the money he may make4 #b4 ,every writer must have a stern and insistent moral purpose in his writing1 and especially must he be animated by this purpose if he is writing fiction4 ,the paradoxy here is that never1 under any circumstances1 may the writer exhibit his moral purpose in his work4 #c4 ,a writer must not write too much nor must he write too little4 ,he is writing too much if his successive books sell better and better2 he is writing too little if each book shows declining sales4 ,this may appear paradoxical1 but consider3 ,if the writer's work is selling with accelerated speed the market for his wares will very quickly be over-supplied4 ,this happened to ,mr4 ,kipling one day4 ,he had the wisdom to stop writing almost entirely1 to let his production fall to an attenuated trickle2 with the result that saturation was avoided1 and there is now and will long continue to be a good1 brisk1 steady demand for his product4 ,on the other hand1 consider the case of ,mrs4 ,blank 7the reader will not expect us to be either so ungallant or so professionally unethical or so commercially unfair as to give her name74 ,mrs4 ,blank wrote a book every two or three years1 and each was more of a plug than its predecessor4 ,she began writing a book a year1 and the third volume under her altered schedule was a best seller4 ,it was also her best novel4 #g ,then why8 why8 why8 do the authors go wrong8 ,because1 if we must say it in plain ,english1 they disregard every principle of successful authorship4 ,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 ,art1 usually4 ,but it is impossible to write for ,art1 for ,art is not an end but a means4 ,when they do not try to write for ,art they try to write for an ,ethical ,purpose1 but they exhibit it as inescapably as if the book were a pulpit and the reader were sitting in a pew4 ,indeed1 some modern fiction cannot be read unless you are sitting in a pew1 and a very stiff and straight backed pew at that2 not one of these old fashioned1 roomy1 high walled family pews such as ,dickens let us sit in1 pews in which one could be comfortable and easy and which held the whole family1 pews in which you could box the children's ears lightly without doing it publicly2 no6 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 benches1 but are intensely more uncomfortable--pews in which1 to ease your misery1 you can do nothing but look for the mote in your neighbor's eye and the wrong color in your neighbor's cravat4 ,because--to get back to the whys of the authors--because when they are popular they overpopularize themselves1 and when they are unpopular they lack the gumption to write more steadily and fight more gamely for recognition4 ,we don't mean critical recognition1 but popular recognition4 ,how can an author expect the public1 his public1 any public to go on swallowing him in increased amounts at meals placed ever closer together--for any length of time8 ,and how1 equally1 can an author expect a public1 his public1 or any public1 to acquire a taste for his work when he serves them a sample once a week1 then once a month1 then once a year8 ,why1 a person could not acquire a taste for olives that way4 #h ,we have no desire to be personal for the sake of being personal1 but we have every desire to be personal in this discussion for the sake of being impersonal1 pointed1 helpful and clear4 ,it is time to take a perfectly fresh and perfectly illustrative example of how not to write fiction4 ,we shall take the case of ,mr4 ,owen ,johnson and his new novel1 ,virtuous ,wives4 ,mr4 ,johnson will be suspected by the dense and conventional censors of ,american literature of having written ,virtuous ,wives to make money4 ,alackaday1 no6 ,if he had a much better book might have come from his typewriter4 ,mr4 ,johnson was not thinking primarily of money1 as he should have been 7prior to the actual writing of the story74 ,he was filled with a moral and uplifting aim4 ,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 about4 ,the participation of ,america in the war had not begun4 ,the performances of an inconsiderable few were unduly conspicuous4 ,mr4 ,johnson decided to write a novel that would hold up these disgusting triflers 7and worse7 to the scorn of sane and decent ,americans4 ,he set to work4 ,he finished his book4 ,it was serialized in one of the several magazines which have displaced forever the old ,sunday school library in the field of ,awful ,warning literature4 ,in these forums ,mr4 ,galsworthy and ,gouverneur ,morris inscribe our present-day chronicles of the ,schoenberg-,cotta family1 and writ large over their instalments1 as part of the editorial blurb1 we read the expression of a fervent belief that ,vice has never been so ,powerfully1 ,brilliantly and ,convincingly ,depicted in ,all ,its ,horror by ,any ,pen4 ,but we divagate4 ,mr4 ,johnson's novel was printed serially and appeared then as a book with a solemn preface--the final indecent exhibition1 outside of the story itself1 of his serious moral purpose4 ,and as a book it is failing utterly of its purpose4 ,it has sold and is selling and ,mr4 ,johnson is making and will make money out of it--which is what he did not want4 ,what he did want he made impossible when he unmasked his great aim4 ,the world may be perverse1 but you have to take it as it is4 ,the world may be childish1 but none of us will live to see it grow up4 ,if the world thinks you write with the honest and understandable object of making a living it attributes no ulterior motive to you4 ,the world says3 8,john ,smith1 the butcher1 sells me beefsteak in order to buy ,mrs4 ,smith a new hat and the little ,smiths shoes40 ,the world buys the steaks and relishes them4 ,but if ,john ,smith tells the world and his wife every time they come to his shop3 8,i am selling you this large1 juicy steak to give you good red blood and make you ,fit10 then the world and his wife are resentful and say3 8,we think we don't like your large1 juicy steaks4 ,we are red blooded enough to have our own preferences4 ,we will just go on down the street to the delicatessen--we mean the ,liberty food shop--and buy some de-,hohenzollernized frankfurters1 the well-known ,liberty sausage4 ,to hell with the ,kaiser60 ,and so ,john ,smith merely makes money4 ,oh1 yes1 he makes money2 a large1 juicy steak is a large1 juicy steak no matter how deadly the good intent in selling it4 ,but ,john ,smith is defeated in his real purpose4 ,he does not furnish the world and his wife with the red corpuscles he yearned to give them4 #i ,at this juncture we seem to hear exasperated cries of this character3 8,what do you mean by saying that an author must write for money first and last and yet must have a stern moral purpose8 ,how can the two be reconciled8 ,why must he think of money until he begins to write and never after he begins to write8 ,we understand why the moral object must not obtrude itself1 but why need it be there at all80 ,can a man serve two masters8 ,can he serve money and morality8 ,foolish question ,no4 #eh1iad6 ,he not only can but he always does when his work is good4 ,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 it4 ,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 why6 ,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 rich6 ,for that's the whole secret4 ,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 him8 ,how is an author to know that he has amused or instructed thousands if not by the size of his royalty checks8 ,by hearsay8 ,by mind reading8 ,by plucking the petals of a daisy--8,they love me4 ,they love me not08 ,every man can and must serve two masters1 but the one is the thing that masters him and the other is the evidence of his mastery4 ,every man must before beginning work fix his mind intently upon the making of money1 the money which shall be an evidence of his mastery2 every man on beginning work and for the duration of the work must fix his mind intently and exclusively on the service of morality1 the great master whose slave he is in the execution of an ,invisible ,purpose4 ,and no man dare let his moral purpose expose itself in his work1 for to do that is to do a presumptuous and sacrilegious thing4 ,the ,great ,moralizer1 who has in his hands each little one of us workers1 holds his ,purpose invisible to us2 how then can we venture to make visible what ,he keeps invisible1 how can we have the audacity to practice a technique that ,he ,himself does not employ8 ,for ,he made the world and all that is in it4 ,and ,he made it with a moral end in view1 as we most of us believe4 ,but not the wisest of us pretends that that moral object is clearly visible4 ,it does not disclose itself to us directly2 we are aware of it only indirectly2 and are influenced by it forevermore4 ,if the world was so made1 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 hidden8 ,there are those1 of course1 who see no moral explanation of the universe2 but they are not always consistent4 ,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 being1 perchance1 a moral end in itself4 ,and yet no man ever wrote with a deeper manifestation and a more perfect concealment of his moral purpose than ,conrad2 for exactly the thing to which all his tales are passionate witnesses is the sense of fidelity1 of loyalty1 of endurance--above all1 the sense of fidelity--that exists in mankind4 ,man1 in the ,conradist view1 is a creature of an inexhaustible loyalty to himself and to his fellows4 ,this inner and utter fidelity it is which makes the whole legend of ,lord ,jim1 which is the despairing cry that rings out at the last in ,victory1 which reaches lyric heights in ,youth1 which is the profound pathos of ,the ,end of the ,tether1 which1 in its corruption by an incorruptible metal1 the silver of the mine1 forms the dreadful tragedy of ,nostromo4 ,an immortal1 ,conrad1 but not the admiring and passive spectator he diffidently declares himself to be6 #aj ,have we covered all the cases8 ,obviously not4 ,it is no more possible to deal with all the authors who go wrong than it is to call all the sinners to repentance4 ,but sin is primarily a question between the sinner and his own conscience1 and the errors of authors are invariably questions between the authors and the public4 ,the public is the best conscience many an author has2 and the substitution of a private self-justification for a public vindication has seldom been a markedly successful undertaking in human history4 ,yet there is a class of writers for whom no public vindication is possible2 who affect1 indeed1 to scorn it2 who set themselves up as little gods4 ,they are the worshippers of ,art4 ,they are the ones who not only do not admit but who deliberately deny a moral purpose in anything2 who think that a something they call pure ,beauty is the sole end of existence1 of work1 of life1 and is alone to be worshipped4 ,it is a cult of ,baal4 ,for these ,artists despise money1 and in despising money they cheapen themselves and become creatures of barter4 ,they sneer at morality and reject it2 immediately the world disappears3 8,and the earth was without form1 and void40 ,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 them4 ,what is their ,beauty8 ,it is what each one of them thinks beautiful4 ,what is their ,art8 ,it is what each cold little selfish soul among them chooses to call ,art4 ,what is their achievement8 ,self-destruction4 ,they are the spiritual suicides1 they are the moral defectives1 they are the outcasts of humanity1 the lepers among the workers of the world4 ,for them there can be neither pity nor forgiveness2 for they deny the beauty of rewarded toil1 the sincerity of honest labor1 the mystical humanity of man4 ,of them no more4 ,let us go back in a closing moment to the contemplation of the great body of men and women who labor cheerfully and honorably1 if rather often somewhat mistakenly1 to make their living1 to do good work and make the world pay them for it1 yet leaving with the world the firm conviction that it has had a little the better of the bargain6 ,these are the authors who 8go wrong10 and with whose well-meant errors we have been dealing1 not very methodically but perhaps not unhelpfully4 ,is there1 then1 no parting word of advice we can give our authors8 ,to be sure there is6 ,when our authors are quite sure they will not go wrong1 they may go write6 ,a ,,barbaric ,,yawp ,,ii ,a ,,barbaric ,,yawp ,it was the handy phrase to describe ,walt ,whitman3 ,the 8barbaric yawp40 ,in its elegant inelegance the neatly adjectived noun was felt to be really brilliant4 ,stump speakers 8made the eagle scream02 a chap like ,whitman had to be characterized handily too4 ,the epigrammatic mind is the card index mind4 ,now the remarkable thing about the card index is its casualty list4 ,people who card index things are people who proceed to forget those things4 ,the same metal rod that transfixes the perforated cards pierces the indexers' brains4 ,a mechanical device has been called into play4 ,brains are unnecessary any more4 ,the day of pigeonholes was slightly better2 for the pigeonholes were not unlike the human brain in which things are tucked away together1 because they really have some association with each other4 ,but the card index alphabetizes ruthlessly4 ,fancy an alphabetical brain6 ,epigrams are like that4 ,a man cannot take the trouble to think2 he falls back on an epigram4 ,he cannot take the trouble to remember and so he card indexes4 ,the upshot is that he can find nothing in the card index and of course has no recollection to fall back on4 ,or he recalls the epigram without having the slightest idea what it was meant to signify4 ,but this is not to be about card indexes nor even about epigrams4 ,it is to be a barbaric yawp1 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 poet4 ,whitman was not so much a poet as the chanteyman of ,longfellow's ,ship of ,state4 ,there was an hour when the chanteyman had an inspiration1 when he saw as by an apocalyptic light all the people of these ,united ,states linked and joined in a common effort4 ,every man1 woman and child of the millions tailed on the rope2 every one of them put his weight and muscle to the task4 ,it was a tremendous hour4 ,it was the hour of a common effort4 ,it was the hour for which1 ,walt felt1 men had risked their lives a century earlier4 ,it was a revealed hour2 it had not yet arrived2 but it was sure to come4 ,and in the glow of that revelation the singer lifted up his voice and sang4444 ,god grant he may be hearing the mighty chorus6 #b ,america is not a land1 but a people4 ,and a people may have no land and still they will remain a people4 ,there has1 for years1 been no country of ,poland2 but there are ,poles4 ,there has been a country of ,russia for centuries1 but there is to-day no ,russian people4 ,what makes a people8 ,not a land certainly4 ,not political forms nor political sovereignty4 ,not even political independence4 ,nor1 for that matter1 voices that pretend or aspire to speak the thoughts of a nation4 ,poland has had such voices and ,russia has had her artists1 musicians1 novelists1 poets4 ,the thing that makes a people is a thing over which statesmen have no control4 ,geography throws no light on the subject4 ,nor does that study of the races of man which is called anthropology4 ,it is not a psychological secret 7psychology covers a multitude of guesses74 ,philosophy may evolve beautiful systems of thought1 but systems of thought have nothing to do with the particular puzzle before us4 ,the secret must be sought elsewhere4 ,is it an inherited thing1 this thing that makes a people8 ,that can't be2 ours is a mixed inheritance here in ,america4 ,is it an abstract idea8 ,abstract ideas are never more than architectural pencillings and seldom harden into concrete foundations4 ,is it a common emotion8 ,if it were we should be able to agree on a name for it4 ,is it an instinct8 ,an instinct might be back of it4 ,what is left8 ,can it be a religion8 ,as such it should be easily recognizable4 ,but an element of religion8 ,an act of faith8 ,yes1 for faith may exist with or without a creed1 and the act of faith may be deliberate or involuntary4 ,willed or unwilled the faith is held2 formulated or unformulated the essential creed is there4 ,let us look at the people of ,america1 men and women of very divergent types and tempers far apart2 men and women of inextricable heredities and of confusing beliefs--even1 ordinarily1 of clashing purposes4 ,each believes a set of things1 but the beliefs of them all can be reduced to a lowest common denominator1 a belief in each other2 just as the beliefs of them all have a highest common multiple1 a willingness to die in defence of ,america4 ,to some of them ,america means a past1 to some the past has no meaning2 to some of them ,america means a future1 to others a future is without significance4 ,but to all of them ,america means a present to be safeguarded at the cost of their lives1 if need be2 and the fact that the present is the translation of the past to some and the reading of the future to others is incidental4 #c ,we would apply these considerations to the affair of literature2 and having been tiresomely generalizing we shall get down to cases that every one can understand4 ,the point we have tried to make condenses to this3 ,the present is supremely important to us all4 ,to some of us it is all important because of the past1 and to some of us it is of immense moment because of the future1 and to the greatest number 7probably7 the present is of overshadowing concern because it is the present--the time when they count and make themselves count4 ,it is now or never1 as it always is in life1 though the urgency of the hour is not always so apparent4 ,it was now or never with the armies in the field1 with the men training in the camps1 with the coal miners1 the shipbuilders1 the food savers in the kitchens4 ,it is just as much now or never with the poets1 the novelists1 the essayists--with the workers in every line1 although they may not see so distinctly the immediacy of the hour4 ,everybody saw the necessity of doing things to win the war2 many can see the necessity of doing things that will constitute a sort of winning after the war4 ,there is always something to be won4 ,if it is not a war it is an after the war4 8,peace hath its victories no less renowned than war0 is a fine sounding line customarily recited without the slightest recognition of its real meaning4 ,the poet did not mean that the victories of peace were as greatly acclaimed as the victories of war1 but that the sum total of their renown was as great or greater because they are more enduring4 #d ,now for the cases4 ,it is the duty1 the opportunity and the privilege of ,america now1 in the present hour1 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 ,literature1 namely1 whether there is an independent ,american literature4 ,not only does ,mr4 ,perry raise the question1 but1 stated as baldly as we have stated it1 the query was thereupon discussed1 with great seriousness1 by a well-known ,american book review6 ,we are happy to say that both ,mr4 ,perry and the book review decided that there is such a thing as an ,american literature1 and that ,american writing is not a mere adjunct 7perhaps a caudal appendage7 of ,english literature4 ,all ,americans will feel deeply gratified that they could honorably come to such a conclusion4 ,but not all ,americans will feel gratified that the conclusion was reached on the strength of ,emerson1 ,lowell1 ,longfellow1 ,whittier1 ,holmes1 ,whitman1 ,poe and others of the immortal dead4 ,some ,americans will wish with a faint and timid longing that the conclusion might have been reached1 or at least sustained1 on the strength of ,tarkington1 ,robert ,herrick1 ,edith ,wharton1 ,mary ,johnston1 ,gertrude ,atherton1 ,mary ,s4 ,watts1 ,william ,allen ,white1 ,edgar ,lee ,masters1 ,amy ,lowell1 ,edna ,ferber1 ,joseph ,hergesheimer1 ,owen ,wister and a dozen or so other living writers over whose relative importance as witnesses for the affirmative we have no desire to quarrel4 ,mr4 ,howells1 we believe1 was called to the stand4 ,if we had not seen it we should refuse to credit our senses4 ,the idea of any one holding court to-day to decide the question as to the existence of an independent ,american literature is incredibly funny4 ,it is the peculiarity of criticism that any one can set up a court anywhere at any time for any purpose and with unlimited jurisdiction4 ,there are no rules of procedure4 ,there are no rules of evidence4 ,there is no jury2 the people who read books may sit packed in the court room1 but there must be no interruptions4 ,order in the court6 ,usually the critic-judge sits alone1 but sometimes there are special sessions with a full bench4 ,writs are issued1 subpnas served1 witnesses are called and testimony is taken4 ,an injunction may be applied for1 either temporary or permanent4 ,nothing is easier than to be held in contempt4 #e ,the most striking peculiarity of procedure in the ,critical ,court is with regard to what constitutes evidence4 ,you might1 in the innocence of your heart1 suppose that a man's writings would constitute the only admissible evidence4 ,not at all4 ,his writings have really nothing to do with the case4 ,what is his ,purpose8 ,if1 as a sincere individual1 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 incompetent1 irrelevant and immaterial2 and not sound ,art4 ,on the other hand if1 as an artist1 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 discovery1 counsel will object to the admission of his books as evidence on the ground that they are incompetent1 irrelevant and immaterial2 and not the best proof4 ,counsel will demand that the man himself be examined personally as to his purpose 7if he is alive7 or will demand a searching examination of his private life 7if he be dead74 ,the witness is always a culprit and browbeating the witness is always in order4 ,i am a highbrow and you are a lowbrow2 what the devil do you mean by writing a book anyway8 ,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 not4 ,a favorite principle with the man on the bench is that all that is not obscure is not ,art4 ,it isn't phrased as intelligibly as that1 to be sure2 a common way to put it is to lay down the rule that the popularity of a book 7which means the extent to which it is understood and therefore appreciated7 has nothing to do with the case1 tra-la1 has nothing to do with the case4 ,another principle is that sound can be greater than sense1 which1 in the lingo of the ,highest ,criticism1 is the dictum that words and sentences can have a beauty apart from the meaning 7if any7 that they seek to convey4 ,and there really is something in this idea2 for example1 what could be lovelier than the old line1 8,eeny1 meeny1 miny-mo08 ,shakespeare1 a commercial fellow who wrote plays for a living1 knew this when he let one of his characters sing3 8,when that ,i was and a little tiny boy1 ,with hey1 ho1 the wind and the rain1 ,a foolish thing was but a toy1 ,for the rain it raineth every day40 ,and a little earlier in ,twelfth ,night3 8,like a mad lad1 ,pare thy nails1 dad2 ,adieu1 goodman devil40 ,which is not only beautiful as sound1 but without the least sense unless it hath the vulgarity to be looked for in the work of a mercenary playwright4 #f ,but the strangest thing about the proceedings in the ,critical ,court is their lack of contemporary interest4 ,rarely1 indeed1 is anything decided here until it has been decided everywhere else4 ,for the great decisions are the decisions of life and not decisions on the past4 ,a man has written twenty books and he is dead4 ,he is ripe for consideration by the ,critical ,court4 ,a man has written two novels and has eighteen more ahead of him4 ,the ,critical ,court will leave him alone until he is past all helping4 ,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 novels4 ,for the young man who has written two novels has some novels yet to be written2 he can be helped1 strengthened1 encouraged1 advised1 corrected1 warned1 counselled1 rebuked1 praised1 blamed1 presented with bills of particulars1 and--heartened4 ,if he has not genius nothing can put it in him1 but if he has1 many things can be done to help him exploit it4 ,and a man who is dead cannot be affected by anything you say or do2 the critic-judge has lost his chance of shaping that writer's work and can no longer write a decree1 only an epitaph4 ,to be brutally frank3 ,nobody cares what the ,critical ,court thinks of ,whitman or ,poe or ,longfellow or ,hawthorne4 ,everybody cares what ,tarkington does next1 what ,mary ,johnston tackles1 what the developments are in the ,william ,allen ,white case1 what becomes of ,joseph ,hergesheimer1 whether ,amy ,lowell achieves great work in that contrapuntal poetry she calls polyphonic prose4 ,on these things depend the present era in ,american literature and the possibilities of the future4 ,and these things are more or less under our control4 ,the people of ,america not only believe that there is an independent ,american literature1 but they believe that there will continue to be4 ,some of them believe in the past of that literature1 some of them believe in its future2 but all of them believe in its present and its presence4 ,their voice may be stifled in the ,critical ,court 7silence in the court67 but it is audible everywhere else4 ,it is heard in the bookshops where piles of new fiction melt away1 where new verse is in brisk demand1 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 customers4 ,the voice of the ,american people is articulate in the offices of newspapers which deal with the news of new books4 ,it makes a seismographic record in the ledgers of publishing houses4 ,it comes to almost every writer in letters of inquiry1 comment and commendation4 ,what1 do you suppose1 a writer like ,gene ,stratton-,porter cares whether the ,critical ,court excludes her work or condemns it8 ,she can re-read hundreds and thousands of letters from men and women who tell her how profoundly her books have--tickled their fancy8 pleased their love of verbal beauty8 taxed their intellectuals to understand8 ,no1 merely how profoundly her books have altered their whole lives4 ,hear ye6 ,hear ye6 ,hear ye6 ,the ,critical ,court is in session4 ,all who have business with the court draw near and give attention6 ,,in ,,the ,,critical ,,court ,,iii ,,in ,,the ,,critical ,,court ,the ,critical ,court being in session1 ,william ,dean ,howells1 ,h4 ,w4 ,boynton1 ,w4 ,c4 ,brownell1 ,wilson ,follett and ,william ,marion ,reedy sitting1 the case of ,booth ,tarkington1 novelist1 is called4 ,,counsel ,,for ,,the ,,prosecution3 ,if it please the court1 this case should go over4 ,the defendant1 ,mr4 ,tarkington1 is not dead yet4 ,mr4 ,,howells3 ,i do not know how my colleagues feel1 but ,i have no objection to considering the work of ,mr4 ,tarkington while he is alive4 ,mr4 ,,follett3 ,i think it would be better if we deferred the consideration of ,mr4 ,tarkington until it is a little older4 ,,counsel ,,for ,,the ,,defense 7in this case ,mr4 ,robert ,cortes ,holliday1 biographer of ,tarkington73 8,it08 ,mr4 ,,follett3 ,i mean his work1 or works4 ,perhaps ,i should have said 8them40 ,mr4 ,,holliday3 8,they10 not 8them40 ,exception4 ,and 8are0 instead of 8is40 ,gentlemen1 ,i have no wish to prejudice the case for my client1 but ,i must point out that if you wait until he is a little older he may be dead4 ,mr4 ,,boynton3 ,so much the better4 ,we can then consider his works in their complete state and with reference to his entire life4 ,mr4 ,,holliday3 ,but it would then be impossible to give any assistance to ,mr4 ,tarkington4 ,the chance to influence his work would have passed4 ,mr4 ,,brownell3 ,that is relatively unimportant4 ,mr4 ,,holliday3 ,i beg pardon but ,mr4 ,tarkington feels it rather important to him4 ,mr4 ,,boynton3 ,my dear ,mr4 ,holliday1 you really must remember that it is not what seems important to ,mr4 ,tarkington that can count with us1 but what is important in our eyes4 ,mr4 ,,holliday3 ,self-importance4 ,mr4 ,,boynton 7stiffly73 ,certainly not4 ,merely self-confidence4 ,but on my own behalf ,i may say this3 ,i am unwilling to consider ,mr4 ,tarkington's works in this place at this time2 but ,i am willing to pass judgment in an article for a newspaper or a monthly magazine or some other purely perishable medium4 ,that should be sufficient for ,mr4 ,tarkington4 ,mr4 ,,follett3 ,i think the possibility of considering ,mr4 ,tarkington must be ruled out1 anyway1 as one or more of his so-called works have first appeared serially in the ,saturday ,evening ,post4 ,mr4 ,,holliday 7noting the effect of this revelation on the members of the court73 ,very well1 ,i will not insist4 ,booth1 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 face4 ,be brave1 ,tark1 and do as you aren't done by4 ,after all1 a few million people read you and you make enough to live on4 ,the court will pass on you after you are dead1 and if you dictate any books on the ouija board the court's verdict may be helpful to you then2 you might even manage the later ,henry ,james manner4 ,,clerk ,,of ,,the ,,court 7,prof4 ,william ,lyon ,phelps73 ,next case6 ,mrs4 ,atherton please step forward6 ,mrs4 ,,atherton 7advancing with composure73 ,i can find no one to act for me1 so ,i will be my own counsel4 ,i will say at the outset that ,i do not care for the court1 individually or collectively1 nor for its verdict1 whatever it may be4 ,prof4 ,,phelps3 ,i must warn you that anything you say may1 and probably will1 be used against you4 ,mrs4 ,,atherton3 ,oh1 ,i don't mind that2 it's the things the members of the court have said against me that ,i purpose to use against them4 ,mr4 ,,brownell3 ,are you1 by any chance1 referring to me1 ,madam8 ,mrs4 ,,atherton3 ,i do not refer to persons1 ,mr4 ,brownell4 ,i hit them4 ,no1 ,i had ,mr4 ,boynton particularly in mind4 ,and perhaps ,gene ,stratton-,porter4 ,is she here8 7,looks around menacingly74 ,no4 ,well1 go ahead with your nonsense4 ,mr4 ,,howells 7rising73 ,i think ,i will withdraw from consideration of this case4 ,mrs4 ,atherton has challenged me so often---- ,mr4 ,,boynton3 ,no1 stay4 ,i am going to stick it out---- ,mr4 ,,follett3 ,i think there is no question but that we should hold the defendant in contempt4 ,mrs4 ,,atherton3 ,mutual1 ,i assure you4 7,she sweeps out of the room and a large section of the public quietly follows her47 ,,clerk ,,phelps3 ,joseph ,hergesheimer to the bar6 7,a short1 stocky fellow with twinkling eyes steps forward47 ,mr4 ,hergesheimer8 ,mr4 ,,hergesheimer3 ,right4 ,mr4 ,,reedy3 ,good boy1 ,joe6 ,mr4 ,,follett3 ,it won't do1 it won't do at all4 ,there's only ,the ,three ,black ,pennys and ,gold and ,iron and a novel called ,java ,head to go by4 ,saturday ,evening ,post4 ,and bewilderingly unlike each other4 ,seem artistic but are too popular1 ,i fancy1 really to be sound4 ,mr4 ,,hergesheimer3 ,with all respect1 ,i should like to ask whether this is a court of record8 ,mr4 ,,howells3 ,it is4 ,mr4 ,,hergesheimer3 ,in that case ,i think ,i shall press for a verdict which may be very helpful to me4 ,i should like also to have the members of the court on record respecting my work4 ,mr4 ,,boynton3 ,just as ,i feared4 ,my dear fellow1 while we should like to be helpful and will endeavor to give you advice to that end it must be done unobtrusively 444 current reviews 444 we'll compare your work with that of ,hawthorne and ,hardy or perhaps a standard ,frenchman4 ,that will give you something to work for4 ,but you cannot expect us to say anything definite about you at this stage of your work4 ,suppose we were to say what we really think1 or what some really think1 that you are the most promising writer in ,america to-day1 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 fine4 ,don't you see the risk8 ,mr4 ,,hergesheimer3 ,i do1 and ,i also see that you would make your own reputation much more than you would make mine4 ,i write a story4 ,i risk everything with that story4 ,you deliver a verdict4 ,why shouldn't you take a decent chance1 too8 ,mr4 ,,follett3 ,why should ,i take any more chances than ,i have to with my contemporaries8 ,i pick them pretty carefully1 ,i can tell you4 ,mr4 ,,hergesheimer3 ,i shall write a novel to be published after my death4 ,there was ,henry ,adams4 ,he stipulated that ,the ,education of ,henry ,adams should not be published until after his death2 and everybody says it is positively brilliant4 ,mr4 ,,follett 7relieved73 ,that is a wise decision4 ,but don't be disheartened4 ,i'll probably be able to get around to you in ten years1 anyway4 7,mr4 ,hergesheimer bows and retires47 ,,clerk ,,phelps3 ,john ,galsworthy6 ,mr4 ,,follett 7brightening73 ,some of the ,englishmen6 ,this is better6 ,besides1 ,i know all about ,galsworthy4 ,mr4 ,,galsworthy 7coming forward73 ,i feel much honored4 ,,counsel ,,for ,,the ,,prosecution3 ,if the court please1 ,i must state that for some time now ,mr4 ,galsworthy has been published serially in a magazine with a circulation of one digit and six ciphers4 ,or one cipher and six digits1 ,i cannot remember which4 ,mr4 ,,brownell3 ,what1 six8 ,then he has more readers than can be counted on the fingers of one hand4 ,there are only five fingers on a hand4 ,i think this is conclusive4 ,mr4 ,,boynton3 ,oh1 decidedly4 ,mr4 ,,follett3 ,but ,i put him in my book on modern novelists1 all of whom were hand picked4 ,mr4 ,,galsworthy 7with much calmness for one uttering a terrible heresy73 ,perhaps that's the difficulty1 really4 ,all hand picked4 ,do you know1 ,i rather believe in literary windfalls4 ,but ,i beg to withdraw4 7,and he does47 ,,the ,,clerk3 ,herbert ,george ,wells6 ,mr4 ,,wells 7sauntering up and speaking with a certain inattention73 ,respecting my long novel1 ,joan and ,peter1 there are some points that need to be made clear4 ,peter1 you know1 is called ,petah by ,joan4 ,petah is a sapient fellow4 ,he is even able to admire the ,germans because1 after all1 they knew where they were going1 they knew what they were after1 their education had them headed for something4 ,it had1 indeed4 ,i think ,petah overlooks the fact that it had headed them for ,paris in #aiad4 ,the point that ,oswald and ,i make in the book is that ,england and the ,empire1 in #aiad and prior thereto1 had not been headed for anything1 educationally or otherwise1 except ,littleness in every field of political endeavor1 except ,stupidity in every province of human affairs4 ,and the proof of this1 we argue1 is found in the first three years of the ,great ,war4 ,no doubt4 ,the first three years of the war prove so many things that this may well be among them2 don't you think so8 ,without detracting from the damning case which ,oswald and ,i make out against ,england it does occur to me1 as ,i poke over my material for a new book1 that as the proof of a pudding is in the eating so the proof of a nation at war is in the fighting4 ,indisputable as the bankruptcy of much ,british leadership has been1 indisputable as it is that ,general ,gough lost tens of thousands of prisoners1 hundreds of guns and vast stores of ammunition1 it is equally indisputable that the ,australians who died like flies at the ,dardanelles died like men1 that the ,tommies who were shot by their own guns at ,neuve ,chapelle went forward like heroes1 that the undersized and undernourished and unintellectual ,londoners from ,whitechapel who fell in ,flanders gave up their immortal souls like freemen and ,englishmen and kinsmen of the ,lion ,heart4 ,and if it comes to a question as to the blame for the war as distinguished from the question as to the blame for the ,british conduct of the war1 the latter being that with which ,joan and ,peter is almost wholly concerned1 ,i should like to point out now1 on behalf of myself and the readers of my next book1 that perhaps ,i am not entirely blameless4 ,perhaps ,i bear an infinitesimal portion of the terrible responsibility which ,i have showed some unwillingness to place entirely and clearly on ,germany4 ,for after all1 it was ,science that made the war and that waged it2 it was the idolatry of ,science that had transformed the ,german nation by transforming the ,german nature4 ,it was the proofs of what ,science could do that convinced ,prussia of her power1 that made her confident that with this new weapon she could overstride the earth4 ,i had a part in setting up that worship of ,science4 ,i have been not only one of its prophets but a high priest in its temple4 ,and ,i am all the more dismayed1 therefore1 when ,i find myself1 as in ,joan and ,peter1 still kneeling at the shrine4 ,what is the cure for war8 ,i ask4 ,petah tells us that our energies must have some other outlet4 ,we must explore the poles and dig through the earth to ,china4 ,he himself will go back to ,cambridge and get a medical degree2 and if he is good enough he'll do something on the border line between biology and chemistry4 ,joan will build model houses4 ,and the really curious thing is that the pair of them seem disposed to run the unspeakable risks of trying to educate still another generation1 a generation which1 should it have to fight a war with a conquering horde from ,mars1 might blame ,peter and ,joan severely for the sacrifices involved1 just as they blame the old ,victorians for the sacrifice of #aiad-aiah4 ,mr4 ,,howells3 ,in heaven's name1 what is this tirade8 ,mr4 ,,brownell3 ,mr4 ,wells is merely writing his next book1 that's all4 7,as it is impossible to stop ,mr4 ,wells the court adjourns without a day47 ,,book 8,,reviewing0 ,,iv ,,book 8,,reviewing0 ,on the subject of ,book 8,reviewing0 we feel we can speak freely1 knowing all about the business1 as we do1 though by no means a practitioner1 and having no convictions on the score of it4 ,for we point with pride to the fact that1 though many times indicted1 a conviction has never been secured against us4 ,however1 it isn't considered good form 7whatever that is7 to talk about your own crimes4 ,for instance1 after exhausting the weather1 you should say pleasantly to your neighbor3 8,what an interesting burglary you committed last night6 ,we were all quite stirred up60 ,it is almost improper 7much worse than merely immoral7 to exhibit your natural egoism by remarking3 8,if ,i do say it1 that murder ,i did on ,tuesday was a particularly good job60 ,for this reason1 if for no other1 we would refrain1 ordinarily1 from talking about book 8reviewing02 but since ,robert ,cortes ,holliday has mentioned the subject in his ,walking-,stick ,papers and thus introduced the indelicate topic once and for all1 there really seems no course open but to pick up the theme and treat it in a serious1 thoughtful way4 #b ,book reviewing is so called because the books are not reviewed1 or viewed 7some say not even read74 ,they are described with more or less accuracy and at a variable length4 ,they are praised1 condemned1 weighed and solved by the use of logarithms4 ,they are read1 digested1 quoted and tested for butter fat4 ,they are examined1 evalued1 enjoyed and assessed2 criticised1 and frequently found fault with 7not the same thing1 of course72 chronicled and even orchestrated by the few who never write words without writing both words and music4 ,james ,huneker could make ,irvin ,cobb sound like a performance by the ,boston ,symphony4 ,others1 like ,benjamin ,de ,casseres1 have a dramatic gift4 ,mr4 ,de ,casseres writes book revues4 #c ,any one can review a book and every one should be encouraged to do it4 ,it is unskilled labor4 ,good book reviewers earn from #aej to #bcj a week1 working only in their spare time1 like the good-looking young men and women who sell the ,saturday ,evening ,post1 the ,ladies' ,home ,journal and the ,country ,gentleman but who seldom earn over #ajj a week4 ,book reviewing is one of the very few subjects not taught by the correspondence schools1 simply because there is nothing to teach4 ,it is so simple a child can operate it with perfect safety4 ,write for circular giving full particulars and our handy phrasebook listing #b1efg standard phrases indispensable to any reviewer--,,free4 ,in reviewing a book there is no method to be followed4 ,like one of the playerpianos1 you shut the doors 7i4e41 close the covers7 and play 7or write7 by instinct6 ,although no directions are necessary we will suggest a few things to overcome the beginner's utterly irrational sense of helplessness4 ,one of the most useful comments in dealing with very scholarly volumes1 such as ,a ,history of the ,statistical ,process in ,modern ,philanthropical ,enterprises by ,jacob ,jones1 is as follows3 8,mr4 ,jones's work shows signs of haste40 ,the peculiar advantage of this is that you do not libel ,mr4 ,jones2 the haste may have been the printer's or the publisher's or almost anybody's but the postoffice's4 ,in the case of a piece of light fiction the best way to start your review is by saying3 8,a new book from the pen of ,alice ,apostrophe is always welcome40 ,but suppose the book is a first book8 ,one of the finest opening sentences for the review of a first book runs3 8,for a first novel1 ,george ,lamplit's ,good ,gracious6 is a tale of distinct promise40 ,be careful to say 8distinct02 it is an adjective that fits perfectly over the shoulders of any average-chested noun4 ,it gives the noun that upright1 swagger carriage a careful writer likes his nouns to have4 #d ,but clothes do not make the man and words do not make the book review4 ,a book review must have a ,structure1 a ,skeleton1 if it be no more than the skeleton in the book closet4 ,it must have a backbone and a bite4 ,it must be able to stand erect and look the author in the face and tell him to go to the ,home for ,indigent ,authors which the ,authors' ,league will build one of these days after it has met running expenses4 ,our favorite book reviewer reviews the ordinary book in four lines and a semi-colon4 ,unusual books drain his vital energy to the extent of a paragraph and a half1 three adjectives to the square inch4 ,he makes it a point to have one commendatory phrase and one derogatory phrase1 which gives a nicely balanced1 8on the one hand 444 on the other hand0 effect4 ,he says that the book is attractively bound but badly printed2 well-written but deficient in emotional intensity2 full of action but weak in characterization2 has a good plot but is devoid of style4 ,he reads all the books he reviews4 ,every little while he pounces upon a misquotation on page #dch1 or a misprint on page #bgi4 ,reviewers who do not read the books they review may chance upon such details while idly turning the uncut leaves or while looking at the back cover1 but they never bring in three runs on the other side's error4 ,they spot the fact that the heroine's mother1 who was killed in a train accident in the fourth chapter1 buys a refrigerator in the twenty-third chapter1 and they indulge in an unpardonable witticism as to the heroine's mother's whereabouts after her demise4 ,but the wrong accent on the ,greek word in ,chapter ,,xvii gets by them2 and as for the psychological impulse which led the hero to jump from ,brooklyn ,bridge on the ,fourth of ,july they miss it entirely and betray their neglect of their duty by alluding to him as a poor devil crazed with the heat4 ,the fact is1 of course1 that he did a ,steve ,brodie because he found something obscurely hateful in the ,manhattan skyline4 ,day after day1 while walking to his work on the ,brooklyn ,rapid ,transit1 he gazed at the saw-toothed outline of the buildings limned against the sky4 ,day by day his soul kept asking3 8,why don't they get a gold filling for that cavity between the ,singer and ,woolworth towers80 ,and he would ask himself despondently3 8,is this what ,i live for80 ,and gradually he felt that it was not4 ,he felt that it might be something to die about1 however4 ,and so1 with the rashness of youth1 he leaped4 ,the ,george ,meredith-,thomas ,hardy irony came into the story when he was pulled out of the river by his rival in ,dorinda's affections1 ,gregory ,anthracyte1 owner of the magnificent steam yacht ,chuggermugger4 ,so much for the anatomy of a book review4 ,put backbone into it4 ,read before you write4 ,look before you leap4 ,be just1 be fair1 be impartial2 and when you damn1 damn with faint praise1 and when you praise1 praise with faint damns4 ,be all things to all books4 ,remember the author4 ,review as you would be reviewed by4 ,if a book is nothing in your life it may be the fault of your life4 ,and it is always less expensive to revise your life than to revise the book4 ,your life is not printed from plates that cost a fortune to make and another fortune to throw away4 8,life is too short to read inferior books10 eh8 ,books are too good to be guillotined by inferior lives--or inferior livers4 ,bacon said some books were to be digested1 but he neglected to mention a cure for dyspeptics4 #e ,but when we say so much we have only touched the surface of a profound matter4 ,the truth of that matter1 the full depth of it1 may as well be plumbed at once4 ,a book cannot be reviewed4 ,it can only be written about or around4 ,it is insusceptible of such handling as is accorded a play1 for example4 ,a man with more or less experience in seeing plays and with more or less knowledge of the drama goes to the first performance of a new comedy or tragedy or whatnot4 ,there it is before him in speech and motion and color4 ,it is acted4 ,the play1 structurally1 is good or bad2 the acting is either good or bad4 ,every item of the performance is capable of being resolved separately and estimated2 and the collective interest or importance of these items can be determined1 is1 in fact1 determined once and for all by the performance itself4 ,the observer gets their collective impact at once and his task is really nothing but a consideration afterward in such detail as he cares to enter upon of just how that impact was secured4 ,did you ever1 in your algebra days1 or even in your arithmetically earnest childhood1 8factor0 a quantity or a number8 ,take #ia4 ,a little difficult1 #ia1 but after some mental and pencil investigation you found that it was obtained by multiplying #ac by #g4 ,very well4 ,you knew how the impact of #ia was produced2 it was produced by multiplying #ac by #g4 ,you had reviewed the number #ia in the sense that you might review a play4 ,now it is impossible to review a book as you would factor a number or a play4 ,you can't be sure of the factors that make up the collective impact of the book upon you4 ,there's no way of getting at them4 ,they are summed up in the book itself and no book can be split into multipliable parts4 ,a book is not the author times an idea times the views of the publisher4 ,a book is unfactorable1 often undecipherable4 ,it is a growth4 ,it is a series of accretions about a central thought4 ,the central thought is like the grain of sand which the oyster has pearled over4 ,the central thought may even be a diseased thought and the pearl may be a very lovely and brilliant pearl1 superficially at least1 for all that4 ,there is nothing to do with a book but to take it as it is or go at it hammer and tongs1 scalpel and curette1 chisel and auger--smashing it to pieces1 scraping and cutting1 boring and cleaving through the layers of words and subsidiary ideas and getting down eventually to the heart of it1 to the grain of sand1 the irritant thought that was the earliest foundation4 ,such surgery may be highly skilful or highly and wickedly destructive2 it may uncover something worth while and it may not2 naturally1 you don't go in for much of it1 if you are wise1 and as a general thing you take a book as it is and not as it once was or as the author may1 in the innocence of his heart or the subtlety of his experience1 have intended it to be4 #f ,surgery on a book is like surgery on a human being1 for a book is alive2 ordinarily the only justification for it is the chance of saving life4 ,if the operator can save the author's life 7as an author7 by cutting he ought to go ahead1 of course4 ,the fate of one book is nothing as against the lives of books yet unwritten2 the feelings of the author are not necessarily of more account than the screams of the sick child's parent4 ,there have been such literary operations for which1 in lieu of the #a1jjj fee of medical practise1 the surgeon has been rewarded and more than repaid by a private letter of acknowledgement and heartfelt thanks4 ,no matter how hard up the recipient of such a letter may be1 the missive seldom turns up in those auction rooms where the ,a4 ,l4 ,s4 7or ,autograph ,letter with ,signature7 sometimes brings an unexpected and astonishingly large price4 #g ,there is a good deal to be said for taking a book as it is4 ,most books1 in fact1 should be taken that way4 ,for the number of books which contain within them issues of life and death is always very small4 ,you may handle new books for a year and come upon only one such4 ,and when you do1 unless you recognize its momentousness1 no responsibility rests on you to do anything except follow a routine procedure4 ,in this domain ignorance is a wholly valid excuse2 no one would think of blaming a general practitioner of medicine for not removing the patient's vermiform appendix on principle1 so to say4 ,unless he apprehended conclusively that the man had appendicitis and unless he knew the technique of the operation he would certainly be blamed for performing it4 ,similarly1 unless the handler of new books is dead sure that a fatality threatens ,harold ,bell ,wright or ,john ,galsworthy or ,mary ,roberts ,rinehart1 unless the new book of ,mr4 ,wright or ,mr4 ,galsworthy or ,mrs4 ,rinehart is a recognizable and unmistakable symptom1 unless1 further1 he knows what to uncover in that book and how to uncover it1 he has no business to take the matter in hand at all4 ,though the way of most 8reviewers0 with new books suggests that their fundamental motto must be that one good botch deserves another4 ,not at all4 ,better1 if you don't know what to do1 to leave bad enough alone4 ,but since the book as it is forms #ii per cent4 of the subject under consideration this aspect of dealing with new books should be considered first and most extensively4 ,afterward we can revert to the one percent4 of books that require to go under the knife4 #h ,now the secret of taking a book as it is was never very abstruse and is always perfectly simple2 nevertheless1 it seems utterly to elude most of the persons who deal with new books4 ,it is a secret only because it is forever hidden from their eyes4 ,or maybe they deliberately look the other way4 ,there exists in the world as at present constituted a person called the reporter4 ,he is1 mostly1 an adjunct of the daily newspaper2 in small places1 of the weekly newspaper4 ,it is1 however1 in the cities of ,america that he is brought to his perfection and in this connection it is worth while pointing out what ,irvin ,cobb has already noted--the difference between the ,new ,york reporter and the reporter of almost any other city in ,america4 ,the ,new ,york reporter 8works with0 his rival on another sheet2 the reporter outside ,new ,york almost never does this4 ,cobb attributed the difference to the impossible tasks that confront reporters in ,new ,york1 impossible1 that is1 for single-handed accomplishment4 ,a man who should attempt to cover alone some ,new ,york assignments1 to 8beat0 his fellow1 would be lost4 ,of course where a ,new ,york paper details half a dozen men to a job real competition between rival outfits is feasible and sometimes occurs4 ,but the point here is this3 ,the ,new ,york reporter1 by generally 8working with0 his fellow from another daily1 has made of his work a profession1 with professional ideals and standards1 a code1 unwritten but delicate and decidedly high rules of what is honorable and what is not4 ,elsewhere reporting remains a business1 decently conducted to be sure1 open in many instances to manifestations of chivalry2 but essentially keen1 sharp-edged1 cutthroat competition4 ,now it is of the reporter in his best and highest estate that we would speak here--the reporter who is not only a keen and honest observer but a happy recorder of what he sees and hears and a professional person with ethical ideals in no respect inferior to those of any recognized professional man on earth4 ,there are many things which such a reporter will not do under any pressure of circumstance or at the beck of any promise of reward4 ,he will not distort the facts1 he will not suppress them1 he will not put in people's mouths words that they did not say and he will not let the reader take their words at face value if1 in the reporter's own knowledge1 the utterance should be perceptibly discounted4 ,no reporter can see and hear everything and no reporter's story can record even everything that the observer contrived to see and hear4 ,it must record such things as will arouse in the reader's mind a correct image and a just impression4 ,how is this to be done8 ,why1 there is no formula4 ,there's no set of rules4 ,there's nothing but a purpose animating every word the man writes1 a purpose served1 and only half-consciously served1 by a thousand turns of expression1 a thousand choices of words4 ,like all honest endeavors to effect a purpose the thing is spoiled1 annulled1 made empty of result by deliberate art4 ,good reporters are neither born nor made2 they evolve themselves and without much help from any outside agency1 either4 ,they can be hindered but not prevented1 helped but not hurt4 ,you may remember a saying that ,god helps those who help themselves4 ,the common interpretation of this is that when a man gets up and does something of his own initiative ,providence is pretty likely to play into his hands a little2 not at all1 that isn't what the proverb means4 ,what it does mean is just this3 ,that those who help themselves1 who really do lift themselves by their bootstraps1 are helped by ,god2 that it isn't they who do the lifting but somebody bigger than themselves4 ,now there is no doubt whatever that good reporters are good reporters because ,god makes them so4 ,they aren't good reporters at three years of age2 they get to be4 ,does this seem discouraging8 ,it ought to be immensely encouraging1 heartening1 actually 8uplifting0 in the finest sense of a tormented word4 ,for if we believed that good reporters were born and not made there would be no hope for any except the gifted few1 endowed from the start2 and if we believed that good reporters were made and not born there would be absolutely no excuse for any failures whatever--every one should be potentially a good reporter and it would be simply a matter of correct training4 ,but if we believe that a good reporter is neither born nor made1 but makes himself with the aid of ,god we can be unqualifiedly cheerful4 ,there is hope for almost any one under such a dispensation2 moreover1 if we believe in ,god at all and in mankind at all we must believe that between ,god and mankind the supply of topnotch reporters will never entirely fail4 ,the two together will come pretty nearly meeting the demand every day in the year4 #i ,perhaps the reader is grumbling1 in fact1 we seem to hear murmurs4 ,what has all this about the genesis and nature of good reporters to do with the publication of new books8 ,why1 this3 ,the only person who can deal adequately and amply with #ii new books out of a hundred--the #ii that require to be taken as they are--is the good reporter4 ,he's the boy who can read the new book as he would look and listen at a political convention1 or hop around at a fire--getting the facts1 getting them straight 7yes1 indeed1 they do get them straight7 and setting them down1 swiftly and selectively1 to reproduce in the mind of the public the precise effect of the book itself4 ,the effect--not the means by which it was achieved1 not the desirability of it having been achieved1 not the artistic quality of it1 not the moral worth of it1 not anything in the way of a corollary or lesson or a deduction1 however obvious--just the effect4 ,that's reporting4 ,that's getting and giving the news4 ,and that's what the public wants4 ,some people seem to think there is something shameful in giving the public what it wants4 ,they would1 one supposes1 highly commend the grocer who gave his customer something 8just as good0 or 7according to the grocer7 8decidedly better40 ,but substitution1 open or concealed1 is an immoral practice4 ,nothing can justify it1 no nobility of intention can take it out of the class of deception and cheating4 ,but1 they cry1 the public does not want what is sufficiently good1 let alone what is best for it2 that is why it is wrong to give the public what it wants4 ,so they shift their ground and think to escape on a high moral plateau or table land4 ,but the table land is a tip-table land4 ,what they mean is that they are confidently setting their judgment of what the public ought to want against the public's plain decision what it does want4 ,they are a few dozens against many millions1 yet in their few dozen intelligences is collected more wisdom than has been the age-long and cumulative inheritance of all the other sons of earth4 ,they really believe that4444 ,pitiable4444 #aj ,a new book is news4 ,this might almost be set down as axiomatic and not as a proposition needing formal demonstration by the ,euclidean process4 ,yet it is susceptible of such demonstration and we shall demonstrate accordingly4 ,in the strict sense1 anything that happens is news4 ,everybody remembers the old distinction1 that if a dog bites a man it is very likely not news1 but that if a man bites a dog it is news beyond all cavil4 ,such a generalization is useful and fairly harmless 7like the generalization we ourselves have just indulged in and are about proving7 if--a big if--the broad exception be noted4 ,if a dog bites ,john ,d4 ,rockefeller1 ,jr41 it is not only news but rather more important1 or certainly more interesting1 news than if ,john ,jones of ,howlersville bites a dog4 ,for the chances are that ,john ,jones of ,howlersville is a poor demented creature1 after all4 ,now the dog that bites ,mr4 ,rockefeller is very likely a poor1 demented creature1 too2 but the distinction lies in this3 the dog bitten by ,john ,jones is almost certainly not as well-known or as interesting or as important in the lives of a number of people as ,mr4 ,rockefeller4 ,pair off the cur that puts his teeth in the ,rockefeller ankle1 if you like1 with the wretch who puts his teeth in an innocent canine bystander 7it's the innocent bystander who always gets hurt72 do this and you still have to match up the hound of ,howlersville with ,mr4 ,rockefeller4 ,and the scale of news values tips heavily away from ,howlersville and in the direction of #bf ,broadway4 ,so it is plain that not all that happens is news compared with some that happens4 ,the law of specific interest1 an intellectual counterpart of the law of specific gravity in the physical world1 rules in the world of events4 ,any one handling news who disregards this law does so at his extreme peril1 just as any one building a ship heavier than the water it displaces may reasonably expect to see his fine craft sink without a trace4 ,since a new book is a thing happening it is news1 subject to the broad correction we have been discussing above1 namely1 that in comparison with other new books it may not be news at all1 its specific interest may be so slight as to be negligible entirely4 ,but if a particular new book is news1 if its specific interest is moderately great1 then obviously1 we think1 the person best fitted to deal with it is a person trained to deal with news1 namely1 a reporter4 ,naturally we all prefer a good reporter4 #aa ,the question will at once be raised3 ,how is the specific interest of a new book to be determined8 ,we answer3 ,just as the specific interest of any kind of potential news or actual news is determined--in competition with the other news of the day and hour4 ,what is news one day isn't news another4 ,this is a phenomenon of which the regular reader of every daily paper is more or less consciously aware4 ,there are some days when 8there's no news in the paper40 ,there are other days when the news in the paper is so big and so important that all the lesser occurrences which ordinarily get themselves chronicled are crowded out4 ,granting a white paper supply which does not at present exist1 it would1 of course1 be possible on the 8big days0 to record all these lesser doings2 and consistently1 day in and day out1 to print nicely proportioned accounts of every event attaining to a certain fixed level of specific interest4 ,but the reader who may think he would like this would speedily find out that he didn't4 ,some days he would have a twelve page newspaper and other days 7not ,sundays1 either7 he would have one of thirty-six pages4 ,he would be lost1 or rather1 his attention would be lost in the jungle of events that all happened within twenty-four hours1 with the profuse luxuriance of tropical vegetation shooting up skyward by inches and feet overnight4 ,his natural appetite for a knowledge of what his fellows were doing would be alternately starved and overfed2 malnutrition would lead to chronic and incurable dyspepsia2 soon he would become a hateful misanthrope1 shunning his fellow men and having a seizure every time ,mr4 ,hearst brought out the eighth edition 7which is the earliest and first7 of the ,new ,york ,evening ,journal4 ,it is really dreadful to think what havoc a literal adhesion to the motto of the ,new ,york ,times--8,all the news that's fit to print0--would work in ,new ,york ,city4 ,no mortal has more than a certain amount of time daily and a certain amount of attention 7according to his mental habit and personal interest7 to bestow on the perusal of a newspaper1 or news1 or the printed page of whatever kind4 ,on ,sunday he has much more1 it is likely1 but still there is a limit and a perfectly finite bound4 ,consequently the whole problem for the persons engaged in gathering and preparing news for presentation to readers sums up in this3 8,how many of the day's doings attaining or exceeding a certain level of public interest and importance1 shall we set before our clients80 ,easily answered1 in most cases2 and the size of the paper is the index of the answer4 ,question ,two3 8,what of the day's doings shall be served up in the determined space80 ,for this question there is never an absolute or ready answer1 and there never can be4 ,on some of the affairs to be reported all journalists would agree2 but they would differ in their estimates of the relative worth of even these and the lengths at which they should be treated2 about lesser occurrences there would be no fixed percentage of agreement4 #ab ,now the application of all this to the business of giving the news of books should be fairly clear4 ,a new book is news--and so1 sometimes1 is an old one1 rediscovered4 ,since a new book is news it should be dealt with by a news reporter4 ,not all that happens is news2 not all the new books published are news2 new books1 like new events of all sorts1 are news when they compete successfully with a majority of their kind4 ,there is no more sense in reporting--that is1 describing individually at greater or less length--all the new books than there would be in reporting every incident on the police blotters of a lively ,american city4 ,recording new books is another matter2 somewhere1 somehow1 most occurrences in this world get recorded in written words that reach nearly all who are interested in the happenings 7as in letters7 or are accessible to the interested few 7as the police records74 ,the difference between the reporter and the recorder is not entirely a difference of details given4 ,the recorder usually follows a prescribed formula and makes his record conform thereto2 the good reporter never has a formula and never can have one4 ,let us see how this works out with the news of books4 #ac ,the recorder of new books generally compiles a list of ,books ,received or ,books ,just ,published and he does it in this uninspired and conscientious manner3 ,,in ,,the ,,heart ,,of ,a ,,fool4 ,by ,william ,allen ,white4 ,a story of ,kansas in the last half-century1 centered in a single town1 showing its evolution from prairie to an industrial city with difficult economic and labor problems2 the story told in the lives of a group of people1 pioneers and the sons of pioneers--their work1 ambitions1 personal affairs1 c4 ,new ,york3 ,the ,macmillan ,company4 #a4fj4 ,that would be under the heading ,fiction4 ,an entry under the heading ,literary ,studies or ,essays might read3 ,,our ,,poets ,,of ,,to-,,day4 ,by ,howard ,willard ,cook4 ,volume ,,ii4 in a series of books on modern ,american writers4 ,sketches of sixty-eight ,american poets1 nearly all living1 including ,edgar ,lee ,masters1 ,amy ,lowell1 ,witter ,bynner1 ,robert ,service1 ,edgar ,guest1 ,charles ,divine1 ,carl ,sandburg1 ,joyce ,kilmer1 ,sara ,teasdale1 ,george ,edward ,woodberry1 ,percy ,mackaye1 ,harriet ,w4 ,monroe1 c4 ,new ,york3 ,moffat1 ,yard ,co4 #a4fj4 ,these we hasten to say would be unusually full and satisfactory records1 but they would be records just the same--formal and precise statements of events1 like the chronological facts affixed to dates in an almanac4 ,if all records were like these there would be less objection to them2 but it is an astonishing truth that most records are badly kept4 ,why1 one may never fathom2 since the very formality and precision make a good record easy4 ,yet almost any of the principal pages or magazines in the ,united ,states devoted to the news of new books is likely to make a record on this order3 ,,in ,,the ,,heart ,,of ,a ,,fool4 ,by ,william ,allen ,white4 ,novel of contemporary ,american life4 ,new ,york1 c4 ,such a record is1 of course1 worse than inadequate2 it is actually misleading4 ,mr4 ,white's book happens to cover a period of fifty years4 8,contemporary ,american life0 would characterize quite as well1 or quite as badly1 a story of ,new ,york and ,tuxedo by ,robert ,w4 ,chambers4 #ad ,the reporter works in entirely another manner4 ,he is concerned to present the facts about a new book in a way sufficiently arresting and entertaining to engage the reader4 ,as ,mr4 ,holliday says with fine perception1 the true function of the describer of new books is simply to bring a particular volume to the attention of its proper public4 ,to do that it is absolutely necessary to 8give the book10 at least to the extent of enabling the reader of the article to determine1 with reasonable accuracy 7#a7 whether the book is for him1 that is1 addressed to a public of which he is one1 and 7#b7 whether he wants to read it or not4 ,whether the book is good or bad is not the point4 ,a man interested in sociology may conceivably want to read a book on sociology even though it is an exceedingly bad book on that subject and even though he knows its worthlessness4 ,he may want to profit by the author's mistakes2 he may want to write a book to correct them2 or he may merely want to be amused at the spectacle of a fellow sociologist making a fool of himself1 a spectacle by no means rare but hardly ever without a capacity for giving joy to the mildly malicious4 ,the determination of the goodness or badness of a book is not and should not be a deliberate purpose of the good book reporter4 ,why8 ,well1 in many cases it is a task of supererogation4 ,take a reporter who goes to cover a public meeting at which speeches are made4 ,he does not find it necessary to say that ,mr4 ,so-and-,so's speech was good4 ,he records what ,mr4 ,so-and-,so says1 or a fair sample of it2 which is enough4 ,the reader can see for himself how good or bad it was and reach a conclusion based on the facts as tempered by his personal beliefs1 tastes and ideas4 ,in the same way1 it is superfluous for the book reporter to say that ,miss ,such-and-,such's book on ,new ,york is rotten4 ,all he need do is to set down the incredible fact that ,miss ,such-and-,such locates the ,woolworth building at ,broadway1 ,fifth ,avenue and ,twenty-third street1 and refers to the ,aquarium as the fisheries section of the ,bronx ,zoo4 ,if this should not appear a sufficient notice of the horrible nature of the volume the reporter may very properly give the truth about the ,woolworth building and the ,aquarium for the benefit of people who have never visited ,new ,york and might be unable to detect ,miss ,such-and-,such's idiosyncrasies4 ,the rule holds in less tangible matters4 ,why should the book reporter ask his reader to accept his dictum that the literary style of a writer is atrocious when he can easily prove it by a few sentences or a paragraph from the book8 #ae ,yet books are still in the main 8reviewed10 instead of being given into the hands of trained news reporters4 ,anything worse than the average book 8review0 it would certainly be difficult to find in the length and breadth of ,america4 ,and ,england1 despite the possession of some brilliant talents1 is nearly as badly off4 ,no one who is not qualified as a critic should attempt to criticise new books4 ,there are but few critics in any generation--half a dozen or perhaps a dozen men in any single one of the larger countries are all who could qualify at a given time2 that much seems evident4 ,what is a critic8 ,a critic is a person with an education unusually wide either in life or in letters1 and preferably in both4 ,he is a person with huge backgrounds4 ,he has read thousands of books and has by one means or another abstracted the essence of thousands more4 ,he has perhaps travelled a good deal1 though this is not essential2 but he has certainly lived with a most peculiar and exceptional intensity1 descending to greater emotional and intellectual depths than the majority of mankind and scaling higher summits2 he has1 in some degree1 the faculty of living other people's lives and sharing their human experiences which is the faculty that1 in a transcendent degree1 belongs to the novelist and storyteller4 ,a critic knows the past and the present so well that he is able to erect standards1 or uncover old standards1 by which he can and does measure the worth of everything that comes before him4 ,he can actually show you1 in exact and inescapable detail1 how ,de ,morgan compares with ,dickens and how ,gilbert ,k4 ,chesterton ranks with ,swift and whether ,thackeray learned more from ,fielding or from ,daniel ,defoe and he can trace the relation between a period in the life of ,joseph ,conrad and certain scenes and settings in ,the ,arrow of ,gold4 ,such a man is a critic4 ,of course critics make mistakes but they are not mistakes of ignorance1 of personal unfitness for the task1 of pretension to a knowledge they haven't4 ,they are mistakes of judgment2 such mistakes as very eminent jurists sometimes make after years on the bench4 ,the jurist is reversed by the higher court and the critic is reversed by the appellate decree of the future4 ,the mistakes of a real critic1 like the mistakes of a real jurist1 are always made on defensible1 and sometimes very sound1 grounds2 they are reasoned and seasoned conclusions even if they are not the correct conclusions4 ,the mistakes of the #i1gfc persons who assume the critical ermine without any fitness to wear it are quite another matter2 and they are just the mistakes that would be made by a layman sitting in the jurist's seat4 ,the jurist knows the precedents1 the rules of evidence1 the law2 he is tolerant and admits exceptions into the record4 ,so the critic2 with the difference that the true critic merely presides and leaves the verdict to that great jury of true and right instincts which we call 8the public40 ,the genuine critic is concerned chiefly to see that the case gets before the jury cleanly4 ,without presuming to tell the jury what its verdict must be--except in extraordinary circumstances--he does instruct it what the verdict should be on1 what should be considered in arriving at it1 what principles should guide the decision4 ,but the near-critic 7,god save the mark67 has it in his mind that he must play judge and jury too4 ,he doesn't like the writer's style1 or thinks the plot is poor1 or this bad or that defective4 ,instead of carefully outlining the evidence on which the public might reach a correct verdict on these points he delivers a dictum4 ,it doesn't go1 of course1 at least for long2 and it never will4 ,let us be as specific as is possible in this1 as specific1 that is1 as a general discussion can be and remain widely applicable4 ,i don't like the writer's style4 ,i am not a person of critical equipment or pretensions4 ,i am1 we will say1 a book reporter4 ,i do not declare1 with a fiat and a flourish1 that the style is bad2 ,i merely present a chunk of it4 ,there is the evidence1 and nothing else is so competent1 so relevant or so material1 as the lawyers would say4 ,i may1 in the necessity to be brief and the absence of space for an excerpt1 say that the style is adjectival1 or adverbial1 or diffuse1 or involved or florid or something of that sort1 if ,i know it to be4 ,these would be statements of fact4 8,bad0 is a statement of opinion4 ,i may call the plot 8weak0 if it is weak 7a fact7 and if ,i know weakness in a plot 7which qualifies me to announce the fact74 ,but if ,i call the plot 8poor0 ,i am taking a good deal upon myself4 ,its poorness is a matter of opinion4 ,some stories are spoiled by a strong plot which dominates the reader's interest almost to the exclusion of other things--fine characterization1 atmosphere1 and so on4 ,and even restrictions of space can hardly excuse the lack of courtesy1 or worse1 shown by the near-critic who calls the plot weak or the style diffuse or involved1 however much these may be facts1 and who does not at least briefly explain in what way the style is diffuse 7or involved7 and wherein the weakness of the plot resides4 ,but to put a finger on the how or the where or the why requires a knowledge and an insight that the near-critic does not possess and will not take the trouble to acquire2 so we are asking him to do the impossible4 ,nevertheless we can ask him to do the possible2 and that is to leave off talking or writing on matters he knows nothing about4 #af ,the task of training good book reporters is not a thing to be easily and lightly undertaken4 ,and the first essential in the making of such a reporter is the inculcation of a considerable humility of mind4 ,a near-critic can afford to think he knows it all1 but a book reporter cannot4 ,besides a sense of his own limitations the book reporter must possess and develop afresh from time to time a mental attitude which may best be summed up in this distinction3 ,when a piece of writing seems to him defective he must stop short and ask himself1 8,is this defect a fact or is it my personal feeling80 ,if it is a fact he must establish it to his own1 and then to the reader's1 satisfaction4 ,if it is his personal impression or feeling1 merely1 as he may conclude on maturer reflection1 he owes it to those who will read his article either not to record it or to record it as a personal thing4 ,there is no sense in saying only the good things that can be said about a book that has bad things in it4 ,such a course is dishonest4 ,it is equally dishonest1 and infinitely more common1 to pass off private opinions as statements of fact4 ,when in doubt1 the doubt should be resolved in favor of the author4 ,a good working test of fact versus personal opinion is this3 ,if you1 as a reporter1 cannot put your finger on the apparent flaw1 cannot give the how or where or why of the thing that seems wrong1 it must be treated as your personal feeling4 ,a fact that you cannot buttress might as well not be a fact at all--unless1 of course1 it is self-evident1 in which case you have only to state it or exhibit your evidence to command a universal assent4 ,all that we have been saying respecting the fact or fancy of a flaw in a piece of writing applies with equal force1 naturally1 to the favorable as well as the unfavorable conclusion you1 as a book reporter1 may reach4 ,because a story strikes you as wonderful it does not follow that it is wonderful4 ,you are under a moral obligation1 at least1 to establish the wonder of it4 ,the procedure for the book reporter who has to describe favorably and for the book reporter who has to report unfavorably is the same4 ,first comes the question of fact1 then the citation1 if possible1 of evidence2 and if that be impossible the brief indication of the how1 the where1 the why of the merit reported4 ,if the meritoriousness remains a matter of personal impression it ought so to be characterized but may warrantably be recorded where an adverse impression would go unmentioned4 ,the presumption is in favor of the author4 ,it should be kept so4 #ag ,in all this there is nothing impossible1 nothing millennial4 ,but what has been outlined of the work of the true book reporter is as far as possible from what we very generally get to-day4 ,we get unthinking praise and unthinking condemnation2 we do not expect analysis but we have a right to expect straightaway exposition and a condensed transliteration of the book being dealt with4 8,praise10 we have just said1 and 8condemnation40 ,that is what it is1 and there is no room in the book reporter's task either for praise or condemnation4 ,he is not there to praise the book any more than a man is at a political convention to praise a nominating speech2 he is there to describe the book1 to describe the speech1 to report either4 ,a newspaperman who should begin his account of a meeting in this fashion1 8,in a lamentably poor speech1 showing evidences of hasty preparation1 ,elihu ,root10 c41 would be fired--and ought to be4 ,no matter if a majority of those who heard ,mr4 ,root thought the same way about it4 #ah ,the book reporter will be governed in his work by the precise news value in the book he is dealing with at the moment he is dealing with it4 ,this needs illustration4 ,on ,november #aa1 #aiah1 an armistice was concluded in ,europe1 terminating a war that had lasted over four years4 ,in that four years books relating to the war then being waged had sold heavily1 even at times outselling fiction4 ,had the war drawn to a gradual end the sales of these war books would probably have lessened1 little by little1 until they reached and maintained a fairly steady level4 ,from this they would doubtless have declined1 as the end drew near1 lower and lower1 until the foreseen end came1 when the interest in them would have been as great1 but not much greater1 than the normal interest in works of a historical or biographical sort4 ,but the end came overnight2 and suddenly the whole face of the world was transformed4 ,the reaction in the normal person was intense4 ,in an instant war books of several pronounced types became intolerable reading4 ,how ,i ,reacted to the ,war1 by ,quintus ,quintuple seemed tremendously unimportant4 ,even ,mr4 ,britling was1 momentarily1 utterly stale and out of date4 ,reminiscences of the ,german ex-,kaiser were neither interesting nor important2 he was a fugitive in ,holland4 ,the book reporter who had any sense of news values grasped this immediately4 ,books that a month earlier would have been worth #a1jjj to #a1ejj word articles were worth a few lines or no space at all4 ,on the other hand books which had a historical value and a place as interesting public records1 such as ,ambassador ,morgenthau's ,story1 were not diminished either in interest or in importance4 ,some books which had been inconsequential were correspondingly exalted by the unprecedented turn of affairs4 ,these were books on such subjects as the re-education of disabled fighters1 the principles which might underlie the formation of a league of nations1 problems of reconstruction of every sort4 ,they had been worth1 some of them1 very small articles a week earlier2 now they were worth a column or two apiece4 #ai ,no doubt we ought to conclude this possibly tedious essay with some observations on the one per cent4 of books which call for swift surgery4 ,but such an enterprise is1 if not impossible1 extraordinarily difficult for the reason that the same operation is never called for twice4 ,in a sense it is like cutting diamonds1 or splitting a large stone into smaller stones4 ,the problem varies each time4 ,the cutter respects certain principles and follows a careful technique4 ,that is all4 ,we shall1 for the sake of the curious1 take an actual instance4 ,in #aiah there was published a novel called ,foes by ,mary ,johnston1 an ,american novelist of an endowment so decided as fairly to entitle her to the designation 8a genius40 ,miss ,johnston's first novel had appeared twenty years earlier4 ,her first four books--nay1 her first two1 the second being ,to ,have and to ,hold--placed her firmly in the front rank of living romantic writers4 ,the thing that distinguished her romanticism was its sense of drama in human affairs and human destiny4 ,added to this was a command of live1 nervous1 highly poetic prose4 ,history--romance2 it did not matter4 ,she could set either movingly before you4 ,her work showed steady progress1 reaching a sustained culmination in her two ,civil ,war novels1 ,the ,long ,roll and ,cease ,firing4 ,she experimented a little1 as in her poetic drama of the ,french ,revolution1 ,the ,goddess of ,reason1 and in ,the ,fortunes of ,garin1 a tapestry of medival ,france4 ,the ,wanderers was a more decided venture1 but a perfectly successful4 ,then came ,foes4 ,considered purely as a romantic narrative1 as a story of friendship transformed into hatred and the pursuit of a private feud under the guise of wreaking ,divine vengeance1 ,foes is a superb tale4 ,considered as a novel1 ,foes is a terrible failure4 ,why8 ,is it not sufficient to write a superb tale8 ,yes1 if you have essayed nothing more4 ,is a novel anything more than 8a good story1 well told08 ,yes1 if the writer essays to make more of it4 ,the novelist who has aimed at nothing beyond the 8good story1 well told0 has a just grievance against any one who asks anything further4 ,but against the novelist who has endeavored to make his story1 however good1 however well told1 the vehicle for a human philosophy or a metaphysical speculation1 the reader has a just grievance--if the endeavor has been unsuccessful or if the philosophy is unsound4 ,now as to the soundness or unsoundness of a particular philosophy every reader must pronounce for himself4 ,the metaphysical idea which was the basis of ,miss ,johnston's novel was this3 ,all gods are one4 ,all deities are one4 ,christ1 ,buddha2 it matters not4 8,there swam upon him another great perspective4 ,he saw ,christ in light1 ,buddha in light4 ,the glorified--the unified4 ,union40 ,upon this idea ,miss ,johnston reconciles her two foes4 ,this perfectly comprehensible mystical conception is the rock on which the whole story is founded--and the rock on which it goes to pieces4 ,it will be seen at once that the conception is one which no ,christian can entertain and remain a ,christian--nor any ,buddhist1 and remain a ,buddhist1 either4 ,to the vast majority of mankind1 therefore1 the philosophy of ,foes was unsound and the novel was worthless except for the superficial incidents and the lovely prose in which they were recounted4 ,it might be thought that for those who accepted the mystical concept ,miss ,johnson imposed1 ,foes would have been a novel of the first rank4 ,no1 indeed2 and for this reason3 ,her piece of mysticism was supposed to be arrived at and embraced by a dour ,scotchman of about the year of ,our ,lord #agej4 ,it was supposed to transform the whole nature of that man so as to lead him to give over a life-long enmity in which he had looked upon himself as a ,divine instrument to punish an evil-doer4 ,now however reasonable or sound or inspiring and inspiriting the mystical idea may have seemed to any reader1 he could not but be fatally aware that1 as presented1 the thing was a flat impossibility4 ,scotchmen of the year #agej were ,christians above all else4 ,they were1 if you like1 savage ,christians2 some of them were irreligious1 some of them were ,god-defying1 none of them were ,deists in the all-inclusive sense that ,miss ,johnston prescribes4 ,the idea that ,christ and ,buddha might possibly be nothing but different manifestations of the ,deity is an idea which could never have occurred to the eighteenth century ,scotch mind--and never did4 ,least of all could it have occurred to such a man as ,miss ,johnston delineates in ,alexander ,jardine4 ,the thing is therefore utterly anachronistic4 ,it is a historical anachronism1 if you like1 the history here being the history of the human spirit in its religious aspects4 ,every reader of the book1 no matter how willing he may have been to accept the novelist's underlying idea1 was aware that the endeavor to convey it had utterly failed1 was aware that ,miss ,johnston had simply projected her idea1 her favorite bit of mysticism1 into the mind of one of her characters1 a ,scotchman living a century and a half earlier6 ,but the thoughts that one may think in the twentieth century while tramping the ,virginia hills are not thoughts that could have dawned in the mind of a ,scottish laird in the eighteenth century1 not even though he lay in the flowering grass of the ,roman ,campagna4 444 ,and so there1 in ,foes1 we have the book in a hundred which called for something more than the intelligent and accurate work of the book reporter4 ,here was a case of a good novelist1 and a very1 very good one1 gone utterly wrong4 ,it was not sufficient to convey to the prospective reader a just idea of the story and of the qualities of it4 ,it was necessary to cut and slash1 as cleanly and as swiftly and as economically as possible--and as dispassionately--to the root of the trouble4 ,for if ,miss ,johnston were to repeat this sort of performance her reputation would suffer1 not to speak of her royalties2 readers would be enraged or misled2 young writers playing the sedulous ape would inflict dreadful things upon us2 tastes and tempers would be spoiled2 publishers would lose money2--and1 much the worst of all1 the world would be deprived of the splendid work ,mary ,johnston could do while she was doing the exceedingly bad work she did do4 ,perhaps the most disturbing thing about the blunder in ,foes was the fact that there was no necessity for it4 ,the ,christian religion1 which was the religion of ,alexander ,jardine1 provides for reconciliation1 indeed1 it exacts it4 ,there was the way for ,miss ,johnston to bring her foes together4 ,of course1 it would not have been intellectually so exciting4 ,but there is such a thing as emotional appeal1 and it is not always base2 there are emotions in the human so high and so lofty that it is wiser not to try to transcend them4444 ,the appearance of part of the foregoing in ,books and the ,book ,world of ,the ,sun1 ,new ,york1 brought a letter from ,kansas which should find a place in this volume4 ,the letter1 with the attempted answer1 may as well be given here4 ,the writer is head of the ,english department in a ,state college4 ,he wrote3 #bj 8,i hope that the mails lost for your college professors of ,english subscribers their copies of ,books and the ,book ,world containing the foregoing observations on ,book ,reporting4444 ,college professors do not like to be disturbed--and most of us cannot be1 for that matter4 ,the ,,tnt in those pages was not meant for us1 perhaps1 but it should have been4 8,when ,i read ,book ,reporting ,i dictated three pages of protest1 but did not send it on--thanks to my better judgment4444 ,then ,i decided1 since you had added so much to my perturbation1 to ask you to help me4 8,we need it out here--literary help only1 of course4 ,this is the only ,state college on what was once known as the #8,great ,plains4' ,w4 ,f4 ,cody won his sobriquet on ,government land which is now our campus4 ,our students are the sons and daughters of pioneers who won over grasshoppers1 droughts1 hot winds and one crop farms4 ,they are so near to real life that the teaching of literature must be as real as the literature--rather1 it ought to be4 ,that's where ,i want you to help me4 8,i am not teaching literature here now as ,i was taught geology back in ,missouri4 ,that's as near as ,i shall tell you how ,i teach--it is bad enough and you might not help me if ,i did4 7,perhaps1 in fairness to you1 ,i should say that for several years never less than one-third of those to whom we gave degrees have majored in ,english1 and always as many as the next two departments combined47 8,here's what ,i am tired of and want to get away from3 8#a4 ,testing students on reading a book by asking fact questions about what is in the book--memory work1 you see4 8#b4 ,demanding of students a scholarship in the study of literature that is so academic that it is ,prussian4 8#c4 ,demanding that students serve time in literature classes as a means of measuring their advance in the study of literature4 8,here's what ,i want you to help me with in some definite concrete way3 7,sounds like a college professor making an assignment--beg pardon47 8#a4 ,could you suggest a scheme of #8book reporting' for college students in literature classes8 7,an old book to a new person is news1 isn't it87 8#b4 ,give me a list of books published during the last ten years that should be included in college ,english laboratory classes in literature4 ,i want your list4 ,i have my own1 but fear it is too academic4 8#c4 ,what are some of the things which should enter into the training of teachers of high school ,english8 ,part of our work1 especially in the summer1 is to give such training to men and women who will teach composition and literature in ,kansas high schools4 8,your help will not only be appreciated1 but it will be used40 #ba ,to answer adequately these requests would take about six months' work and the answers would make a slender book4 ,and then they would exhibit the defects inseparable from a one man response4 ,none of which excuses a failure to attempt to answer1 though it must extenuate failures in the attempt4 ,we shall try to answer1 in this place1 though necessarily without completeness4 ,if nothing better than a few suggestions is the result1 why--suggestions may be all that is really needed4 ,and first respecting the things our friend is tired of and wants to get away from3 #a4 ,fact questions about what is in the book--memory work--are not much use if they stop with the outline of the story4 ,what is not in the book may be more important than what is4 ,why did the author select this scene for narration and omit that other1 intrinsically 7it seems7 the more dramatically interesting of the two8 ,see ,the ,flirt1 by ,booth ,tarkington1 where a double murder gets only a few lines and a small boy's doings occupy whole chapters4 #b4 ,scholarship is less important than wide reading1 though the two aren't mutually exclusive4 ,a wide acquaintance doesn't preclude a few profoundly intimate friendships4 ,textual study has spoiled ,chaucer1 ,shakespeare and ,milton for most of us4 ,fifty years hence ,kipling and ,masefield will be spoiled in the same way4 #c4 ,time serving over literature is a waste of time4 ,there are only three ways to teach literature4 ,the first is by directing students to books for voluntary reading--hundreds of books1 thousands4 ,the second is by class lectures--entertaining1 idea'd1 anecdoted1 catholic in range and expository in character4 ,the third is by conversation--argumentative at times1 analytic at moments1 but mostly by way of exchanging information and opinions4 ,study books as you study people4 ,mix among them4 ,you don't take notes on people unless1 perchance1 in a diary4 ,keep a diary on books you read1 if you like1 but don't 8take notes40 ,look for those qualities in books that you look for in people and make your acquaintances by the same 7perhaps unformulated7 rules4 ,to read snobbishly is as bad as to practise snobbery among your fellows4 #bb ,we go on to the first of our friend's requests for help4 ,it is a scheme for 8book reporting0 for college students in literature classes and he premises that an old book to a new reader is news4 ,of course it is4 ,let the student take up a book that's new to him and read it by himself1 afterward writing a report of it to be read to the class4 ,when he comes to write his report he must keep in the forefront of his mind this one thing3 ,to tell the others accurately enough about that book so that each one of them will know whether or not he wants to read it4 ,that is all the book reporter ever tries for4 ,no book is intended for everybody1 but almost every book is intended for somebody4 ,the problem of the book reporter is to find the reader4 ,comparison may help4 ,for instance1 those who enjoy ,milton's pastoral poetry will probably enjoy the long poem in ,robert ,nichols's ,ardours and ,endurances4 ,those who like ,thackeray will like ,mary ,s4 ,watts4 ,those who like ,anna ,katharine ,green will thank you for sending them to ,the ,moonstone1 by one ,wilkie ,collins4 ,most stories depend upon suspense in the action for their main effect4 ,you must not 8give away0 the story so as to spoil it for the reader4 ,in a mystery story you may state the mystery and appraise the solution or even characterize it--but you mustn't reveal it4 ,tell 'em that ,mr4 ,hergesheimer's ,java ,head is an atmospheric marvel1 but will disappoint many readers who put action first4 ,tell 'em that ,william ,allen ,white writes 7often7 banally1 but so saturates his novel with his own bigheartedness that he makes you laugh and cry4 ,tell 'em the truth1 the whole truth and nothing but the truth as well as you can make it out--and for heaven's sake ask yourself with every assertion3 8,is this a fact or is it my personal opinion80 ,and a fact1 for your purpose1 will be an opinion in which a large majority of readers will concur4 #bc 8,give me a list of books published during the last ten years that should be included in college ,english laboratory classes in literature4 ,i want your list4 ,i have my own1 but fear it is too academic40 ,the following list is an offhand attempt to comply with this request4 ,it is offered merely for the suggestions it may contain4 ,if the ten year restriction is rigid we ask pardon for such titles as may be a little older than that4 ,strike them out4 ,for ,kansans3 ,willa ,sibert ,cather's novels1 ,o ,pioneers6 and ,my ,antonia1 chronicling people and epochs of ,kansas-,nebraska4 ,william ,allen ,white's ,a ,certain ,rich ,man and ,in the ,heart of a ,fool1 less for their ,kansas-ness than for their ,americanism and humanity4 ,for ,middle ,westerners3 ,meredith ,nicholson's ,the ,valley of ,democracy4 ,zona ,gale's ,birth4 ,carl ,sandburg's ,chicago ,poems4 ,edgar ,lee ,masters's ,spoon ,river ,anthology4 ,vachel ,lindsay's longer poems4 ,mary ,s4 ,watts's ,nathan ,burke and ,van ,cleve3 ,his ,friends and ,his ,family4 ,lord ,charnwood's life of ,lincoln4 ,william ,dean ,howells's ,the ,leatherwood ,god4 ,booth ,tarkington's ,the ,conquest of ,canaan 7first published about fourteen years ago7 and ,the ,magnificent ,ambersons4 ,gene ,stratton-,porter's ,a ,daughter of the ,land1 her ,freckles and her ,a ,girl of the ,limberlost4 ,one or two books by ,harold ,bell ,wright4 ,the ,passing of the ,frontier1 by ,emerson ,hough1 and other books in the ,chronicles of ,america series published by the ,yale ,university ,press4 ,for ,americans3 ,mary ,s4 ,watts's ,the ,rise of ,jennie ,cushing4 ,owen ,wister's ,the ,virginian 7if not barred under the ten year rule74 ,booth ,tarkington's ,the ,flirt4 ,novels with ,american settings by ,gertrude ,atherton and ,stewart ,edward ,white4 ,mary ,johnston's ,the ,long ,roll and ,cease ,firing4 ,willa ,sibert ,cather's ,the ,song of the ,lark4 ,edith ,wharton's ,ethan ,frome4 ,alice ,brown's ,the ,prisoner4 ,ellen ,glasgow's ,the ,deliverance4 ,corra ,harris's ,a ,circuit-,rider's ,wife4 ,all of ,o4 ,henry4 ,margaret ,deland's ,the ,iron ,woman4 ,earlier novels by ,winston ,churchill4 ,ernest ,poole's ,the ,harbor4 ,joseph ,hergesheimer's ,the ,three ,black ,pennys1 his ,gold and ,iron and his ,java ,head4 ,historical books by ,theodore ,roosevelt4 ,american biographies too numerous to mention4 ,from ,isolation to ,leadership3 ,a ,review of ,american ,foreign ,policy by ,latan 7published by the educational department of ,doubleday1 ,page ,company74 ,essays1 such as those of ,agnes ,repplier4 ,each of these enumerations presupposes the books already named1 or most of them4 ,don't treat them as pieces of literary workmanship4 ,many of them aren't4 ,those that have fine literary workmanship have something else1 too--and it's the other thing1 or things1 that count4 ,fine art in a book is like good breeding in a person1 a passport1 not a ,magna ,charta4 8,manners makyth man0--yah6 #bd ,we are also asked3 8,what are some of the things which should enter into the training of teachers of high school ,english80 ,we reply3 ,a regard for literature1 not as it reflects life1 but as it moulds lives4 ,a profound respect for an author who can find #ajj1jjj readers1 a respect at least equal to that entertained for an author who can write superlatively well4 ,for instance3 ,get it out of your head that you can afford to condescend toward a best seller1 or to worship such a writer as ,stevenson for his sheer craftsmanship4 ,an instinct for what will nourish the ordinary man or woman as keen as your perception of what will be relished by the fastidious reader4 ,don't insist that people must live on what you1 or any one else1 declare to be good for them4 ,it is not for nothing that they 8don't know anything about literature1 but know what they like40 ,a confidence in the greater wisdom of the greatest number4 ,tarkington got it right4 ,the public wants the best it is capable of understanding2 its understanding may not be the highest understanding1 but 8the writer who stoops to conquer doesn't conquer40 ,neither does the writer who never concedes anything4 ,the public's standard can't always be wrong2 the private standards can't always be right4 ,arnold ,bennett says1 quite rightly1 that the classics are made and kept alive by 8the passionate few40 ,but the business of high school teachers of ,english is not with the passionate few--who will look after themselves--but with the unimpassioned many4 ,you can lead the student to ,mr4 ,pope's ,pierian spring1 but you cannot make him drink4 ,unless you can show him1 in the ,missourian sense1 it's all off4 ,if you can't tell what it is a girl likes in ,grace ,s4 ,richmond how are you going to show her what she'll like in ,dickens8 ,unless you know what it is that 8they0 get out of these books they do read you won't be able to bait the hook with the things you want them to read4 ,don't you think you've got a lot to learn yourself8 ,and mightn't you do worse than sit down yourself and read attentively1 at whatever personal cost1 some of the best sellers8 ,it all goes back to the size of the teacher's share of our common humanity4 ,a person who can't read a detective story for the sake of the thrills has no business teaching high school ,english4 ,a person who is a literary snob is unfit to teach high school ,english4 ,a person who can't sense 7better yet1 share7 the common feeling about a popular writer and comprehend the basis of it and sympathize a little with it and express it more or less articulately in everyday speech is not qualified to teach high school ,english4 #be ,a word about writing 8compositions0 in high school ,english classes4 ,make 'em write stories instead4 ,if they want to tackle thumbnail sketches or abstracter writing--little essays--why1 let 'em4 ,abstractions in thought and writing are like the ocean--it's fatally easy to get beyond your depth1 and every one else's4 ,read what ,sir ,arthur ,quiller-,couch says about this in his ,studies in ,literature4 ,once in a while a theologian urges us to 8get back to the ,bible40 ,well1 there is one sense1 at least1 in which the world would do well to get back to the ,bible1 or to the ,old ,testament1 at any rate4 ,as ,gardiner points out in his ,the ,bible as ,english ,literature1 it was the fortune or misfortune of ancient ,hebrew that it had no abstractions4 ,everything was stated in terms of the five senses4 ,there was no such word as 8virtue02 you said 8sweet smellingness0 or 8pleasant tastingness0 or something like that4 ,and everybody knew what you meant4 ,whereas 8virtue0 means anything from personal chastity to a general meritoriousness that nobody can define4 ,the ,greeks introduced abstract thinking and expression and some ,germans blighted the world by their abuse4 ,what should enter into the training of high school teachers of ,english8 ,only humbleness1 sanity1 catholicity of viewpoint1 humor1 a continual willingness to learn1 a continuous faith in the people--and undying enthusiasm4 ,only these--and the love of books4 ,,literary ,,editors ,,by ,,one ,,of ,,them ,v ,,literary ,,editors1 ,,by ,,one ,,of ,,them ,the very term 8literary editor0 is a survival4 ,it is meaningless1 but we continue to use it because no better designation has been found1 just as people in monarchical countries continue to speak of 8,king ,george0 or 8,queen ,victoria of ,spain40 ,besides1 there is politeness to consider4 ,no one wants to be the first to allude publicly and truthfully to 8,figurehead ,george0 or 8,social ,leader ,victoria40 ,literary editors who are literary are not editors1 and literary editors who are editors are no longer literary4 ,of old there were scholarly1 sarcastic men 7delightful fellows1 personally7 who sat in cubbyholes and read unremittingly4 ,afterward1 at night1 they set down a few thoughtful1 biting words about what they had read4 ,these were printed4 ,publishers who perused them felt as if knives had been stuck in their backs4 ,booksellers who read them looked up to ask each other pathetically3 8,but what does it mean80 ,book readers who read them resolved that the publication of a new book should be1 for them1 the signal to read an old one4 ,it was good for the secondhand trade4 ,we've changed all that1 or1 if we haven't1 we're going to4 ,take a chap who runs what is called a 8book section40 ,this is a separate section or supplement forming part of a daily or ,sunday newspaper4 ,its pages are magazine size--half the size of newspaper pages4 ,they number from eight to twenty-eight1 depending on the season and the advertising4 ,the essential thing to realize about such a section is that it requires an editor to run it4 ,it does not require a literary man1 or woman1 at all4 ,the editor of such a section need have no special education in the arts or letters4 ,he must have judgment1 of course1 and if he has not some taste for literary matters he may not enjoy his work as he will if he has that taste4 ,but high-browism is fatal4 ,can our editor 8review0 a book8 ,perhaps not4 ,it is no matter4 ,maybe he knows a good review when he sees it1 which will matter a good deal4 ,maybe he can get capable people to deal with the books for him4 ,which will matter more than anything else on earth in the handling of his book section4 ,a section will most certainly require1 to run it1 a man who can tell a good review 7another word-survival7 and who can get good reviewers4 ,it will require a man1 or woman1 with a sharp1 clear and very broad viewpoint4 ,such exist4 ,what do we mean--viewpoint8 ,the right conception1 it seems to us1 starts with the proposition that a new book is news 7sometimes an old one is news too7 and should be dealt with as such4 ,perhaps1 we are dealing only with a state of mind1 in all this1 but states of mind are important4 ,they are the only states where self-determination is a sure thing4 ,to get on3 ,your literary editor is like unto a city editor1 an individual whose desk is usually not so far away but that you can study him in his habitat4 ,the city editor tries to distinguish the big news from the little news4 ,the literary editor will wisely do the same4 ,what is big news in the world of books8 ,well1 a book that appears destined to be read as widely fifty years hence as it is to-day on publication is big news4 ,and a book that will be read immediately by #ajj1jjj people is bigger news4 ,people who talk about news often overlook the ephemeral side of it4 ,much of the newsiness and importance of news resides in its transiency4 ,what is news to-day isn't news to-morrow4 ,but to-day #ajj1jjj people1 more or less1 will want to know about it4 ,illustration3 ,two events happen on the same day4 ,one of them will be noted carefully in histories written fifty years hence1 but it affects1 and interests1 at the hour of its occurrence very few persons4 ,of course it is news1 but there may easily1 at that hour1 be much bigger4 ,for another event occurring on that same day1 though of a character which will make it forgotten fifty years later1 at once and directly affects the lives of the hundred thousand4 ,parallel3 ,two books are published on the same day4 ,one of them will be dissected fifty years later by the ,h4 ,w4 ,boyntons and ,wilson ,folletts of that time4 ,but the number of persons who will read it within the twelvemonth of its birth is small--in the hundreds4 ,the other book will be out of print and unremembered in five years4 ,but within six months of its publication hundreds of thousands will read it4 ,among those hundreds of thousands there will be hundreds1 and maybe thousands1 whose thoughts1 ideas1 opinions will be seriously modified and in some cases lastingly modified--whose very lives may change trend as a result of reading that book4 ,no need to ask which event and which book is the bigger news4 ,news is not the judgment of posterity on a book or event4 ,news is not even the sum total of the effects of an event or a book on human society4 ,news is the immediate importance1 or interest1 of an event or a book to the greatest number of people4 ,eleanor ,h4 ,porter writes a new story4 ,one in every thousand persons in the ,united ,states1 or perhaps more1 wants to know about it1 and at once4 ,isidor ,mac,dougal 7as ,frank ,m4 ,o',brien would say7 writes a literary masterpiece4 ,not one person in #ejj1jjj cares1 or would care even if the subject matter were made comprehensible to him4 ,the oldtime 8reviewer0 would write three solid columns about ,isidor ,mac,dougal's work4 ,the present-day literary editor puts it in competent hands for a simplified description to be printed later2 and meanwhile he slaps ,mrs4 ,porter's novel on his front page4 ,the troubles of a literary editor are the troubles of his friend up the aisle1 the city editor4 ,the worst of them is the occasional and inevitable error in giving out the assignment4 ,all his reporters are good book reporters1 but like the people on the city editor's staff they have usually their limitations1 whether temperamental or knowledgeable4 ,every once in a while the city editor sends to cover a fire a reporter who does speechified dinners beautifully but who has no sympathy with fires1 who can't get through the fire lines1 who writes that the fire 8broke out0 and burns up more words misdescribing the facts than the copyreader can extinguish with blue air and blue pencil4 ,just so it will happen in the best regulated literary editor's sanctum that1 now and then1 the editor will give the wrong book to the right man4 ,then he learns how unreasonable an author can be1 if he doesn't know already from the confidences of publishers4 ,the literary editor's point of view1 we believe1 must be that so well expressed by ,robert ,cortes ,holliday in the essay on ,that ,reviewer 8,cuss0 in the book ,walking-,stick ,papers4 ,few books that get published by established publishing houses are so poor or so circumscribed as not to appeal to a body of readers somewhere1 however small or scattered4 ,the function of the book reporter is transcendently to find a book's waiting audience4 ,if he can incidentally warn off those who don't belong to that audience1 so much the better4 ,that's a harder thing to do1 of course4 #b ,the first requisite in a good book section is that it shall be interesting4 ,as regards the news of new books1 this is not difficult where book reporters1 with the reporter's attitude1 are on the job4 ,reporter's stories are sometimes badly written1 but they are seldom dull4 ,new books described by persons who have it firmly lodged in their noodles that they are 8reviewing0 the books1 fare badly4 ,the reviewer-obsession manifests itself in different ways4 ,sometimes the new book is made to march past the reviewer in column of squads1 deploying at page #bdg into skirmish formation and coming at page #dca into company front4 ,very fine1 but the reader wants to see them in the trenches1 or1 headed by the author uttering inspiriting yells1 going over the top4 ,on other occasions the reviewer assumes the so-called judicial attitude1 the true inwardness of which ,william ,schwenk ,gilbert was perhaps the first to appreciate1 with the possible exception of ,lewis ,carroll4 ,then doth our reviewer tell us what will be famous a century hence4 ,much we care what will be famous a century hence4 ,what bothers us is what we shall read to-morrow4 ,of course it may happen to be one and the same book4 ,very well then1 why not say so8 ,the main interest of the book section is served by getting crackajack book reporters4 ,they will suffice for the people who read the section because they are interested in books4 ,if the literary editor stops there1 however1 he might as well never have started4 ,these people would read the book section anyway1 unless it were filled throughout with absolutely unreadable matter1 as has been known to happen4 ,even then they would doubtless scan the advertisements4 ,at least1 that is the theory on which publishers hopefully proceed4 ,there are book sections where the contributors always specify that their articles shall have a position next to advertising matter4 ,no1 the literary editor must interest people who do not especially care about books as such4 ,he can do it only by convincing them that books are just as full of life and just as much a part of a normal scheme of life as movies1 or magazine cut-outs1 or buying things on the instalment plan4 ,many a plain person has been led to read books by the fact that books are sometimes sold for instalment payments4 ,anything so sold1 the ordinary person at once realizes1 must be something which will fit into his scheme of existence4 ,acting on an instinct so old that its origin is shrouded in the mists of antiquity1 the ordinary person pays the instalments4 ,as a result1 books are delivered at his residence4 ,at first he is frightened4 ,but he who looks and runs away may live to read another day4 ,and from living to read it is but a step to reading to live4 ,now one way to interest people who don't care about books for books' sake is to get up attractive pages1 with pleasant or enticing headlines1 with pictures1 with jokes in the corners of 'em1 with some new and original and not-hitherto-published matter in them1 with poetry 7all kinds71 with large type1 with signed articles so that the reader can know who wrote it and like or hate him with the necessary personal tag4 ,but these things aren't literary1 at all4 ,they are just plain human and fall in the field of action of every editor alive--though of course editors who are dead are exempt from dealing with them4 ,that is why a literary editor has no need to be literary and1 indeed1 had better not be if it is going to prevent his being human4 ,we have been talking about the literary editor of a book section4 ,there are not many book sections in this country4 ,there are hundreds of book pages--half-pages and whole pages and double pages4 ,the word 8technique0 is a loathsome thing and really without any significance in this connection1 inasmuch as there is no particular way of doing the news of books well1 and certainly no one way of doing it that is invariably better than any other4 ,but for convenience we may permit ourselves to use the word 8technique0 for a moment2 and1 permission granted1 we will merely say that the technique of a book page or pages is entirely different from the technique of a book section--if you know what we mean4 ,clarified 7we hope7 it comes down to this1 that things which a fellow would attempt in a book section he would not essay in a book page or double page4 ,conversely1 things that will make a page successful may be out of place in a section4 ,it is by no means wholly a matter of newspaper makeup1 though there is that to it1 too4 ,but a man with a book section1 though not necessarily more ambitious1 is otherwisely so4 ,for one thing1 he expects to turn his reporters loose on more books than his colleague who has only a page or so to turn around in4 ,for another1 he will probably want to print a careful list of all books he receives1 of whatever sort1 with a description of each as adequate as he can contrive in from twenty to fifty words1 plus title1 author1 place of publication1 publisher and price4 ,such lists are scanned by publishers1 booksellers1 librarians1 readers in search of books on special subjects--by pretty nearly everybody who reads the section at all4 ,even the rather prosaic quality of such a list has its value4 ,a woman down in ,texas writes to the literary editor that there is too much conscious cleverness in lots of the stuff he prints1 8but the lists of books are delightful06 ,there you are4 ,in editing a book section you must be all things to all women4 ,the fellow with a page or two has quite other preoccupations4 ,where's a photo1 or a cartoon8 ,must have a headline to break the solidity of this close-packed column of print4 ,how about a funny column8 ,that gifted person1 ,heywood ,broun1 taking charge of the book pages of the ,new ,york ,tribune1 announces that he is in favor of anything that will make book reviewing exciting4 ,nothing can make book reviewing exciting except book reporting and the books themselves2 but if ,broun is looking for excitement he will find it while filling the rle of a literary editor4 ,before long he will learn that everybody in the world who is not the author of a book wants to review books--and some who are authors are willing to double in both parts4 ,also1 a considerable number of books are published annually in these still ,united ,states and a considerable percentage of those published find their way to the literary editor4 ,it is no joke to receive1 list with descriptions and sort out for assignment or non-assignment an average of #a1ejj volumes a year1 nor to assign to your book reporters1 with as much infallibility in choosing the reporter as possible1 perhaps half of the #a1ejj4 ,likewise there are assignments which several reporters want1 a single book bespoken by four persons1 maybe2 and there are book assignments that are received with horror or sometimes with unflinching bravery by the good soldier4 ,to hand a man1 for instance1 the extremely thick two-volume ,history of ,labour in the ,united ,states by ,professor ,commons and his associates is like pinning a decoration on him for limitless valor under fire--only the decoration bears a strong resemblance to the ,iron ,cross4 #c ,advertising8 ,newspapers depend upon advertising for their existence1 let alone their profits1 in most instances4 ,of course1 if there were no such things as advertisements we should still have newspapers4 ,the news must be had4 ,presumably people would simply pay more for it1 or pay as much in a more direct way4 ,what is true of newspapers is true of parts of newspapers4 ,the fact that a new book is news1 and1 as such1 a thing that must more or less widely but indispensably be reported1 is attested by the maintenance of book columns and pages in many newspapers where book advertising there is none4 ,the people who read the ,boston ,evening ,transcript1 for example1 would hardly endure the abolition of its book pages whether publishers used them to advertise in or not4 ,at the same time the publisher finds1 and can find1 no better medium than a good live book page or book section2 nor can he find any other medium1 nor can any other medium be created1 in which his advertising will reach his full audience4 8,the trade0 reads the excellent ,publishers' ,weekly1 librarians have the journal of the ,american ,library ,association1 readers have the newspapers and magazines of general circulation on which they rely for the news of new books4 ,but the good book page or book section reaches all these groups4 ,publishers1 authors1 booksellers1 librarians1 book buyers--all read it4 ,and if it is really good it spreads the book-reading habit4 ,even a bookshop seldom does that--we have one exception in mind1 pretty well known4 ,people do not1 ordinarily1 read in a bookshop4 ,of course a literary editor who has any regard for the vitality of his page or section is interested in book advertising4 ,there's something wrong with him if he isn't4 ,if he isn't he doesn't measure up to his job1 which is to get people to read books and find their way about among them4 ,a book page or a book section without advertising is no more satisfactory than a man or a woman without a sense of the value of money4 ,it looks lopsided and it is lopsided4 ,readers resent it1 and rightly4 ,it's a beautiful faade1 but the side view is disappointing4 ,the interest the literary editor takes in book advertising need no more be limited than the interest he takes in the growth or improvement of any other feature of his page or section4 ,it has and can have no relation to his editorial or news policy4 ,the moment such a thing is true his usefulness is ended4 ,an alliance between the pen and the pocketbook is known the moment it is made and is transparent the moment it takes effect in print4 ,a literary editor may resent1 and keenly1 as an editor1 the fact that ,bing1 ,bang ,company do not advertise their books in his domain4 ,he is quite right to feel strongly about it4 ,it has nothing to do with his handling of the ,bing ,bang books4 ,that is determined by their news value alone4 ,he may give the ,bing ,bang best seller a front page review and at the same time decline to meet ,mr4 ,bing or lunch with ,mr4 ,bang4 ,and he will be entirely honest and justified in his course1 both ways4 ,puff ,boom advertise like thunder4 ,the literary editor likes them both immensely1 or1 at least1 he appreciates their good judgment 7necessarily it seems good to him in his rle as editor of the pages they use74 ,but ,puff ,boom's books are one-stick stories4 ,well1 it's up to ,puff ,boom1 isn't it8 ,oh1 well1 first and last there's a lot to being a literary editor1 new style4 ,but first and last there's a lot to being a human4 ,any one who can be human successfully can do the far lesser thing much better than any literary editor has yet done it4 ,,what ,,every ,,publisher ,,knows ,,vi ,,what ,,every ,,publisher ,,knows ,a big subject8 ,not necessarily4 ,discussed by an authority8 ,no1 indeed4 ,on the contrary1 about to be written upon by an amateur recording impressions extending a little over a year but formed in several relationships--as a 8literary editor10 as an author and1 involuntarily1 as an author's agent--but all friendly4 ,also1 perhaps1 as a pretty regular reader of publishers' products4 ,what will first appear as vastness in the subject will shrink on a moment's examination4 ,for our title is concerned only with what every publisher knows4 ,a common piece of knowledge2 or if not1 after all1 very 8common10 at least commonly held--by book publishers4 ,to state the main conclusion first3 ,the one thing that every publisher knows1 so far as a humble experience can deduce1 is that what is called 8general0 publishing--meaning fiction and other books of general appeal--is a highly speculative enterprise and hardly a business at all4 ,the clearest analogy seems to be with the theatrical business4 ,producing books and producing plays is terrifyingly alike4 ,full of risks4 ,requiring1 unless genius is manifested1 considerable money capital4 ,likely to make1 and far more likely to lose1 small fortunes overnight4444 ,fatally fascinating4 ,more an art than an organization but usually requiring an organization for the exhibition of the most brilliant art--like opera4 ,a habit comparable with hasheesh4 ,heart-lifting--and headachy4 ',twas the night before publication and all through the house not a creature was stirring1 not even a stenographer4 ,the day dawned bright and clear and a re-order for fifty more copies came in the afternoon mail4444 ,absentmindedly1 the publisher-bridegroom pulled a contract instead of the wedding ring from his pocket4 8,with this royalty ,i thee wed10 he murmured4 ,and so she was published and they lived happily ever after until she left him because he did not clothe the children suitably1 using green cloth with purple stamping4 #b ,a fine old publishing house once went back over the record of about #a1bjj published books4 ,this was a rather conservative firm1 as little of a gambler as possible2 its books had placed it1 in every respect1 in the first rank of publishing houses4 ,of the #a1bjj books just one in ten had made any sizable amount of money4 ,the remaining #a1jhj had either lost money1 broken even1 or made sums smaller than the interest on the money tied up in them4 ,most of the #abj profitable books had been highly profitable2 it will not surprise you to learn this when you reflect that these lucrative books had each to foot the bill1 more or less1 for nine others4 ,so much for the analysis of figures4 ,but what lay behind the figures8 ,in some cases it was possible to tell why a particular book had sold4 ,more often it wasn't4444 ,is this a business8 #c ,thorwald ,alembert ,jenkinson has a book published4 ,it's not a bad book1 either2 very good novel1 as a matter of fact4 ,sales rather poor4 ,mr4 ,jenkinson's publisher takes his next book with a natural reluctance1 buoyed up by the certitude that this is a better story and has in it elements that promise popularity4 ,the publisher's salesman goes on the road4 ,in ,dodge ,city1 ,iowa1 let us say1 he enters a bookseller's and begins to talk the new ,jenkinson novel4 ,at the sound of his voice and the sight of the dummy the bookseller lifts repelling hands and backs away in horror4 8,stock that80 asks the bookseller rhetorically4 8,not on your life6 ,why10 with a gesture toward one shelf1 8there's his first book4 ,twenty copies and only two sold60 ,the new ,jenkinson novel has a wretched advance sale4 ,readers1 not seeing it in the bookshops1 may yet call for it when they read a review--not necessarily a favorable account--or when they see it advertised4 ,if ,mr4 ,jenkinson wrote histories or biographies the bookseller's wholly human attitude would not much matter4 ,but a novel is different4 ,the customer wanting ,jenkinson's ,history of ,france would order it or go elsewhere1 most likely4 ,the customer wanting ,jenkinson's new novel is quite often content with ,tarkington's instead4 ,when you go to the ticket agency to get seats at a ,broadway show and find they have none left for ,whoop ',er ,up you grumble1 and then buy seats at ,let's ,all ,go4 ,not that you really care4 ,not that any one really cares4 ,the man who produced ,whoop ',er ,up is also the producer of ,let's ,all ,go1 both theatres are owned by a single group1 the librettists are one and the same and the music of both is equally bad1 proceeding from an identical source4 ,even the stagehands work interchangeably on a strict union scale4 ,but ,mr4 ,jenkinson did not write ,tarkington's novel1 the two books are published by firms that have not a dollar in common1 and only the bookseller can preserve an evatanguayan indifference over your choice4 #d ,the publisher's salesman comes to the bookseller's lair equipped with dummies4 ,these show the book's exterior1 its size1 thickness1 paper1 binding and 7very important7 its jacket4 ,within the dummy are blank pages1 or perhaps the first twenty pages of the book printed over and over to give the volume requisite thickness4 ,the bookseller may read these twenty pages4 ,if the author has got plenty of action into them the bookseller is favorably impressed4 ,mainly he depends for his idea of the book upon what the salesman and the publisher's catalogue tells him4 ,he has to4 ,he can't read 'em all4 ,sometimes the salesman can illustrate his remarks4 ,henry ,leverage wrote an ingenious story called ,whispering ,wires in which the explanation of a mysterious murder depended upon the telephone1 converted by a too-gifted electrician into a single-shot pistol4 ,offering the story to the booksellers1 ,harry ,apeler carried parts of a telephone receiver about the country with him1 unscrewing and screwing on again the delicate disc that you put against your ear and showing how the deed was done4 #e ,the bookseller1 like every one else1 goes by experience4 ,it is1 or has been1 his experience that collections of short stories do not sell well4 ,and this is true despite ,o4 ,henry1 ,fannie ,hurst and ,edna ,ferber4 ,it is so true that publishers shy at short story volumes4 ,where there is a name that will command attention--,alice ,brown1 ,theodore ,dreiser--or where a special appeal is possible1 as in ,edward ,j4 ,o',brien's ,the ,best ,short ,stories of #aia-1 books made up of short tales may sell4 ,but there are depressing precedents4 ,in his interesting article on ,the ,publishing ,business1 appearing in #aiaf in the ,publishers' ,weekly and since reprinted as a booklet1 ,temple ,scott cites ,henri ,bergson's ,creative ,evolution as a modern instance of a special sort of book finding its own very special1 but surprisingly large1 public4 8,nine booksellers out of ten #8passed' it when the traveller brought it round10 observes ,mr4 ,scott4 8,fortunately1 for the publisher1 the press acted the part of the expert1 and public attention was secured40 ,was the bookseller to blame8 ,most decidedly not4 ,creative ,evolution is nothing to tie up your money in on a dim chance that somewhere an enthusiastic audience waits for the ,bergsonian gospel4 ,mr4 ,scott's article1 which is inconclusive1 in our opinion1 points out clearly that as no two books are like each other no two books are really the same article4 ,much fiction1 to be sure1 is of a single stamp2 many books1 and here we are by no means limited to fiction1 have whatever unity comes from the authorship of a single hand4 ,this unity may exist1 elusively1 as in the stories of ,joseph ,conrad1 or may be confined almost wholly to the presence of the same name on two titlepages1 as in the fact that ,the ,virginian and ,the ,pentecost of ,calamity are both the work of ,owen ,wister4 ,no6 ,two books are most often and emphatically not the same article4 ,mr4 ,scott is wholly right when he points out every book should have advertising1 or other attention1 peculiar to itself4 ,a method of reporting one book will not do for another1 any more than a publisher's circular describing one book will do to describe a second4 ,the art of reporting books or other news1 like the art of advertising books or other commodities1 is one of endless differentiation4 ,in the absence of real originality1 freshness and ideas1 both objects go unachieved or else are achieved by speciousness1 not to say guile4 ,you1 for example1 do not really believe that by reading ,hannibal ,halcombe's ,how to ,heap ,up ,happiness you will be able to acquire the equivalent of a college education in #eb weeks4 ,but somewhere in ,how to ,heap ,up ,happiness ,mr4 ,halcombe tells how he made money or how he learned to enjoy pictures on magazine covers or a happy solution of his unoriginal domestic troubles--any one of which you may crave to know and honest information of which will probably send you after the book4 #f ,at this point in the discussion of our subject we have had the incredible folly to look back at our outline4 ,yes1 there is an outline--or a thing of shreds and patches which once went by that description4 ,what1 you will say1 wrecked so soon1 after a mere introduction of #a1ejj words or so8 ,certainly4 ,outlines are to writers what architects' plans are to builders1 or what red rags are supposed to be to bulls4 ,or1 as the proverbial 7our favorite adjective7 chaff before the wind4 ,our outline says that the subject of selling books should be subdivision 7c7 under division #a of the three partitions of our subject4 ,all ,gaul and ,poland are not the only objects divided in three parts4 ,every serious subject is1 likewise4 ,never mind4 ,we shall have to struggle along as best we can4 ,we have been talking about selling books1 or what every publisher knows in regard to it4 ,well1 then1 every publisher knows that selling books as it has mainly to be conducted under present conditions1 is just as much a matter of merchandising as selling bonnets1 bathrobes and birdseed4 ,but this is one of the things that people outside the publishing and bookselling businesses seldom grasp4 ,a cultural air1 for them1 invests the book business4 ,the curse of the genteel hangs about it4 ,it is almost professional1 like medicine and baseball4 ,it has an odor1 like sanctity4444 ,all wrong4 ,bonnets1 bathrobes1 birdseed1 books4 ,all are saleable if you go about it right4 ,and how is that8 you ask4 ,the best way to sell bonnets is to lay a great foundational demand for headgear4 ,the best way to sell bathrobes is to encourage bathing4 ,the best way to sell birdseed is to put a canary in every home4 ,it might be supposed that the best way to sell books would be to get people to read4 ,yes1 it might be far more valuable in the end to stimulate and spread the reading habit than to try to sell #ajj1jjj copies of any particular book4 ,of course every publisher knows this and of course all the publishers1 associating themselves for the promotion of a common cause not inconceivably allied to the general welfare1 spend time and money in the effort to make readers--not of ,mrs4 ,halcyon ,hunter's ,love ,has ,wings or ,mr4 ,caspar ,cartouche's ,martin the ,magnificent1 but of books1 just good books of any sort soever4 ,yes1 of course4444 ,this would be--beg pardon1 is--the thing that actually and immediately as well as ultimately counts3 ,let us get people to read1 to like to read1 to enjoy reading1 and they will1 sooner or later1 read books4 ,sooner or later they'll become book readers and book buyers4 ,sooner or later books will sell as well as automobiles4444 ,on the merely technical side of bookselling1 on the immediate problem of selling particular new novels1 collections of short stories1 histories1 books of verse1 and all the rest1 the publishers have1 collectively at least1 not much to learn from their fellow merchants with the bonnets1 bathrobes and birdseed4 ,the mechanism of merchandising is so highly developed in ,america that many of the methods resemble the interchangeable parts of standardized manufactures everywhere4 ,suppose we have a look at these methods4 #g ,the lesson of flexibility has been fully mastered by at least two ,american publishing houses4 ,with their very large lists of new books they contrive to avoid1 as much as possible1 fixed publication dates4 ,while their rivals are pinning themselves fast six months ahead1 these publishers are moving largely but conditionally six and nine months ahead1 and less largely but with swift certainty three months1 two months1 even one month from the passing moment4 ,and they are absolutely right and profit by their rightness4 ,for this reason3 ,everything that is printed has in it an element of that timeliness1 that ephemerality if you like but also that widening ripple of human interest which is the unique essence of what we call 8news40 ,this quality is present1 in a perceptible amount1 even in the most serious sort of printed matter4 ,let us take1 as an example1 ,darwin's ,origin of ,species4 ,oh6 exclaims the reader1 there surely is a book with no ephemerality about it6 ,no8 ,but there was an immense quantity of just that in its publication4 ,it came at the right hour4 ,fifty years earlier it would have gone unnoticed4 ,to-day it is transcended by a body of biological knowledge that ,darwin knew not4 ,fifty years1 one way or the other1 would have made a vast difference in the reception1 the import1 the influence of even so epochal a book as ,the ,origin of ,species4 ,now a little reflection will show that1 in the case of lesser books1 the matter of time is far more sharply important4 ,darwin's book was so massive that ten or twenty years either way might not have mattered4 ,but in such a case as ,john ,spargo's ,bolshevism a few months may matter4 ,in the case of ,mr4 ,britling the month as well as the year mattered vitally4 ,time is everything1 in the fate of many a book1 even as in the fate of a magazine article1 a poem1 an essay1 a short story4 ,arthur ,guy ,empey was on the very hour with ,over the ,top2 but the appearance of his ,tales from a ,dugout a few days after the signing of the armistice on ,november #aa1 #aiah1 was one of the minor tragedies of the war4 ,therefore the publisher who can1 as nearly as human and mechanical conditions permit1 preserve flexibility in his publishing plans1 has a very great advantage over inelastic competitors4 ,that iron-clad arrangements at half year ahead can be avoided the methods of two of the most important ,american houses demonstrate4 ,either can get out a book on a month's notice4 ,more than once in a season this spells the difference between a sale of #e1jjj and one of #ae1jjj copies--that is1 between not much more than 8breaking even0 and making a handsome profit4 #h ,every book that is published requires advertising though perhaps no two books call for advertising in just the same way4 ,one of the best ,american publishing houses figures certain sums for advertising--whatever form it may take--in its costs of manufacture and then the individual volumes have to take each their chances of getting1 each1 its proper share of the money4 ,other houses have similar unsatisfactory devices for providing an advertising fund4 ,the result is too often not unlike the revolving fund with which ,american railways were furnished by ,congress--it revolved so fast that there wasn't enough to go round long4 ,a very big publishing house does differently4 ,to the cost of manufacture of each book is added a specific1 flat and appropriate sum of money to advertise that particular book4 ,the price of the book is fixed accordingly4 ,when the book is published there is a definite sum ready to advertise it4 ,no book goes unadvertised4 ,if the book 8catches on0 there is no trouble1 naturally1 about more advertising money2 if it does not sell the advertising of it stops when the money set aside has been exhausted and the publishers take their loss with a clear conscience2 they have done their duty by the book4 ,it may be added that this policy has always paid4 ,combined with other distinctive methods it has put the house which adopted it in the front rank4 #i ,whether to publish a small1 carefully selected list of books in a season or a large and comprehensive list is not wholly decided by the capital at the publisher's command4 ,despite the doubling of all costs of book manufacture1 publishing is not yet an enterprise which requires a great amount of capital1 as compared with other industries of corresponding volume4 ,the older a publishing house the more likely it is to restrict its list of new books4 ,it has more to lose and less to gain by taking a great number of risks in new publications4 ,at the same time it is subjected to severe competition because the capital required to become a book publisher is not large4 ,hence much caution1 too much1 no doubt1 in many cases and every season4 ,still1 promising manuscripts are lamentably few4 8,look at the stuff that gets published10 is the classic demonstration of the case4 ,the older the house1 the stronger its already accumulated list1 the more conservative1 naturally1 it becomes1 the less inclined to play with loaded dice in the shape of manuscripts4 ,yet a policy of extreme caution and conservatism is more dangerous and deadly than a dash of the gambler's makeup4 ,two poor seasons together are noticed by the trade2 four poor seasons together may put a house badly behind4 ,a season with ten books only1 all good1 all selling moderately well1 is perhaps more meritorious and more valuable in the long run than a season with thirty books1 nearly all poor except for one or two sensational successes4 ,but the fellow who brings out the thirty books and has one or two decided best sellers is the fellow who will make large profits1 attract attention and acquire prestige4 ,it is far better to try everything you can that seems to have 8a chance0 than to miss something awfully good4 ,and1 provided you drop the bad potatoes quickly1 it will pay you better in the end4 ,there must be a big success somewhere on your list4 ,a row of respectable and undistinguished books is the most serious of defeats4 #aj ,suppose you were a book publisher and had put out a novel or two by ,author ,a4 with excellent results on the profit side of the ledger4 ,author ,a4 is plainly a valuable property1 like a copper mine in war time4 ,a4's third manuscript comes along in due time4 ,it is entirely different from the first two so-successful novels2 it is pretty certain to disappoint ,a4's 8audience40 ,you canvass the subject with ,a41 who can't 8see0 your arguments and suggestions4 ,it comes to this3 ,either you publish the third novel or you lose ,a4 ,which1 darling reader1 would you1 if you were the publisher1 do8 ,would you choose the lady and ,the ,tiger8 ,you are neatly started as a book publisher4 ,you can't get advance sales for your productions 7to borrow a term from the theatre74 ,you go to ,memphis and ,syracuse and interview booksellers4 ,they say to you3 8,for heaven's sake1 get authors whose names mean something6 ,why should we stock fiction by ,horatius ,hotaling when we can dispose of #abe copies of ,e4 ,phillips ,oppenheim's latest in ten days from publication80 ,returning thoughtfully to ,new ,york1 you happen to meet a ,celebrated ,author4 ,toward the close of luncheon at the ,brevoort he offers to let you have a book of short stories4 ,one of them 7it will be the title-story1 of course7 was published in the ,saturday ,evening ,post1 bringing to ,mr4 ,lorimer1 the editor1 #b1ejj letters and #aag telegrams of evenly divided praise and condemnation4 ,short stories are a stiff proposition2 but the ,celebrated ,author has a name that will insure a certain advance sale and a fame that will insure reviewers' attention4 ,for you to become his publisher will be as prestigious as it is adventitious4 ,from ethical and other motives1 you seek out the ,c4 ,a4's present publisher--old1 well-established house--and inquire if ,octavo ,duodecimo will have any objection to your publishing the ,c4 ,a4's book of tales4 ,mr4 ,octavo replies in friendly accents3 8,not a bit6 ,not a bit6 ,go to it6 ,however1 we've lent 444 7the ,c4 ,a47 #b1ejj at one time or another in advance moneys on a projected novel4 ,travel as far as you like with him1 but remember that he can't give you a novel until he has given us one or has repaid that #b1ejj40 ,what to do8 ',tis indeed a pretty problem4 ,if you pay ,octavo ,duodecimo #b1ejj you can have the ,c4 ,a4's next novel--worth several times as much as any book of tales1 at the least4 ,on the other hand1 there is no certainty that the ,c4 ,a4 will deliver you the manuscript of a novel4 ,he has been going to deliver it to ,octavo ,duodecimo for three years4 ,and you can't afford to tie up #b1ejj on the chance that he'll do for you what he hasn't done for them4 ,because #b1ejj is1 to you1 a lot of money4 ,in the particular instance where this happened 7except for details1 we narrate an actual occurrence7 the beginning publisher went ahead and published the book of tales1 and afterward another book of tales1 and let ,octavo ,duodecimo keep their option on the ,c4 ,a4's next novel1 if he ever writes any4 ,the probabilities are that the ,c4 ,a4 will write short stories for the rest of his life rather than deliver a novel from which he will receive not one cent until #b1ejj has been deducted from the royalties4 #aa ,english authors are keenest on advance money4 ,the ,english writer who will undertake to do a book without some cash in hand before putting pen to paper is a great rarity4 ,an ,american publisher who wants ,english manuscripts and goes to ,london without his checkbook won't get anywhere4 ,a little real money will go far4 ,it will be almost unnecessary for the publisher who has it to entrain for those country houses where ,english novelists drink tea and train roses4 ,kent1 ,sussex1 ,norfolk1 ,yorkshire1 ,wessex1 c41 will go down to ,london4 ,mr4 ,britling will motor into town to talk about a contract4 ,all the ,london clubs will be named as rendezvous4 ,visiting cards will reach the publisher's hotel1 signifying the advent of ,mr4 ,percival ,fotheringay of ,houndsditch1 ,bayswater1 ,wapping ,old ,stairs1 ,london1 ,b4 ,c4 ,ah1 yes1 ,fotheringay2 wonderful stories of ,whitechapel and the ,east ,end1 really6 ,knows the people--what8 ,it has to be said that advances on books seem to retard their delivery4 ,we have in mind a famous ,english author 7though he might as well be ,american1 so far as this particular point is concerned7 who got an advance of #ejj 7wasn't it87 some years ago from ,quarto ,folio--on a book of essays4 ,quarto ,folio have carried that title in their spring and fall catalogues of forthcoming books ever since4 ,spring and fall they despair afresh4 ,daylight saving did nothing to help them--an hour gained was a mere bagatelle in the cycles of time through which ,fads and ,fatalities keeps moving in a regular and always equidistant orbit4 ,if some day the ,league of ,nations shall ordain that the calendar be set ahead six months ,quarto ,folio may get the completed manuscript of ,fads and ,fatalities4 ,american authors are much less insistent on advance payments than their cousins #c1jjj miles removed4 ,a foremost ,american publishing house has two inflexible rules3 ,no advance payments and no verdict on uncompleted manuscripts4 ,inflexible--but it is to be suspected that though this house never bends the rule there are times when it has to break it4 ,what won't bend must break4 ,there are a few authors for whom any publisher will do anything except go to jail4 ,probably you would make the same extensive efforts to retain your exclusive rights in a ,south ,african diamond digging which had already produced a bunch of ,kohinoors4 #ab ,there is a gentleman's agreement among publishers1 arrived at some years back1 not to indulge in cutthroat competition for each other's authors4 ,this ethical principle1 like most ethical principles now existing1 is dictated quite as much by considerations of keeping a whole skin as by a sense of professional honor4 ,there are some men in the book publishing business whose honorable standards have a respect for the other fellow's property first among their ,fourteen ,points4 ,there are others who are best controlled by a knowledge that to do so-and-so would be very unhealthy for themselves4 ,the agreement1 like most unwritten laws1 is interpreted with various shadings4 ,some of these are subtle and some of them are not4 ,it is variously applied by different men in different cases1 sometimes unquestionably and sometimes doubtfully4 ,but in the main it is pretty extensively and strictly upheld1 in spirit as in letter4 ,how far it transgresses authors' privileges or limits authors' opportunities would be difficult to say4 ,in the nature of the case1 any such understanding must operate to some extent to lessen the chances of an author receiving the highest possible compensation for his work4 ,whether this is offset by the favors and concessions1 pecuniary and otherwise1 made to an author by a publisher to whom he adheres1 can't be settled4 ,the relation of author and publisher1 at best1 calls for1 and generally elicits1 striking displays of loyalty on both sides4 ,particularly among ,americans1 the most idealistic people on earth4 ,in its practical working this publishers' understanding operates to prevent any publisher 8approaching0 an author who has an accepted publisher of his books4 ,unless you1 as a publisher1 are yourself approached by ,author ,b41 whose several books have been brought out by ,publisher ,c41 you are theoretically bound hand and foot4 ,and even if ,author ,b4 comes to you there are circumstances under which you may well find it desirable to talk ,b4's proposal over with ,c41 hitherto his publisher4 ,after that talk you may wish ,b4 were in ,halifax4 ,if everybody told the truth matters would be greatly simplified4 ,or would they8 ,if you hear that ,author ,d41 who writes very good sellers1 is dissatisfied with ,publisher ,f41 what is your duty in the circumstances8 ,author ,d4 may not come to you1 for there are many publishers for such as he to choose from4 ,shall we say it is your duty to acquaint ,d41 indirectly perhaps1 with the manifest advantages of bringing you his next novel8 ,we'll say so4 ,whatever publishers agree to1 authors are free4 ,and every publisher knows how easy it is to lose an author4 ,why1 they leave you like that6 7,business of snapping fingers47 ,and for the lightest reasons6 7,register pain or maybe mournfulness47 ,if ,d4 ,w4 ,griffith wanted to make a ,movie of a ,publisher ,losing an ,author he would find the action too swift for the camera to record4 ,might as well try to film ,the ,birth of a ,notion4 #ac ,one of the most fascinating mysteries about publishers1 at least to authors1 is the method or methods by which they determine the availability of manuscripts4 ,fine word1 availability4 ,noncommittal and all that4 ,it has no taint of infallibility--which is the last attribute a publisher makes pretensions to4 ,there are places where one man decides whether a manuscript will do and there are places where it takes practically the whole clerical force and several plebiscites to accept or reject the author's offering4 ,one house which stands in the front rank in this country accepts and rejects mainly on the verdicts of outsiders--specialists1 however1 in various fields4 ,another foremost publishing house has a special test for 8popular0 novels in manuscript4 ,an extra ration of chewing gum is served out to all the stenographers and they are turned loose on the type-written pages4 ,if they react well the firm signs a contract and prints a first edition of from #e1jjj to #be1jjj copies1 depending on whether it is a first novel or not and the precise comments of the girls at page #cgh4 ,always the sales manager reads the manuscript1 if it is at all seriously considered4 ,what he says has much weight4 ,he's the boy who will have to sell the book to the trade and unless he can see things in it1 or can be got to1 there is practically no hope despite ,dr4 ,munyon's index finger4 ,recently a publishing house of national reputation has done a useful thing--we are not prepared to say it is wholly new--by establishing a liaison officer4 ,this person does not pass on manuscripts1 unless incidentally by way of offering his verdict to be considered with the verdicts of other department heads4 ,but once a manuscript has been accepted by the house it goes straight to this man who reads it intensively and sets down1 on separate sheets1 everything about it that might be useful to 7a7 the advertising manager1 7b7 the sales manager and his force1 and 7c7 the editorial people handling the firm's book publicity effort4 #ad ,a little knowledge of book publishing teaches immense humility4 ,the number of known instances in which experienced publishers have erred in judgment is large4 ,authors always like to hear of these4 ,but too much must not be deduced from them4 ,every one has heard of the rejection of ,henry ,sydnor ,harrison's novel ,queed4 ,many have heard of the publisher who decided not to 8do0 ,vicente ,blasco ,ibaez's ,the ,four ,horsemen of the ,apocalypse4 ,there was more than one of him1 by the way1 and in each case he had an exceedingly bad translation to take or reject 7we are told71 the only worthy translation1 apparently1 being that which was brought out with such sensational success in the early fall of #aiah4 ,a publisher lost ,spoon ,river ,anthology because of a delay in acceptance--he wanted the opinion of a confrere not easily reached4 ,for every publisher's mistake of this sort there could probably be cited an instance of perspicacity much more striking4 ,such was the acceptance of ,edward ,lucas ,white's ,el ,supremo after many rejections4 ,and how about the publisher who accepted ,queed8 #ae ,let us conclude these haphazard and very likely unhelpful musings on an endless subject by telling a true story4 ,in the spring of #aiai one of the principal publishing houses in ,america and ,england undertook the publication of a very unusual sort of a novel1 semi-autobiographical1 a work of love and leisure by a man who had gained distinction as an executive4 ,it was a fine piece of work1 though strange2 had a delightful reminiscential quality4 ,the book was made up1 a first edition of moderate size printed and bound4 ,it was not till this had been done and the book was ready to place on sale that the head of this publishing house had an opportunity to read it4 ,the ,head is a veteran publisher famous for his prescience in the matter of manuscripts and for honorable dealings4 ,he read the book through and was charmed by it2 he looked at the book and was unhappy4 ,he sent for everybody who had had to do with the making of this book4 ,he held up his copy and fluttered pages and said1 in effect3 8,this has been done all wrong4 ,here is a book of quite exceptional quality4 ,i don't think it will sell4 ,only moderately1 though perhaps rather steadily for some years to come4 ,it won't make us money4 ,to speak of4 ,but it deserves1 intrinsically1 better treatment4 ,better binding4 ,this is only ordinary six-months'-selling novel binding4 ,it deserves larger type4 ,type with a more beautiful face4 ,fewer lines to the page4 ,lovelier dress from cover to cover4 8,throw away the edition that has been printed4 ,destroy it or something4 ,at least1 hide it4 ,don't let any of it get out4 ,for this has been done wrong1 all wrong4 ,do it over40 ,so they went away from his presence and did it right4 ,it meant throwing away about #b1jjj4 ,or was it a #b1jjj investment in the good opinion of people who buy1 read and love books8 ,,the ,,secret ,,of ,,the ,,best ,,seller ,,vii ,,the ,,secret ,,of ,,the ,,best ,,seller ,by 8best seller0 we may mean one of several things4 ,dr4 ,emmett ,holt's ,care and ,feeding of ,children1 of which the fifty-eighth edition was printed in the spring of #aiai1 is one kind of best seller2 ,owen ,wister's ,the ,virginian is quite another4 ,the number of editions of a book is a very uncertain indication of sales to a person not familiar with book publishing4 ,editions may consist of as few as #ejj copies or as many as #be1jjj or even #ej1jjj4 ,the advance sale of ,gene ,stratton-,porter's ,a ,daughter of the ,land was1 if we recall the figure exactly1 #aej1jjj copies4 ,these1 therefore1 were printed and distributed by the day when the book was placed on sale1 or shortly thereafter4 ,to call this the 8first edition0 would be rather meaningless4 ,one thousand copies of a book of poems--unless it be an anthology--is a large edition indeed4 ,but not for ,edgar ,guest1 whose books sell in the tens of thousands4 ,the sale1 within a couple of years1 of #ca1jjj copies of the poems of ,alan ,seeger was phenomenal4 ,the first book of essays of an ,american writer sold #f1jjj copies within six months of its publication4 ,this upset most precedents of the bookselling trade4 ,the author's royalties may have been #a1abe4 ,a few hundred dollars should be added to represent money received for the casual publication of the essays in magazines before their appearance in the book4 ,of course the volume did not stop selling at the end of six months4 ,compare these figures1 however1 with the income of one of the most popular ,american novelists4 ,a single check for #ge1jjj4 ,total payments1 over a period of fifteen years1 of #gej1jjj to #a1jjj1jjj4 ,yet it is doubtful if the books of this novelist reached more than #fe per cent4 of their possible audience4 ,it is a moderate estimate1 in our opinion1 that most books intended for the 8general reader10 whether fiction or not1 do not reach more than one-quarter of the whole body of readers each might attain4 ,with the proper machinery of publicity and merchandising book sales in the ,united ,states could be quadrupled4 ,we share this opinion with ,harry ,blackman ,sell of the ,chicago ,daily ,news and were interested to find it independently confirmed by ,james ,h4 ,collins who1 writing in the ,saturday ,evening ,post of ,may #c1 #aiai1 under the heading ,when ,merchandise ,sells ,itself1 said3 8,book publishing is one industry that suffers for lack of retail outlets4 ,even the popular novel sells in numbers far below the real buying power of this nation of readers1 because perhaps #be per cent4 of the public can examine it and buy it at the city bookstores1 while it is never seen by the rest of the public4 8,for lack of quantity production based on wide retail distribution the novel sells for a dollar and a half4 8,but for a dollar you can buy a satisfactory watch4 8,that is made possible by quantity production4 ,quantity production of dollar watches is based on their sale in #ej1jjj miscellaneous shops1 through the standard stock and the teaching of modern mercantile methods4 ,book publishers have made experiments with the dollar novel1 but it sold just about the same number of copies as the #a4ej novel1 because only about so many fiction buyers were reached through the bookstores4 ,now the standard-stock idea is being applied to books1 with assortments of #ej or #ajj proved titles carried by the druggist and stationer40 #b ,speaking rather offhandedly1 we are of opinion that not more than two living ,american writers of fiction have achieved anything like a #ajj per cent4 sale of their books4 ,these are ,harold ,bell ,wright and ,gene ,stratton-,porter4 ,i am indebted to ,mr4 ,frank ,k4 ,reilly1 president of the ,reilly ,lee ,company1 ,chicago1 selling agents for the original editions of all ,mr4 ,wright's books1 for the following figures3 8,we began10 wrote ,mr4 ,reilly1 8with ,that ,printer of ,udell's--selling1 as ,i remember the figures1 about #bj1jjj4 ,then ,the ,shepherd of the ,hills--about #ajj1jjj1 ,i think4 ,then the others in fast growing quantities4 ,for ,the ,winning of ,barbara ,worth we took four orders in advance which totalled nearly #bjj1jjj copies4 ,on ,when a ,man's a ,man we took the biggest single order ever placed for a novel at full price--that is1 a cloth-bound1 #8regular' #a4ce book--#bej1jjj copies from the ,western ,news ,company4 ,the advance sale of this #aiaf book was over #dfe1jjj40 ,mr4 ,reilly wrote at the beginning of ,march1 #aiai1 from ,french ,lick1 ,indiana4 ,at that time ,mr4 ,wright's publishers had in hand a novel1 ,the ,re-,creation of ,brian ,kent1 published ,august #ba1 #aiai4 ,they had arranged for a first printing of #gej1jjj copies and were as certain of selling #ejj1jjj copies before ,august #a as you are of going to sleep some time in the next twenty-four hours4 ,it was necessary to make preparations for the sale of #a1jjj1jjj copies of the new novel before ,august #ba1 #aibj4 ,the sale of #a1jjj1jjj copies of ,the ,re-,creation of ,brian ,kent within a year of publication may be said to achieve a #ajj per cent4 circulation so far as existing book merchandising facilities allow4 ,the sale1 within ten years1 of #fgj1gcc copies of ,gene ,stratton-,porter's story1 ,freckles1 approaches a #ajj per cent4 sale but with far too much retardation4 #c ,how has the #ajj per cent4 sale for the ,harold ,bell ,wright books been brought within hailing distance8 ,before us lies a circular which must have been mailed to most booksellers in the ,united ,states early in the spring of #aiai4 ,it is headed3 8,first ,publicity ,advertisement of ,our #ajj1jjj ,campaign40 ,below this legend is an advertisement of ,the ,re-,creation of ,brian ,kent4 ,below that is a statement that the advertisement will appear1 simultaneously with the book's publication1 in 8magazines and national and religious weeklies having millions upon millions of circulation4 ,in addition to this our newspaper advertising will cover all of the larger cities of the ,united ,states40 ,then follows a list of 8magazines1 national and religious weeklies covered by our signed advertising contracts40 ,there are #acb of them4 ,the range is from the ,atlantic ,monthly and the ,new ,republic to ,vanity ,fair and ,town ,topics in one slant2 from ,system and ,physical ,culture to ,zion's ,herald and the ,catholic ,news2 from ,life to ,needlecraft2 from the ,photoplay ,world to the ,girl's ,companion2 from the ,outlook to the ,lookout--and to and fro and back and forth in a web covering all ,america between the two ,portlands4 ,there are about #adj1jjj1jjj persons in the ,united ,states and ,great ,britain together4 ,over #ajj1jjj1jjj of them1 we are told1 have read a ,harold ,bell ,wright book or seen a ,harold ,bell ,wright movie4 ,the secret of the sale of ,mr4 ,wright's books1 so far as the external factor is concerned1 resides in the fact that his stories have been brought to the attention of thousands upon thousands who1 from one year's end to the other1 never have a new book of fiction thrust upon their attention by advertising or by sight of the book itself4 #d ,we speak of the 8external factor40 ,there is an external factor quite as much as an internal factor in the success of every best seller of whatever sort4 ,the tendency of everybody who gives any attention to the subject1 but particularly the book publisher1 is to study the internal factor almost to the exclusion of the other4 ,what1 you naturally ask yourself1 are the qualities in this book that have made it sell so remarkably8 ,the internal factor is important4 ,its importance1 doubtless1 cannot be overrated4 ,but it is not the whole affair4 ,before we go further let us lay down some general principles that are not often formulated clearly enough even in the minds of those to whom they import most4 #a4 ,the internal factor--certain qualities of the book itself--predetermines its possible audience4 #b4 ,the external factor--the extent to which it is brought to public attention1 the manner in which it is presented to the public1 the ubiquity of copies for sale--determines its actual audience4 #c4 ,the internal factor can make a best seller of a book with almost no help from the external factor1 but cannot give it a #ajj per cent4 sale4 #d4 ,the external factor cannot make a big seller where the internal factor is not of the right sort2 but it can always give a #ajj per cent4 sale4 #e4 ,the internal factor is only partly in the publisher's control2 the external factor is entirely controllable by the publisher4 ,there are two secrets of the best seller4 ,one resides in the book itself1 the other rests in the manner of its exploitation4 ,one is inherent1 the other is circumstantial4 ,one is partly controllable by the publisher1 the other is wholly so4 ,since a book possessing certain qualities in a sufficient degree will sell heavily anyway1 it is human nature to hunt ceaselessly for this thing which will triumph over every sort of handicap and obstacle4 ,but it is a lazy way to do4 ,it is not good business4 ,it cannot1 ultimately1 pay4 ,the successful book publisher of the future is going to be the publisher who works for a #ajj per cent4 sale on all his books4 ,when he gets a book with an internal factor which would make it a best seller anyway1 it will simply mean that he will have to exert himself markedly less to get a #ajj per cent4 result4 ,he will have such best sellers and will make large sums of money with them1 but they will be incidents and not epochal events2 for practically all his books will be good sellers4 #e ,before we go on to a discussion of the internal factor of the best seller we want to stress once more1 and constructively and suggestively1 the postnatal attention it should receive4 ,the first year and the second summer are fatal to far too many books as well as humans4 ,and this is true despite the differences between the two4 ,if #ajj1jjj copies represent the #ajj per cent4 sale of a given volume you may declare that it makes no difference whether that sale is attained in six months or six years4 ,from the business standpoint of a quick turnover six months is a dozen times better1 you may argue2 and if interest on invested money be thought of as compounding1 the apparent difference in favor of the six-months' sale is still more striking4 ,this would perhaps be true if the author's next book could invariably be ready at the end of the six-months' period4 ,other ifs will occur to those with some knowledge of the publishing business and a moderate capacity for reflection4 ,most books are wrongly advertised and inadequately advertised1 and rather frequently advertised in the wrong places4 ,of the current methods of advertising new fiction only one is unexceptionably good4 ,this is the advertising which arrests the reader's attention and baits his interest by a few vivid sentences outlining the crisis of the story1 the dilemma that confronts the hero or heroine1 the problem of whether the hero or heroine acted rightly2 or paints in a few swift strokes some exciting episode of the action--ending with a question that will stick in the reader's mind4 ,such an advertisement should always have a drawing or other illustration if possible4 ,it should be displayed in a generous space and should be placed broadcast but with much discrimination as to where it is to appear4 ,a kind of advertisement somewhat allied to this1 but not in use at all despite its assured selling power would consist of the simple reproduction of a photographed page of the book4 ,the ,detroit ,news has used such reproduced pages so effectively as illustrations that it seems strange no publisher 7so far as we know7 has followed suit4 ,striking pages1 and pages containing not merely objective thrill but the flavor which makes the fascination of a particular book1 can be found in most novels4 ,the ,detroit ,news selected a page of the highest effectiveness from so subtle a romance as ,joseph ,conrad's ,the ,arrow of ,gold4 ,this manner of advertising1 telling from its complete restraint1 is applicable to non-fiction4 ,a page of a book of essays by ,samuel ,crothers would have to be poorly taken not to disclose1 in its several hundred words1 the charm and fun of his observations4 ,publishers of encyclopdias have long employed this 8page-from-the-book0 method of advertisement with the best results4 ,the ordinary advertisement of a book1 making a few flat assertions of the book's extraordinary merit1 has become pretty hopelessly conventionalized4 ,the punch is gone from it1 we rather fear forever4 ,in all conscience1 it is psychologically defective in that it tries to coerce attention and credence instead of trying to attract1 fascinate or arouse the beholder4 ,the advertiser is not different1 essentially1 from the public speaker4 ,the public speaker who aims to compel attention by mere thundering or by extraordinary assertions has no chance against the speaker who amuses1 interests1 or agreeably piques his audience1 who stirs his auditors' curiosity or kindles their collective imagination4 ,there is too little personality in the advertising of books1 and when we say personality we mean1 in most cases1 the author's personality4 ,the bald and unconvincing recital of the opinion of the ,westminster ,gazette1 that this is a book every ,anglo-,american should read1 is as nothing compared with a few dozen words that could have been written of1 or by1 no man on earth except ,h4 ,g4 ,wells4 ,the internal factor of ,h4 ,g4 ,wells's novel ,the ,undying ,fire is so big that it constitutes a sort of a least common multiple of the hopes1 doubts and fears of hundreds of thousands of humans4 ,a #ajj per cent4 sale of the book1 under existing merchandising conditions1 would be #djj1jjj copies1 at the very least4 ,it ought to be advertised in every national and religious weekly of #aj1jjj circulation or over in the ,united ,states1 and in every periodical of that circulation reaching a rural audience4 ,and it ought to be advertised1 essentially1 in this manner3 ,,shall ,,man ,,curse ,,god ,,and ,,die8 ,no6 ,job ,answered ,,no6 ,h4 ,g4 ,,wells ,,tells ,,stricken ,,europe ,read ,his ,new ,short ,novel1 8,the ,undying ,fire10 in ,which ,he ,holds ,out the ,hope that ,men ,may ,yet ,unite to ,organize the ,world and ,save ,mankind from ,extinction ,such an appeal to the hope1 the aspiration1 the unconquerable idealism of men everywhere1 to the social instinct which has its roots in thousands of years of human history1 cannot fail4 #f ,books are wrongly advertised1 as we have said1 and they are inadequately advertised1 by which we mean in too few places2 and perhaps 8insufficiently advertised0 had been a more accurate phrase4 ,it is correct and essential to advertise books in periodicals appealing wholly or partly to book readers4 ,it is just as essential to recruit readers4 ,book readers can be recruited just as magazine readers are recruited4 ,the most important way of getting magazine readers is still the subscription agent4 ,every community of any size in these ,united ,states should have in it a man or woman of at least high school education and alert enthusiasm selling books of all the publishers4 ,where there is a good bookstore such an agent is unnecessary or may be found in the owner of the store or an employee thereof4 ,most communities cannot support a store given over entirely to bookselling4 ,in them let there be agents giving their whole time or their spare time and operating with practically no overhead expense4 ,where the agents receive salaries these must be paid jointly by all the publishers whose books they handle4 ,this should naturally be done through a central bureau or selling agency4 ,efficient agencies already exist4 ,the 8book agent0 is a classical joke4 ,he is a classical joke because he peddled one book1 and the wrong sort of a book1 from door to door4 ,you must equip him with fifty books1 new and alluring1 of all publishers2 and arm him with sheets and circulars describing enticingly a hundred others4 ,he must know individuals and their tastes and must have one or more of the best book reviewing periodicals in the country4 ,he must have catalogues and news notes and special offers to put over4 ,if he gives you all his time he must have assurance of a living1 especially until he has a good start or exhibits his incapacity for pioneering4 ,he must have an incentive above and beyond any salary that may be paid him4 ,but the consideration of details in this place is impossible4 ,the structural outline and much adaptable detail is already in highly successful use by periodicals of many sorts4 ,in fundamentals it requires no profounder skill than that of the clever copyist4 #g ,we charged in the third count of our indictment that books are rather frequently advertised in the wrong places4 ,we had in mind the principle that for every book considerable enough to get itself published by a publisher of standing there is1 somewhere1 a particular audience2 just as there is a certain body of readers for every news item of enough moment to get printed in a daily newspaper4 ,a juster way of expressing the trouble would be this3 ,books are rather frequently not advertised in the right places4 ,the clues to the right places must be sought in the book itself and its authorship1 always2 and they are innumerable4 ,as no two books are alike the best thing to do will be to take a specific example4 ,harry ,lauder's ,a ,minstrel in ,france will serve4 ,the first and most obvious thing to do is to advertise it in every vaudeville theatre in ,america4 ,wherever the programme includes motion pictures flash the advertisement on the screen with a fifteen second movie of ,lauder himself4 ,posters and circulars in the lobby must serve if there are no screen pictures4 ,the next and almost equally obvious thing is to have ,lauder make a phonograph record of some particularly effective passage in the book1 marketing the record in the usual way1 at a popular price4 ,newspaper and magazine advertising must be used heavily and must be distributed on the basis of circulation almost entirely4 #h ,the external factor in the success of the best seller is so undeveloped and so rich in possibilities that one takes leave of it with regret2 but we must go on to some consideration of the internal factor that makes for big sales--the quality or qualities in the book itself4 ,without going into a long and elaborate investigation of best-seller books1 sifting and reasoning until we reach rock bottom1 we had better put down a few dogmas4 ,these1 then1 are the essentials of best-selling fiction so far as our observation and intellect has carried us3 #a4 ,a good story2 which means1 as a rule1 plenty of surface action but always means a crisis in the affairs of one or two most-likable characters1 a crisis that is satisfactorily solved4 ,mark the italicized word4 ,not a 8happy ending0 in the twisted sense in which that phrase is used4 ,always a happy ending in the sense in which we say1 8,that was a happy word0--meaning a fit word1 the 8mot juste0 of the ,french4 ,always a fitting ending1 not always a 8happy ending0 in the sense of a pleasant ending4 ,the ending of ,mr4 ,britling ,sees ,it ,through is not pleasant1 but fitting and1 to the majority of readers1 uplifting1 ennobling1 fine4 #b4 ,depths below the surface action for those who care to plumb them4 ,no piece of fiction can sell largely unless it has a region of philosophy1 moral ideas--whatever you will to call it--for those who crave and must have that mental immersion4 ,the reader must not be led beyond his depth but he must be able to go into deep water and swim as far as his strength will carry him if he so desires4 #c4 ,the ethical1 social and moral implications of the surface action must1 in the end1 accord with the instinctive desires of mankind4 ,this is nothing like as fearful as it sounds1 thus abstractly stated4 ,the instinctive desires of men are pretty well known4 ,any psychologist can tell you what they are4 ,they are few1 primitive and simple4 ,they have nothing to do with man's reason except that man1 from birth to death1 employs his reason in achieving the satisfaction of these instincts4 ,the two oldest and most firmly implanted are the instinct for self-preservation and the instinct to perpetuate the race4 ,the social instinct1 much younger than either1 is yet thousands upon thousands of years old and quite as ineradicable4 ,because it violates the self-preservative instinct no story of suicide can have a wide human audience unless1 in the words of ,dick at the close of ,masefield's ,lost ,endeavour1 we are filled with the feeling that 8life goes on40 ,the act of destruction must be1 however blindly1 an act of immolation on the altar of the race4 ,such is the feeling we get in reading ,jack ,london's largely autobiographical ,martin ,eden2 and1 in a much more striking instance1 the terrible act that closed the life of the heroine in ,tolstoy's ,anna ,karenina falls well before the end of the book4 ,in ,anna ,karenina1 as in ,war and ,peace1 the ,russian novelist conveys to every reader an invincible conviction of the unbreakable continuity of the life of the race4 ,the last words of ,anna ,karenina are not those which describe ,anna's death under the car wheels but the infinitely hopeful words of ,levin3 8,i shall continue to be vexed with ,ivan the coach-man1 and get into useless discussions1 and express my thoughts blunderingly4 ,i shall always be blaming my wife for what annoys me1 and repenting at once4 ,i shall always feel a certain barrier between the ,holy of ,holies of my inmost soul1 and the souls of others1 even my wife's4 ,i shall continue to pray without being able to explain to myself why4 ,but my whole life1 every moment of my life1 independently of whatever may happen to me1 will be1 not meaningless as before1 but full of the deep meaning which ,i shall have the power to impress upon it40 #i ,it is because they appeal so strongly and simply and directly to our instinctive desires that the stories of ,jack ,london are so popular2 it is their perfect appeal to our social instinct that makes the tales of ,o4 ,henry sell thousands of copies month after month4 ,not even ,dickens transcended ,o4 ,henry in the perfection of this appeal2 and ,o4 ,henry set the right value on ,dickens as at least one of his stories shows4 ,civilization and education refine man's instinctive desires1 modify the paths they take1 but do not weaken them perceptibly from generation to generation except in a few individual cases4 ,read the second chapter of ,harold ,bell ,wright's ,the ,shepherd of the ,hills and observe the tremendous call to the instinct of race perpetuation1 prefaced by a character's comment on the careless breeding of man as contrasted with man's careful breeding of animals4 ,and if you think the appeal is crude1 be very sure of this3 ,the crudity is in yourself1 in the instinct that you are not accustomed to have set vibrating with such healthy vigor4 #aj ,all this deals with broadest fundamentals4 ,but they are what the publisher1 judging his manuscript1 must fathom4 ,they are deeper down than the sales manager need go1 or the bookseller2 deeper than the critic need ordinarily descend in his examination into the book's qualities4 ,ordinarily it will be enough for the purpose to analyze a story along the lines of human instinct as it has been modified by our society and our surroundings and conventionalized by habit4 ,the publishers of ,eleanor ,h4 ,porter's novel ,oh1 ,money6 ,money6 were not only wholly correct but quite sufficiently acute in their six reasons for predicting--on the character of the story alone--a big sale4 ,the first of these was that the yarn dealt with the getting and spending of money1 8the most interesting subject in the world10 asserted the publishers--and while society continues to be organized on its present basis their assertion is1 as regards great masses of mankind1 a demonstrable fact4 ,the second reason was allied to the first2 the story would 8set every reader thinking how he would spend the money40 ,and the third3 it was a ,cinderella story1 giving the reader 8the joy of watching a girl who has never been fairly treated come out on top in spite of all odds40 ,this is a powerful appeal to the modified instinct of self-preservation4 ,the fourth reason--8the scene is laid in a little village and the whole book is a gem of country life and shrewd ,yankee philosophy0--answers to the social hunger in the human heart4 ,fifth3 8,a charming love theme with a happy ending40 ,sixth3 8,the story teaches an unobtrusive lesson 444 that happiness must come from within1 and that money cannot buy it40 ,to go behind such reasons is1 for most minds1 not to clarify but to confuse4 ,folks feel these things and care nothing about the source of the river of feeling4 #aa ,with the non-fictional book the internal factor making for large sales is as diverse as the kinds of non-fictional volumes4 ,a textbook on a hitherto untreated subject of sudden interest to many thousands of readers has every prospect of a large sale2 but this is not the kind of internal factor that a publisher is likely to err in judging6 ,any alert business man acquiring correct information will profit by such an opportunity4 ,but there is a book called ,in ,tune with the ,infinite1 the work of a man named ,ralph ,waldo ,trine1 which has sold1 at this writing1 some #ecj1jjj copies1 having been translated into eighteen languages4 ,a man has been discovered sitting on the banks of the ,yukon reading it2 it has been observed in shops and little railway stations in ,burmah and ,ceylon4 ,this is what is called1 not at all badly1 an 8inspirational book40 ,don't you think a publisher might well have erred in judging that manuscript8 ,mr4 ,trine's booklet1 ,the ,greatest ,thing ,ever ,known1 has sold #afj1jjj copies2 his book ,what ,all the ,world's ,a-,seeking1 is in its #ach1jjjth4 ,it will not do to overlook the attractiveness of these titles4 ,what1 most people will want to know1 is 8the greatest thing ever known08 ,and it is human to suppose that what you are seeking is what all the world is after1 and to want to read a book that holds out an implied promise to help you get it4 ,the tremendous internal factor of these books of ,mr4 ,trine's is that they articulate simple 7but often beautiful7 ideas that lie in the minds of hundreds of thousands of men and women1 ideas unformulated and by the hundred thousand unutterable4 ,for any man who can say the thing that is everywhere felt1 the audience is limitless4 ,in autobiography a truly big sale is not possible unless the narrative has the fundamental qualities we have designated as necessary in the fictional best seller4 ,all the popular autobiographies are stories that appeal powerfully to our instinctive desires and this is the fact with such diverse revelations as those of ,benjamin ,franklin and ,benvenuto ,cellini1 ,jean ,jacques ,rousseau and ,henry ,adams4 ,the sum of the instinctive desires is always overwhelmingly in favor of normal human existences4 ,for this reason the predetermined audience of ,mr4 ,tarkington's ,conquest of ,canaan is many times greater than that of ,mr4 ,dreiser's ,sister ,carrie4 ,a moment's reflection will show that this is inevitable1 since these instinctive desires of ours are so many resistless forces exerted simultaneously on us and combining1 in a period of years1 to make a single resultant force impelling us to lead normal1 sane1 8healthy0 and wholesome lives4 ,on such lives1 lived by the vast majority of men and women everywhere1 the security of every form of human society depends2 indeed1 the continued existence of man on the face of the earth is dependent upon them4 ,you may say that ,rousseau1 ,cellini1 ,marie ,bashkirtseff1 even ,franklin and ,henry ,adams1 led existences far from normal4 ,the answer is that we accept the stories of their lives in fact where we 7or most of us7 would never accept them in fiction4 ,we know that these lives were lived2 and the very circumstance that they were abnormal lives makes us more eager to know about and understand them4 ,what most of us care for most is such a recital as ,hamlin ,garland's ,a ,son of the ,middle ,border4 ,the secret of the influence of the life of ,abraham ,lincoln upon the ,american mind and the secret of the appeal made by ,theodore ,roosevelt1 the man1 to his countrymen in general during his lifetime is actually one and the same--the triumph of normal lives1 lived normally1 lived up to the hilt1 and overshadowing almost everything else contemporary with them4 ,such men vindicate common lives1 however humbly lived4 ,we see1 as in an apocalyptic vision1 what any one of us may become2 and in so far as any one of us has become so great we all of us share in his greatness4 #ab ,but perhaps the greatest element in predetermining the possible audience for a non-fiction book is its timeliness4 ,important1 often enough1 in the case of particular novels1 the matter of timeliness is much more so with all other books soever4 ,it cannot be overlooked in autobiography2 ,the ,education of ,henry ,adams attracted a great host of readers in #aiah and #aiai because it became accessible to them in #aiah and not in #aiac or #aibi4 ,in #aiah and #aiai the minds of men were peculiarly troubled4 ,especially about education4 ,h4 ,g4 ,wells was articulating the disastrous doubts that beset numbers of us1 first1 in ,joan and ,peter1 with its subtitle1 ,the ,story of an ,education1 drawing up an indictment which1 whatever its bias1 distortion and unfairness yet contained a lot of terrible truth2 and then1 in ,the ,undying ,fire1 dedicated 8to all schoolmasters and schoolmistresses and every teacher in the world10 returning to the subject1 but this time constructively4 ,yes1 a large number of persons were thinking about education in #aiah-ai1 and the ironical attitude of ,henry ,adams toward his own was of keenest interest to them4 #ac ,we have discussed the internal factor which makes for a big sale in books rather sketchily because1 as a whole1 book publishers can tell it when they see it 7all that is necessary7 even though it may puzzle authors who haven't mastered it4 ,so far as authors are concerned we believe that this factor can1 in many instances1 be mastered4 ,the enterprise is not different from developing a retentive memory1 or skill over an audience in public speaking2 but as with both these achievements no short cut is really possible and advice and suggestion 7you can't honestly call it instruction7 can go but a little way4 ,no end of nonsense has been uttered on the subject of what it is in books that makes them sell well1 and nonsense will not cease to be uttered about it while men write4 ,what is of vastly more consequence than any effort to exploit the internal factor in best sellers is the failure to make every book published sell its best4 ,if1 in general1 books sell not more than one-quarter the number of copies they should sell1 an estimate to which we adhere1 then the immediate and largest gain to publishers1 authors and public will be in securing #ajj per cent4 sales4 #ad ,a word in closing about the familiar argument that the habits of our people have changed1 that they no longer have time to read books1 that motoring and movies have usurped the place of reading4 ,intercommunication is not a luxury but a necessity4 ,transportation is only a means of intercommunication4 ,as the means of intercommunication--books1 newspapers1 mail services1 railroads1 aircraft1 telephones1 automobiles1 motion pictures--multiply the use of each and every one increases with one restriction3 ,a new means of intercommunication paralleling but greatly improving an existing means will largely displace it--as railroads have largely superseded canals4 ,as a means of a particular and indispensable kind of intercommunication nothing has yet appeared that parallels and at the same time decidedly improves upon books4 ,newspapers and magazines do not and cannot1 though they most nearly offer the same service4 ,you cannot go in your ,ford to hear from the lips of ,mr4 ,tarkington his new novel and seeing it on the screen isn't the same thing as reading it--as we all know4 ,and until some inventor enables us to sit down with an author and get his story whole1 at our own convenience and related in his own words1 by some device much more attractive than reading a book1--why1 until then books will be bought and read in steadily increasing numbers4 ,for with its exercise the taste for intercommunication intensifies4 ,to have been somewhere is to want to read about it1 to have read about a place is to want to go there in innumerable instances4 ,it is a superficial view that sees in the spread of automobiles and motion pictures an arrest of reading4 ,as time goes on and more and more people read books1 both absolutely and relatively to the growth of populations1 shall we hear a wail that people's habits have changed and that the spread of book-reading has checked the spread of automobiling and lessened the attendance at the picture shows8 ,possibly we shall hear that outcry but we doubt it2 nor does our doubt rest upon any feeling that books will not be increasingly read4 ,,writing ,a ,,novel ,,viii ,,writing ,a ,,novel ,there are at least as many ways of writing a novel as there are novelists and doubtless there are more2 for it is to be presumed that every novelist varies somewhat in his methods of labor4 ,the literature on the business of novel-writing is not extensive4 ,some observations and advice on the part of ,mr4 ,arnold ,bennett are1 indeed1 about all the average reader encounters2 we have forgotten whether they are embedded in ,the ,truth ,about ,an ,author or in that other masterpiece1 ,how to ,live on #b1djj ,words a ,day4 ,it may be remarked that there is no difficulty in living on #b1djj words a day1 none at all1 where the writer receives five cents a word or better4 ,but there we go1 talking about money1 a shameful subject that has only a backstairs relation to ,art4 ,let us ascend the front staircase together1 first4 ,let us enter the parlor of ,beauty-,is-,truth-,truth-,beauty1 which1 the poet assured us1 is all we know or need to know4 ,let us seat ourselves in lovely sthetic surroundings4 ,if later we have to go out the back way maybe we can accomplish it unobserved4 ,there are only three motives for writing a novel4 ,the first is to satisfy the writer's self1 the second is to please or instruct other persons1 the third is to earn money4 ,we will consider these motives in order4 #b ,the best novels are written from a blending of all three motives4 ,but it is doubtful if a good novel has ever been written in which the desire to satisfy some instinct in himself was not present in the writer's purpose4 ,just what this instinct is can't so easily be answered4 ,without doubt the greatest part of it is the instinct of paternity4 ,into the physiological aspects of the subject we shall not enter1 though they are supported by a considerable body of evidence4 ,the longing to father--or mother--certain fictitious characters is not often to be denied4 ,sometimes the story as a story1 as an entity1 is the beloved child of its author4 ,did not ,dickens father ,little ,nell8 ,how1 do you suppose1 ,barrie has thought of himself in relation to some of his youngsters8 ,any one who has read ,lore of ,proserpine not only believes in fairies but understands the soul of ,maurice ,hewlett4 ,the relation of the creator of a story to his persons is not necessarily parental4 ,it is always intensely human4 ,o4 ,henry was variously a ,big ,brother 7before the ,big ,brothers had been thought of71 a father1 an uncle1 a friend1 a distant cousin1 a mere acquaintance1 a sworn enemy of his people4 ,it has to be so4 ,for the writer lives among the people he creates4 ,the cap of ,fortunatus makes him invisible to them but he is always there--not to interfere with them nor to shape their destinies but to watch them come together or fly apart1 to hear what they say1 to guess what they think 7from what they say and from the way they behave71 to worry over them1 applaud them1 frown2 but forever as a recorder4 #c ,none of the author's troubles must appear in the finished record4 ,still wearing ,fortunatus's cap he is required to be as invisible to the reader as to the people he describes4 ,there are exceptions to this rule4 ,dickens was the most notable4 ,many readers prefer to have a tale told them by a narrator frankly prejudiced in favor of some of the characters and against others4 ,many--but not a majority4 ,in the best novel that ,booth ,tarkington has so far written1 ,the ,flirt1 the dominating figure is a heartless young woman to whom the reader continuously itches to administer prussic acid in a fatal dose4 ,but ,mr4 ,tarkington does not scald ,cora ,madison with boiling invective nor blister her with hot irony4 ,he relates her doings in the main almost dispassionately2 and set forth thus nakedly they are more damnable than any amount of sound and fury could make them appear to be4 ,mr4 ,tarkington does not wave the prussic acid bottle1 though here and there1 distilled through his narrative and perceptible more in the things he selects to tell about than in his manner of telling them1 the reader is conscious of a faint odor of almond blossoms1 signifying that the author has uncorked the acid bottle--perhaps that his restraint in not emptying it may be the more emphasized4 ,may we set things down a little at random8 ,then let us seize this moment to point out to the intending novel writer some omissions in ,the ,flirt4 ,our pupil will1 when he comes to write his novel1 be certain to think of the 8strong scenes40 ,he will be painfully eager to get them down4 ,it is these scenes that will 8grip0 the reader and assure his book of a sale of #ajj1jjj copies4 ,battle1 murder and sudden death are generally held to be the very meat of a strong scene4 ,but when the drunkard ,ray ,vilas1 ,cora ,madison's discarded lover1 shoots down ,valentine ,corliss and then kills himself1 ,mr4 ,tarkington does not fill pages with it4 ,he takes scarce fifteen lines--perhaps a little over #ajj words--to tell of the double slaying4 ,nor does he relate what ,ray ,vilas and ,cora said to each other in that last interview which immediately preceded the crime4 8,probably10 says ,mr4 ,tarkington1 8,cora told him the truth1 all of it2 though of course she seldom told quite the truth about anything in which she herself was concerned0--or words to that effect4 ,where oh where is the strong scene8 ,ah1 one man's strength is another's weakness4 ,the ,flirt is full of strong scenes but they are infrequently the scenes which the intending novel writer1 reviewing his tale before setting to work1 would select as the most promising4 #d ,besides the instinct of paternity--or perhaps in place of it--the novelist may feel an instinct to build something1 or to paint a beautiful picture1 or mold a lovely figure4 ,this yearning of the artist1 so-called1 is sometimes denoted by the word 8self-expression10 a misnomer1 if it be not a euphemism1 for the longing to fatherhood4 ,there is just as much 8self-expression0 in the paternity of a boy or a girl as in the creation of a book1 a picture or a building4 ,the child1 in any case1 has innumerable other ancestors2 you are not the first to have written such a book or painted such a picture4 ,how about the second motive in novel-writing1 the desire to please or instruct others8 ,the only safe generalization about it seems to be this3 ,a novel written exclusively from this motive will be a bad novel4 ,a novel is not1 above everything1 a didactic enterprise4 ,yet even those enterprises of the human race which are in their essence purely didactic1 designed 8to warn1 to comfort1 to command10 such as sermons and lessons in school1 seldom achieve their greatest possible effect if instruction or improvement be the preacher's or teacher's unadorned and unconcealed and only purpose4 ,take a school lesson4 ,teachers who get the best results are invariably found to have added some element besides bare instruction to their work4 ,sometimes they have made the lesson entertaining2 sometimes they have exercised that imponderable thing we call 8personal magnetism02 sometimes they have supplied an incentive to learn that didn't exist in the lesson itself4 ,take a sermon4 ,if the auditor does not feel the presence in it of something besides the mere intelligence the words convey the sermon leaves the auditor cold4 ,pure intellect is not a force in human affairs4 ,bach wrote music with a very high intellectual content but the small leaven of sublime melody is present in his work that lasts through the centuries4 ,shakespeare and ,beethoven employed intellect and emotionalism in the proportion of fifty-fifty4 ,sir ,joshua ,reynolds mixed his paint 8with brains1 sir02 but the significant thing is that ,sir ,joshua did not use only gray matter on his palette4 ,those who economize on emotionalism in one direction usually make up for it1 not always consciously1 in another4 ,joseph ,hergesheimer1 writing ,java ,head1 is very sparing in the emotionalism bound up with action and decidedly lavish in the emotionalism inseparable from sensuous coloring and 8atmosphere40 ,no1 a novel written wholly to instruct will never do2 but neither will a novel written entirely to please1 to give sthetic or sensuous enjoyment to the reader4 ,such a novel is like a portion of a fine ,french sauce--with nothing to spread it on4 ,it is honey without a crust to dip4 #e ,writing a novel purely to make money has a tainted air1 thanks to the long vogue of a false tradition4 ,if so1 ,the ,vicar of ,wakefield ought to be banished from public libraries2 for ,goldsmith needed the money and made no bones about saying so4 ,the facts are1 of course1 unascertainable2 but we would be willing to wager1 were there any way of deciding the bet1 that more novels of the first rank have been written either solely or preponderantly to earn money than for any other reason whatever4 ,it isn't writing for the sake of the money that determines the merit of the result2 that is settled by two other factors1 the author's skill and the author's conscience4 ,and the word 8skill0 here necessarily includes each and every endowment the writer possesses as well as such proficiency as he may have acquired4 ,suppose ,a4 and ,b4 both to have material for a first-rate novel4 ,both are equally skilled in novel writing4 ,both are equally conscientious4 ,a4 writes his novel for his own satisfaction and to please and instruct others4 ,he is careful and honest about it4 ,he delights in it4 ,b4 writes his novel purely to make a few thousand dollars4 ,he is1 naturally1 careful and honest in doing the job2 and he probably takes such pleasure in it as a man may take in doing well anything he can do well1 from laying a sewer to flying an airplane4 ,we submit that ,b4's may easily be the better novel4 ,it is true that ,b4 is under a pressure that ,a4 does not know and that ,b4's work may be affected in ways of which he is not directly aware by the necessity to sell his finished product4 ,but most of the best work in the world is done under some compulsion or other2 and it is the sum of human experience that the compulsion to do work which will find favor in the eyes of the worker's fellows is the healthfullest compulsion of them all4 ,certainly it is more healthful than the compulsion merely to please yourself4 ,and if ,b4 is under a pressure ,a4's danger lies precisely in the fact that he is not under a pressure1 or under too slight a pressure4 ,it is a tenable hypothesis that ,flaubert would have been a better novelist if he had had to make a living by his pen4 ,some indirect evidence on the point may possibly be found in the careers of certain writers whose first books were the product of a need to buy bread and butter2 and whose later books were the product of no need at all--nor met any4 ,so much for motives in novel-writing4 ,you should write 7#a7 because you need the money1 7#b7 to satisfy your own instincts1 and 7#c7 to please and1 perchance1 instruct other persons4 ,take a week or two to get your motives in order and then1 and not until then1 read what follows1 which has to do with how you are presently to proceed about the business of writing your novel4 #f ,it is settled that you are going to write a novel4 ,you have examined your motive and found it pure and worthy of you4 ,comes now the great question of how to set about the business4 ,at this point let no one rise up and 8point out0 that ,arnold ,bennett has told how4 ,arnold ,bennett has told how to do everything--how to live on twenty-four hours a day 7but not how to enjoy it71 how to write books1 how to acquire culture1 how to be yourself and manage yourself 7in the unfortunate event that you cannot be someone else or have no one1 like a wife1 to manage you71 how to do everything1 indeed1 except rise up and call ,arnold ,bennett blessed4 ,the trouble with ,mr4 ,bennett's directions is--they won't work4 ,mr4 ,bennett tells you to write like everything and get as much of your novel done as possible before the ,era of ,discouragement sets in4 ,then1 no matter how great your ,moment of ,depression1 you will be able to stand beside the table1 fondly stroking a pile of pages a foot high1 and reassure yourself1 saying3 8,well1 but here1 at least1 is so much done4 ,no6 ,i cannot take my hand from the plough now6 ,no6 ,i must ,go ,on4 ,i must complete my destiny40 7,one's novel is always one's ,destiny of the moment47 ,it sounds well1 but the truth is that when you strike the ,writer's ,doldrums the sight of all that completed manuscript only enrages you to the last degree4 ,you are embittered by the spectacle of so much effort wasted4 ,you feel like tearing it up or flinging it in the wastebasket4 ,if you are a ,rudyard ,kipling or an ,edna ,ferber1 you do that thing4 ,and your wife or your mother carefully retrieves your ,recessional or your ,dawn ,o',hara and sends it to the publisher who brings it out1 regardless of expense1 and sells a large number of copies--to the booksellers1 anyway4 ,mr4 ,bennett also tells you how to plan the long1 slow culminant movement of your novel2 how to walk in the park and compose those neat little climaxes which should so desirably terminate each chapter2 how to---- ,but what's the use8 ,let us illustrate with a fable4 ,once an ,american1 meeting ,mr4 ,bennett in ,london1 saluted him1 jocularly 7he meant it jocularly7 with the ,american ,indian word of greeting3 8,how80 ,mr4 ,bennett immediately began to tell him how and the ,american never got away until ,george ,h4 ,doran1 the publisher1 who was standing near by1 exclaimed3 8,that's enough1 ,enoch1 for a dollar volume60 7,mr4 ,doran1 knowing ,bennett well1 calls him by his first name1 a circumstance that should be pointed out to ,g4 ,k4 ,chesterton1 who would evolve a touching paradox about the familiarity of the unfamiliar47 ,that will do for ,arnold4 ,if we mention ,arnold again it must distinctly be understood that we have reference to some other ,arnold--,benedict ,arnold or ,matthew ,arnold or ,dorothy ,arnold or ,arnold ,daly4 ,well1 to get back 7in order to get forward71 you are about beginning your novel 7nice locution1 8about beginning07 and are naturally taking all the advice you can get1 if it doesn't cost prohibitively1 and this we are about to give doesn't4 ,the first thing for you to do is not1 necessarily1 to decide on the subject of your novel4 ,it is not absolutely indispensable to select the subject of a novel before beginning to write it4 ,many authors prefer to write a third or a half of the novel before definitely committing themselves to a particular theme4 ,for example1 take ,the ,roll ,call1 by ,arnold--it must have been ,arnold ,constable1 or perhaps it was ,matthew4 ,the ,roll ,call is a very striking illustration of the point we would make4 ,somewhere along toward the end of ,the ,roll ,call the author decided that the subject of the novel should be the war and its effect on the son of ,hilda ,lessways by her bigamous first husband--or1 he wasn't exactly her husband1 being a bigamist1 but we will let it go at that4 ,now ,hilda ,lessways was1 or became1 the wife of ,edwin ,clayhanger2 and ,george ,cannon1 ,clayhanger's--would you say1 stepson8 ,hilda's son1 anyway--,george ,cannon1 the son of a gun--oh1 pardon1 the son of ,bigamist ,cannon--the stepson of1 or son of the wife of1 ,edwin ,clayhanger of the ,five ,towns--,george ,cannon4444 ,where were we8444 ,hilda ,lessways ,clayhanger1 the--well1 wife--of ,bigamist ,cannon4444 ,the relationships in this novel are very confusing1 like the novel and the subject of it1 but if you can read the book you will see that it illustrates our point perfectly4 #g ,well1 go ahead and write4 ,don't worry about the subject4 ,you know how it is1 a person often can't see the forest for the trees4 ,when you're writing #gj1jjj words or maybe a few more you can't expect to see your way out of 'em very easily4 ,when you are out of the trees you can look back and see the forest4 ,and when you are out of the woods of words you can glance over 'em and find out what they were all about4 ,however1 the #hj1jjj words have to be written1 and it is up to you1 somehow or other1 to set down the #ij1jjj parts of speech in a row4 ,now #ajj1jjj words cannot be written without taking thought4 ,any one who has actually inscribed #abj1jjj words knows that4 ,any one who has written the #aej1jjj words necessary to make a good-sized novel 7though ,william ,allen ,white wouldn't call that good measure7 understands the terrible difficulties that confront a mortal when he sits down to enter upon the task of authorship1 the task of putting on paper the #bjj1jjj mono- or polysyllables that shall hold the reader breathless to the end1 if only from the difficulty of pronouncing some of them4 ,where to start8 ,for those who are not yet equipped with self-starters we here set down a few really first-class openings for either the spring or fall novel trade3 8,marinda was frightened4 ,when she was frightened her eyes changed color4 ,they were dark now1 and glittering restlessly like the sea when the wind hauls northwest4 ,jack ,hathaway1 unfamiliar with weather signs1 took no heed of the impending squall4 ,he laughed recklessly1 dangerously44440 7,story of youth and struggle47 8,the peasant combed the lice from his beard1 spat and said1 grumbling3 #8,send us ploughs that we may till the soil and save ,russia4444 ,send us ploughs4'0 7,realistic story of ,russia47 8,darkness1 suave1 dense1 enfolding1 lay over the soft loam of the fields4 ,the girl1 moving silently across the field1 felt the mystery of the dark2 the scent of the soil and the caress of the night alike enchanted her4 ,hidden in the folds of her dress1 clutched tightly in her fingers1 was the ribbon he had given her4 ,with a quick indrawing of her breath she paused1 and1 screened by the utter blackness that enveloped her1 pressed it to her lips44440 7,story of the countryside4 ,simple1 trusting innocence4 ,lots of atmosphere4 ,after crossing the field the girl strikes across ,haunted ,heath1 a description of which fills the second chapter47 ,all these are pretty safe bets1 if you're terribly hard up4 ,think them over4 ,practice them daily for a few weeks4 #h ,now that you have some idea about writing a novel it may be as well for you to consider the consequences before proceeding to the irrevocable act4 ,one of the consequences will certainly be the discovery of many things in the completed manuscript that you never intended4 ,this is no frivolous allusion to the typographical errors you will find--for a typewriter is as capable of spoonerisms as the human tongue4 ,we have reference to things that you did not consciously put into your narrative4 ,and first let it be said that many things that seem to you unconscious in the work of skilled writers are deliberate art 7as the phrase goes74 ,the trouble is that the deliberation usually spoils the art4 ,an example must be had and we will take it in a novel by the gifted ,american1 ,joseph ,hergesheimer4 ,before proceeding further with this ,manual for ,beginners read ,java ,head if you can2 if not1 never mind4 ,now in ,java ,head the purpose of ,mr4 ,hergesheimer was1 aside from the evocation of a beautiful bit of a vanished past1 the delineation of several persons of whom one represented the ,east destroyed in the ,west and another the ,west destroyed in the ,east4 ,edward ,dunsack1 back in ,salem1 ,massachusetts1 the victim of the opium habit1 represented the ,west destroyed in the ,east2 the ,chinese wife of ,gerrit ,ammidon represented the ,east destroyed in the ,west4 ,mr4 ,hergesheimer took an artist's pride in the fact that the double destruction was accomplished with what seemed to him the greatest possible economy of means2 almost the only external agency employed1 he pointed out1 was opium4 ,very well2 this is stheticism1 pure and not so simple as it looks4 ,it is a ,pattern4 ,it is a musical phrase or theme presented as a certain flight of notes in the treble1 repeated or echoed and inverted in the bass4 ,it is a curve on one side of a staircase balanced by a curve on the other4 ,it is a thing of symmetry and grace and it is the expression1 perfect in its way1 of an idea4 ,kipling expressed very much the same idea when he told us that ,east is ,east and ,west is ,west and never the twain shall meet4 ,mr4 ,hergesheimer amplifies and extends4 ,if the two are brought in contact each is fatal to the other4 ,is that all8 ,it is not all1 it is the mere beginning4 ,when you examine ,java ,head with the ,pattern in mind you immediately discover that the ,pattern is carried out in bewildering detail4 ,everything is symmetrically arranged4 ,for instance1 many a reader must have been puzzled and bewildered by the heartbreaking episode at the close of the novel in which ,roger ,brevard denies the delightful girl ,sidsall ,ammidon4 ,the affair bears no relation to the currents of the tale2 it is just a little eddy to one side2 it is unnecessarily cruel and wounding to our sensibilities4 ,why have it at all8 ,the answer is that in his main narrative ,mr4 ,hergesheimer has set before us ,gerrit ,ammidon1 a fellow so quixotic that he marries twice out of sheer chivalry4 ,he has drawn for us the fantastic scroll of such a man1 a sea-shape not to be matched on shore4 ,well1 then1 down in the corner1 he must inscribe for us another contrasting1 balancing1 compensating1 miniatured scroll--a land-shape in the person of ,roger ,brevard who is so unquixotic as to offset ,gerrit ,ammidon completely4 ,gerrit ,ammidon will marry twice for incredible reasons and ,roger ,brevard will not even marry once for the most compelling of reasons--love4 ,the beautiful melody proclaimed by the violins is brutally parodied by the tubas4 #i ,is it all right thus8 ,it is not all right thus and it never can be so long as life remains the unpatterned thing we discern it to be4 ,if life were completely patterned it would most certainly not be worth living4 ,when we say that life is unpatterned we mean1 of course1 that we cannot read all its patterns 7we like to assume that all patterns are there1 because it comforts us to think of a fundamental ,order and ,symmetry74 ,but so long as life is largely unpatterned1 or so long as we cannot discern all its patterns1 life is eager1 interesting1 surprising and altogether distracting and lovely however bewildering and distressing1 too4 ,different people take the unreadable differently4 ,some1 like ,thomas ,hardy1 take it in defiant bitterness of spirit2 some1 like ,joseph ,conrad1 take it in profound faith and wonder4 ,hardy sees the disorder that he cannot fathom2 ,conrad admires the design that he can only incompletely trace4 ,to ,hardy the world is a place where-- 8,as flies to wanton boys are we to the gods2 ,they kill us for their sport40 ,to ,conrad the world is a place where men may continually make the glorious and heartening discovery that a solidarity exists among them2 that they are united by a bond as unbreakable as it is mysterious4 ,and to others1 as regrettably to ,mr4 ,hergesheimer writing ,java ,head1 the world is a place where it is momentarily sufficient to trace casual symmetries without thought of their relation to an ineluctable whole4 #aj ,what1 then1 is the novelist to do8 ,is it not obvious that he must not busy himself too carefully with the business of patterning the things he has to tell8 ,for the moment he has traced everything out nicely and beautifully he may know for a surety that he has cut himself off from the larger design of ,life4 ,he has got his little corner of the ,oriental rug all mapped out with the greatest exactitude4 ,but he has lost touch with the bigger intricacy beyond his corner4 ,it is a prayer rug4 ,he had better kneel down and pray4 ,now there are novels in which no pattern at all is traced2 and these are as bad as those which minutely map a mere corner4 ,these are meaningless and confused stories in which nobody can discern any cause or effect1 any order or law1 any symmetry or proportion or expressed idea4 ,these are the novels which have been justified as a 8slice of life0 and which have brought into undeserved disrepute the frequently painstaking manner of their telling4 ,the trouble is seldom primarily1 as so many people think1 with the material but with its presentation4 ,you may take almost any material you like and so present it as to make it mean something2 and you may also take almost any material you like and so present it as to make it mean nothing to anybody4 ,a heap of bricks is meaningless2 but the same bricks are intelligible expressed as a building of whatever sort1 or merely as a sidewalk with zigzags1 perhaps1 of a varicolor4 ,the point we would make--and we might as well try to drive it home without further ineffectual attempts at illustration--is that you must do some patterning with your material1 whether bricks for a building or lives for a story2 but if you pattern too preciously your building will be contemptible and your story without a soul4 ,in your building you must not be so decided as to leave no play for another's imagination1 contemplating the structure4 ,in your narrative you must not be so dogmatic about two and two adding to four as to leave no room for a wild speculation that perhaps they came to five4 ,for it is not the certainty that two and two have always made four but the possibility that some day they may make five that makes life worth living--and guessing about on the printed page4 #aa ,perhaps the most serious consequence of writing a novel is the revelation of yourself it inevitably entails4 ,we are not thinking1 principally1 of the discovery you will make of the size of your own soul4 ,we have in mind the laying bare of yourself to others4 ,of course you do reveal yourself to yourself when you write a book to reveal others to others4 ,it has been supposed that a man cannot say or do a thing which does not expose his nature4 ,this is nonsense2 you do not expose your nature every time you take the subway1 though a trip therein may very well be an index to your manners4 ,the fact remains that no man ever made a book or a play or a song or a poem1 with any command of the technique of his work1 without in some measure giving himself away4 ,where this is not enough of an inducement some other1 such as a tin whistle with every bound copy1 is offered2 no small addition as it enables the reviewer to declare1 hand on heart1 that 8this story is not to be whistled down the wind40 ,some have doubted ,bernard ,shaw's ,irishism1 which seems the queerer as nearly everything he has written has carried a shillelagh concealed between the covers4 ,recently ,frank ,k4 ,reilly of ,chicago gave away one-cent pieces to advertise a book called ,penny of ,top ,hill ,trail4 ,he might be said1 and in fact he hereby is said1 thus to have coppered his risk in publishing it4444 ,all of which is likely to be mistaken for jesting4 ,let us therefore jest that we may be taken with utmost seriousness4 ,the revelation of yourself to yourself1 which the mere act of writing a novel brings to pass1 may naturally be either pleasant or unpleasant4 ,very likely it is unpleasant in a majority of instances1 a condition which need not necessarily reflect upon our poor human nature4 ,if we did not aspire so high for ourselves we should not suffer such awful disappointments on finding out where we actually get off4 ,the only moral1 if there is one1 lies in our ridiculous aim4 ,imagine the sickening of heart with which ,oscar ,wilde contemplated himself after completing ,the ,picture of ,dorian ,grey6 ,and imagine the lift it must have given him to look within himself as he worked at ,the ,ballad of ,reading ,gaol6 ,the circumstances of life and even the actual conduct of a man are not necessarily here or there--or anywhere at all--in this intimate contemplation4 ,there is one mirror before which we never pose4 ,god made man in ,his own image4 ,god made ,his own image and put it in every man4 ,it is there6 ,nothing in life transcends the wonder of the moment when1 each for himself1 we make this discovery4 ,then comes the struggle to remold ourselves nearer to our heart's desire4 ,it succeeds or it doesn't2 perhaps it succeeds only slightly2 anyway we try for it4 ,the sleeper1 twisting and turning1 dreaming and struggling1 is the perfect likeness of ourselves in the waking hours of our whole earthly existence4 ,because they have seen this some have thought life no better than a nightmare4 ,voltaire suggested that the earth and all that dwelt thereon was only the bad dream of a god on some other planet4 ,we would point out the bright side of this possibility3 ,it presupposes the existence somewhere of a mince pie so delicious and so powerful as to evoke the likenesses of ,csar and ,samuel ,gompers1 giraffes1 ,mr4 ,taft1 violets1 ,mr4 ,roosevelt1 ,piotr ,ilitch ,tchaikovski1 ,billy ,sunday1 ,wu-,ting ,fang1 ,helen of ,troy and ,mother ,jones1 groundhogs1 ,h4 ,g4 ,wells2 perhaps ,bolshevism is the last writhe4 ,mince pie1 unwisely eaten instead of the dietetic nectar and ambrosia1 may well explain the whole confused universe4 ,and you and ,i--we can create another universe1 equally exciting1 by eating mince pie to-night6444 ,you see there is a bright side to everything1 for the mince pie is undoubtedly of a heavenly flavor4 ,we were saying1 when sidetracked by the necessity of explaining the universe1 that the self-revelation which writing a book entails is in most cases depressing1 but not by any means always so4 ,boswell was not much of a man judged by the standards of his own day or ours1 either one1 yet ,boswell knew himself better than he knew ,dr4 ,johnson by the time he had finished his life of the ,doctor4 ,it must have bucked him up immensely to know that he was at least big enough himself to measure a bigger man up and down1 in and out1 criss-cross and sideways1 setting down the complicated result without any error that the human intelligence can detect4 ,it must have appeased the ironical soul of ,henry ,adams to realise that he was one of the very few men who had never fooled himself about himself1 and that evidence of his phenomenal achievement in the shape of the book ,the ,education of ,henry ,adams1 would survive him after his death--or at least1 after the difficulties of communicating with those on earth had noticeably increased 7we make this wise modification lest someone match ,sir ,oliver ,lodge's ,raymond1 or ,life ,after ,death with a volume called ,henry1 or ,re-,education ,after ,death74 ,it must have sent a thrill of pleasure through the by no means insensitive frame of ,joseph ,conrad when he discovered1 on completing ,nostromo1 that he had a profounder insight into the economic bases of modern social and political affairs than nine-tenths of the professional economists and sociologists--plus a knowledge of the human heart that they have never dreamed worth while4 ,for ,conrad saw clearly1 and so saw simply2 the 8silver of the mine0 of this1 his greatest story1 was1 it is true1 an incorruptible metal1 but it could and did alter the corruptible nature of man--and would continue to do so through generation after generation long after his ,mediterranean sailor-hero had become dust4 ,even in the case of the humble and unknown writer whose completed manuscript1 after many tedious journeys1 comes home to him at last1 to be re-read regretfully but with an undying belief not so much in the work itself as in what it was meant to express and so evidently failed to--even in his case the great consolation is the attestation of a creed4 ,very bad men have died1 as does the artist in ,shaw's ,the ,doctor's ,dilemma1 voicing with clarity and beauty the belief in which they think they have lived or ought to have lived2 but a piece of work is always an actual living of some part of the creed that is in you4 ,it may be a failure but it has1 with all its faults1 a gallant quality1 the quality of the deed done1 which men have always admired1 and because of which they have invented those things we call words to embody their praise4 ,but what of the consequences of revealing yourself to others8 ,writing a novel will surely mean that you will incur them4 ,we must speak of them briefly2 and then we may get on to the thing for which you are doubtless waiting with terrible patience--the way to write the novel itself4 ,never fear6 ,if you will but endure steadfastly you shall ,know ,all4 #ab 8,certainly1 publish everything10 commented the ,new ,york ,times editorially upon a proposal to give out earnings1 or some other detail1 of private businesses4 8,all privacy is scandalous10 added the newspaper4 ,in this satirical utterance lies the ultimate justification for writing a novel4 ,all privacy is scandalous4 ,if you don't believe it1 read some of the prose of ,james ,joyce4 ,a ,portrait of ,the ,artist ,as a ,young ,man will do for a starter4 ,ulysses is a follow-up4 ,h4 ,g4 ,wells likes the first1 while deploring so much sewerage in the open street4 ,you see1 nothing but a sincere conviction concerning the wickedness of leaving anything at all unmentioned in public could justify such narratives as ,mr4 ,joyce's4 ,in a less repulsive sense1 the scandal of privacy is what underlies any novel of what we generally call the 8realistic0 sort4 ,mr4 ,dreiser1 for instance1 thinks it scandalous that we should not know and publicly proclaim the true nature of such men as ,hurstwood in his ,sister ,carrie4 ,mr4 ,hardy thinks it scandalous that the world should not publicly acknowledge the purity of ,tess ,durbeyfield and therefore he gives us a book in which she is1 as the subtitle says1 8faithfully presented40 ,gene ,stratton-,porter thinks it scandalous not to tell the truth about such a boy as ,freckles4 ,the much-experienced ,mr4 ,tarkington1 stirred to his marrow by what seems almost a world conspiracy to condone the insufferable conceit of the ,george ,amberson ,minafers among us1 writes ,the ,magnificent ,ambersons to make us confess how we hate 'em--and how our instinctive faith in them is vindicated at last4 ,every novelist who gains a public of any size or permanence deliberately1 and even joyfully1 faces the consequences of the revelation of himself to some thousands of his fellow-creatures4 ,we don't mean that he always delineates himself in the person of a character1 or several characters1 in his stories4 ,he may do that1 of course1 but the self-exposure is generally much more merciless4 ,the novelist can withhold from the character which1 more or less1 stands for himself his baser qualities4 ,what he cannot withhold from the reader is his own mind's limitations4 ,a novel is bounded by the author's horizons4 ,if a man can see only so far and only so deep his book will show it4 ,if he cannot look abroad1 but can perceive nothing beyond the nose on his face1 that fact will be fully apparent to his co-spectators who turn the pages of his story4 ,if he can see only certain colors those who look on with him will be aware of his defect4 ,above all1 if he can see persons as all bad or all good1 all black or all white1 he will be hanged in effigy along with the puppets he has put on paper4 ,this is the reason why every one should write a novel4 ,there is only one thing comparable with it as a means of self-immolation4 ,that1 of course1 is tenure of public office4 ,and as there are not nearly enough public offices to serve the need of individual discipline1 novelizing should be encouraged1 fomented--we had almost said1 made compulsory4 ,compulsion1 however1 defeats its own ends4 ,let us elect to public offices1 as we would choose to fill scholarships1 those who cannot1 through some misfortune1 write novels2 and let us induce all the other people in the world that we can to put pen to paper--not that they may enrich the world with immortal stories1 not that they may make money1 become famous or come to know themselves1 but solely that we may know them for what they are4 ,if ,albert ,burleson had been induced to write a novel would we have made him a ,congressman and would ,president ,wilson have made him ,postmaster-,general8 ,if ,william1 sometime of ,germany1 had written a novel would the ,germans have acquiesced in his theory of ,divine ,right8 ,georges ,clemenceau wrote novels and was chosen of the people to lead them4 ,hall ,caine and ,marie ,corelli and ,rider ,haggard and ,arnold ,bennett have written novels which enable us to gauge them pretty accurately--and not one of them has yet been invited to help run the ,league of ,nations4 ,the reason is simple3 ,we know them too well4 ,all privacy is scandalous4 ,thomas ,dixon says3 8,it is positively immoral that the world should run on without knowing the depths to which ,i can sink4 ,i must write ,the ,way of a ,man and make the world properly contemptuous of me40 ,zona ,gale reflects to herself3 8,after all1 with nothing but these few romances and these ,friendship ,village stories1 people have no true insight into my real tastes1 affinities1 predilections1 qualities of mind4 ,i will write about a fruit and pickle salesman1 an ineffectual sort of person who becomes1 almost involuntarily1 a paperhanger4 ,that will give them the idea of me they lack40 ,william ,allen ,white1 without consciously thinking anything of the kind1 is dimly aware that people generally have a right to know him as a big-hearted man who makes some mistakes but whose sympathy is with the individual man and woman and whose passion is for social progress4 ,the best way to make people generally acquainted with ,william ,allen ,white is to write a novel--say1 ,in ,the ,heart of a ,fool1 which they will read4444 ,the best way to get to know anybody is to get him to talking about somebody else4 ,talk about one's self is a little too self-conscious4 ,and there you have it6 ,it is exactly because such a writer as ,h4 ,g4 ,wells is in reality pretty nearly always talking about himself that we find it so difficult to appraise him rightly on the basis of his novels4 ,self-consciousness is never absent from a ,wells book4 ,it is this acute self-consciousness that makes so much of ,henry ,james valueless to the great majority of readers4 ,they cannot get past it1 or behind it4 ,the great test fails4 ,mr4 ,james is dead1 and the only way left to get at the truth of ,mr4 ,wells will be to make him ,chancellor of the ,exchequer or1 in a socialized ,british republic1 ,secretary of ,un-,war4444 ,dare to be a ,daniel ,carson ,goodman4 ,write ,that ,novel4 ,don't procrastinate1 don't temporize4 ,do ,it ,now1 reserving all rights of translation of words into action in all countries1 including the ,scandinavian4 ,full detailed instructions as to the actual writing follow4 #ac ,you may not have noticed it1 but even so successful a novelist as ,robert ,w4 ,chambers is careful to respect the three unities that ,aristotle 7wasn't it87 prescribed and the ,greeks took always into account4 ,not in a single one of his fifty novels does the popular ,mr4 ,chambers disregard the three ,greek unities4 ,invariably he looks out for the time1 the place and the girl4 ,if ,aristotle recommended it and ,robert ,w4 ,chambers sticks to it1 perhaps you1 about to write your first novel1 had better attend to it also4 ,now1 to work6 ,about a title4 ,better have one1 even if it's only provisional1 before you begin to write4 ,if you can1 get the real1 right title at the outset4 ,sometimes having it will help you through--not to speak of such cases as ,eleanor ,hallowell ,abbott's4 ,the author of ,molly ,make-,believe1 ,the ,sick-a-,bed ,lady and ,old-,dad gets her real1 right title and then the story mushrooms out of it1 like a house afire4 ,ourselves1 we are personally the same4 ,we have three corking titles for as many novels4 ,one is written4 ,the other two we haven't to worry about4 ,they have only to live up to their titles1 which may be difficult for them but will make it easy for ourselves4 ,we have a ,standard4 ,everything that lives up to the promise of our superlative title goes in1 everything that is alien to it or unworthy of it1 stays out4 ,this1 we may add parenthetically1 was the original motive in instituting titles of nobility4 ,a man was made a ,baron4 ,very well1 it was expected that he would conform his character and conduct accordingly4 ,things suitable to a ,baron he would thenceforth be and do1 things unbefitting his new1 exalted station he would kindly omit4444 ,it works better with books than with people1 so cheer up4 ,your novel will come out more satisfactorily than you think4 ,which brings us to the matter of the ending4 ,should it be happy or otherwise8 ,more words have been wasted on this subject than on any other aspect of fictioneering4 ,you must understand from the very first that you1 personally1 have nothing whatever to say about the ending of your story4 ,that will be decided by the people of your tale and the events among which they live4 ,in other words1 the preponderant force in determining the ending is--inevitability4 ,most people misunderstand inevitability4 ,others merely worry about it1 as if it were to-morrow's weather4 ,shall we take an umbrella1 they ask anxiously1 lest it rain inevitably8 ,or will the inevitable come off hot1 so that an overcoat will be a nuisance8 ,nobody knows1 not even the weather forecaster in ,washington4 ,if there were a corresponding official whose duty it would be to forecast with equal inaccuracy the endings of novels life would go on much the same4 ,readers would still worry about the last page because they would know that the official prediction would be wrong at least half the time4 ,if the ,ending ,forecaster prophesied3 8,lovers meet happily on page #cgh2 villain probably killed in train accident0 we would go drearily forward confident that page #cgh would disclose the heroine1 under a lowering sky1 clasped in the villain's arms while the hero lay prone under a stalled ,rolls-,royce1 trying to find out why the carburetor didn't carburete4 ,inevitability is not the same as heredity4 ,heredity can be rigorously controlled--novelists are the real eugenists--but inevitability is like natural selection or the origin of species or mutations or ,o4 ,henry3 ,it is the unexpected that happens4 ,environment has little in common with inevitability4 ,in the pages of any competent novelist the girl in the slums will sooner or later disclose her possession of the most unlikely traits4 ,her bravery1 her innocence will become even more manifest than her beauty4 ,the young feller from ,fifth avenue1 whose earliest environment included orange spoons and ,etruscan pottery1 will turn out to be a lowdown brute4 ,environment is what we want it to be1 inevitability is what we are4 ,you think1 of course1 that you can pre-determine the outcome of this story you are going to write4 ,yes1 you can6 ,you can no more pre-determine the ending than you can pre-determine the girl your son will marry4 ,it's exactly like that4 ,for you must come face to face1 before you have written #ej pages of your book1 with an appalling and inspiring ,fact4 ,you might as well face it here4 #ad ,the position of the novelist engaged in writing a novel can only be indicated by a shocking exaggeration which is this3 ,he is not much better than a medium in a trance4 ,now of course such a statement calls for the most exact explanation4 ,nobody can give it4 ,such a statement calls for indisputable evidence4 ,none exists4 ,such a statement1 unexplained and unsupported by testimony1 is a gross and unscientific assumption not even worthy to be damned by being called a hypothesis4 ,you said it4 ,nevertheless1 the thing's so4 ,we1 personally1 having written a novel--or maybe two--know what we are talking about4 ,the immense and permanent curiosity of people all over the planet who read books at all fixes itself upon the question1 in respect of the novelist3 8,how does he write80 ,as ,mary ,s4 ,watts remarks1 that is the one thing no novelist can tell you4 ,he doesn't know himself4 ,but though it is the one thing the novelist can't tell you it is not one of those things that1 in the words of ,artemus ,ward1 no feller kin find out4 ,any one can find out by writing a novel4 ,and to write one you need little beyond a few personalities firmly in mind1 a typewriter and lots of white paper4 ,an outline is superfluous and sometimes harmful4 ,put a sheet of paper in the machine and write the title1 in capital letters4 ,below1 write3 8,by ,theophrastus ,such10 or whatever you happen unfortunately to be called or elect1 in bad taste1 to call yourself4 ,begin4 ,you will have the first few pages1 the opening scene1 possibly the first chapter1 fairly in mind2 you may have mental notes on one or two things your people will say4 ,beyond that you have only the haziest idea of what it will all be about4 ,write4 ,as you write it will come to you4 ,somehow4 ,what do you care how8 ,let the psychologists stew over that4 ,they1 in all probability1 will figure out that the story has already completely formed itself1 in all its essentials and in many details1 in your subconscious mind1 the lowermost cellar of your uninteresting personality where moth and rust do not corrupt1 whatever harm they may do higher up1 and where the cobwebs lie even more thickly than in your alleged brain4 ,as you write1 and as the result of the mere act of writing1 the story1 lying dormant in your subcellar1 slowly shakes a leg1 quivers1 stretches1 extends itself to its full length1 yawns1 rises with sundry anatomical contortions and advancing crosses the threshold of your subconsciousness into the well-dusted and cleaned basement of your consciousness whence it is but a step to full daylight and the shadow of printed black characters upon a to-and-fro travelling page4 ,in other words1 you are an automaton2 and to be an automaton in this world of exuberant originality is a blissful thing4 ,your brain is not engaged at all4 ,this is why writing fiction actually rests the brain4 ,it is why those who are suffering from brain-fag find recreation and enjoyment1 health and mental strength in writing a short story or a novel4 ,the short story is a two weeks' vacation for the tired mind4 ,writing a novel is a month1 with full pay4 ,it is true that readers are rather prone to resent the widespread habit of novelists recuperating and recovering their mental faculties at their readers' expense4 ,this resentment is without any justification in fact1 since for every novelist who recovers from brain-fag by writing a work of fiction there are thousands of readers who restore their exhausted intellects with a complete rest by reading the aforesaid work of fiction4 ,of course the subconscious cellar theory of novel-writing is not final and authoritative4 ,there is at least one other tenable explanation of how novels are written1 and we proceed to give it4 ,this is that the story is projected through the personality of the writer who is1 in all respects1 no more than a mechanism and whose rle may be accurately compared to that of a telephone transmitter in a talk over the wire4 ,this theory has the important virtue of explaining convincingly all the worst novels1 as well as all the best4 ,for a telephone transmitter is not responsible for what is spoken into it or for what it transmits4 ,it is not to blame for some very silly conversations4 ,it has no merit because it forwards some very wise words4 ,similarly1 if the novelist is merely a transmitter1 a peculiarly delicate and sensitive medium for conveying what is said and done somewhere else1 perhaps on some other plane by some other variety of mortals1 the novelist is in no wise to blame for the performances or utterances of his characters1 or clients as they ought1 in this view1 to be called2 the same novelist might1 and probably would1 be the means of transmitting the news of splendid deeds and the superb utterances of glorious people1 composing one story1 and the inanities1 verbal or otherwise1 of a lot of fourth dimensional ,greenwich ,villagers1 constituting another and infinitely inferior story4444 ,to be sure this explanation1 which relieves the novelist of almost all responsibility for his novels1 ought also to take from him all the credit for good work4 ,if he is a painfully conscientious mortal he may grieve for years over this2 but if his first or his second or his third book sells #ajj1jjj copies he will probably be willing1 in the words of the poet1 to take the cash and let the credit go4 ,very greedy men invariably insist on not merely taking the cash but claiming the credit as well2 saintly men clutch at the credit and instruct their publishers that all author's royalties are to be made over to the ,fund for ,heating the ,igloos of ,aged and ,helpless ,eskimos4 ,but the funny thing about the whole business is that the world1 which habitually withholds credit where credit is due1 at other times insists on bestowing credit anyway4 ,there have been whole human philosophies based upon the principle of ,renunciation and even whole novels1 such as those of ,henry ,james4 ,but it doesn't work4 ,renounce1 if you like1 all credit for the books which bear your name on the title-page4 ,the world will weave its laurel wreath and crown you with bays just the same4 ,men have become baldheaded in a single night in the effort to avoid unmerited honor and by noon the next day have looked as if they were bacchantes or at least hardy perennials1 so thick have been the vine leaves in their hair1 or rather on the site of it4444 ,which takes us away from our subject4 ,where were we8 ,oh1 yes1 about writing your novel4444 ,as soon as you have done two or three days' stint on the book--you ought to plan to write so many words a day or a week1 and it's no matter that you don't know what they will be--as soon as you've got a fairish start you will find that you have several persons in your story who are1 to all intents and purposes1 as much alive as yourself and considerably more self-willed4 ,they will promptly take the story in their hands and you will have nothing to do in the remaining #ej1jjj words or more but to set down what happens4 ,the extreme physical fatigue consequent upon writing so many words is all you have to guard against4 ,play golf or tennis1 if you can1 so as to offset this physical fatigue by the physical rest and intellectual exercise they respectively afford4 ,auction bridge in the evenings1 or1 as ,frank ,m4 ,o',brien says1 reading ,de ,morgan and listening to the phonograph1 will give you the emotional outlet you seek4 #ae ,no doubt many who have read the foregoing will turn up their noses at the well-meant advice it contains1 considering that we have largely jested on a serious subject4 ,we take this occasion to declare most earnestly1 at the conclusion of our remarks1 that we have seldom been so serious in our life4 ,such occasional levities as we have allowed ourselves to indulge in have been plain and obvious1 and of no more importance in the general scheme of what we have been discussing than the story of the ,irishman with which the gifted after-dinner speaker circumspectly introduces his most burning thoughts4 ,we mean what we have said4 ,writing a novel is one of the most rounded forms of self-education4 ,it is one of the most honorable too1 since1 unlike the holder of public office1 the person who is getting the education does not do so at the public expense4 ,we have regard1 naturally1 to the mere act of writing the novel4 ,if afterward it finds a publisher and less probably a public--that has nothing to do with the author1 whose self-culture1 intensive1 satisfying and wholesome1 has been completed before that time4 ,whether a novelist deserves any credit for the novel he writes is a question1 but he will get the credit for it anyway and nothing matters where so wonderful an experience is to be gained4 ,next to being hypnotized1 there is nothing like it2 and it has the great advantage that you know what you are doing whereas the hypnotic subject does not4 ,no preparation is necessary or even desirable since1 even in so specific a detail as the outline of the story the people of your narrative take things entirely in their own hands and reduce the outline to the now well-known status of a scrap of paper4444 ,we talk of 8advice0 in writing a novel4 ,the best advice is not to take any4 ,,the ,,end ,,transcriber',s ,,notes3 ,italicized text is surrounded by underscores3 italics4 ,obvious typographical errors have been corrected4 ,inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized4