Literature in the Making Part 11

"The poet must be influenced by the demand. There is inspiration in the demand. Besides the material reward, the poet who is influenced by the demand has the encouraging, inspiring knowledge that he is writing something that people want to read."

I asked Mr. Guiterman to give me a list of negative commandments for the guidance of aspiring poets. Here it is:

"Don't think of yourself as a poet, and don't dress the part.

"Don't cla.s.sify yourself as a member of any special school or group.

"Don't call your quarters a garret or a studio.

"Don't frequent exclusively the company of writers.

"Don't think of any cla.s.s of work that you feel moved to do as either beneath you or above you.

"Don't complain of lack of appreciation. (In the long run no really good published work can escape appreciation.)

"Don't think you are ent.i.tled to any special rights, privileges, and immunities as a literary person, or have any more reason to consider your possible lack of fame a grievance against the world than has any shipping-clerk or traveling-salesman.

"Don't speak of poetic license or believe that there is any such thing.

"Don't tolerate in your own work any flaws in rhythm, rhyme, melody, or grammar.

"Don't use 'e'er' for 'ever,' 'o'er' for 'over,' 'whenas' or 'what time'

for 'when,' or any of the 'poetical' commonplaces of the past.

"Don't say 'did go' for 'went,' even if you need an extra syllable.

"Don't omit articles or prepositions for the sake of the rhythm.

"Don't have your book published at your own expense by any house that makes a practice of publishing at the author's expense.

"Don't write poems about unborn babies.

"Don't--don't write hymns to the great G.o.d Pan. He is dead; let him rest in peace!

"Don't write what everybody else is writing."

_MAGAZINES CHEAPEN FICTION_

GEORGE BARR McCUTCHEON

Why is the modern American novel inferior to the modern English novel?

Of course, there are some patriotic critics who believe that it is not inferior. But most readers of fiction speak of H. G. Wells and Compton Mackenzie, for example, with a respect and admiration which they do not extend to living American novelists.

Why is this? Is it because of sn.o.bbishness or literary colonialism on the part of the American public? George Barr McCutcheon does not think so. The author of _Beverly of Graustark_ and many another popular romance believes that there is in America a force definitely harmful to the novel. And that force is the magazine.

"The development of the magazine," he said to me, "has affected fiction in two ways. It has made it cheap and yet expensive, if you know what I mean.

"Novels written solely with the view to sensationalism are more than likely to bring discredit, not upon the magazine, but upon the writer.

He gets his price, however, and the public gets its fiction.

"In my humble opinion, a writer should develop and complete his novel without a thought of its value or suitability to serial purposes. He should complete it to his own satisfaction--if that is possible--before submitting it to either editor or publisher. They should not be permitted to see it until it is in its complete form."

"But you yourself write serial stories, do you not?" I asked.

"I have never written a serial," answered Mr. McCutcheon. "Some of my stories have been published serially, but they were not written as serials.

"I am quite convinced in my own mind that if we undertake to a.n.a.lyze the distinction between the first-cla.s.s English writers of to-day and many of our Americans, we will find that their superiority resolves itself quite simply into the fact that they do not write their novels as serials. In other words, they write a novel and not a series of chapters, parts, and instalments."

"Do you think that the American novel will always be inferior to the English novel?" I asked. "Is it not probable that the American novel will so develop as to escape the effects of serialization?"

"There is no reason," Mr. McCutcheon replied, "why Americans should not produce novels equal to those of the English, provided the same care is exercised in the handling of their material, and that they make haste as slowly as possible. Just so long, however, as we are menaced by the perils of the serial our general output will remain inferior to that of England.

"I do not mean to say that we have no writers in this country who are the equals in every respect of the best of the English novelists. We have some great men and women here, sincere, earnest workers who will not be spoiled."

Mr. McCutcheon has no respect for the type of novel, increasingly popular of late, in which the author devotes page after page to glowing accounts of immorality with the avowed intention of teaching a high moral lesson. He has little faith in the honesty of purpose of the authors of works of this sort.

"The so-called s.e.x novel," he said, "is one of our gravest fatalities. I may be wrong, but I am inclined to think that most novels of that character are written, not from an aesthetic point of view, but for the somewhat laudable purpose of keeping the wolf from the door and at the same time allowing the head of the family to ride in an automobile of his own.

"The typical serial writer is animated by the desire, or perhaps it is an obligation, to make the 'suspended interest' paramount to all else.

This interest must not be allowed to flag between instalments.

"The keen desire for thrills must be gratified at all costs. It is commanded by the editor--and I do not say that the editor errs. His public expects it in a serial. It must not be disappointed."

I asked Mr. McCutcheon if he believed that a writer could produce sensational and poorly constructed fiction in order to make a living and yet keep his talent unimpaired; if a writer was justified in writing trash in order to gain leisure for serious work. He replied:

"There are writers to-day who persist in turning out what they vaingloriously describe as 'stuff to meet the popular demand.' They invariably or inevitably declare that some day they will 'be in a position to write the sort of stuff they want to write.'

"These writers say, in defense of their position, that they are not even trying to do their best work, that they are merely biding their time, and that--some day! I very much doubt their sincerity, or, at any rate, their capacity for self-a.n.a.lysis. I believe that when an author sets himself down to write a book (I refer to any author of recognized ability), he puts into that book the best that is in him at the time.

"It is impossible for a good, conscientious writer to work on a plane lower than his best. Only hack writers can do such things.

"There is not one of us who does not do his best when he undertakes to write his book. We only confess that we have not done our best when a critic accuses us of pot-boiling, and so forth. Then we rise in our pride and say, 'Oh, well, I can do better work than this, and they know it.'

"It is true that we may not be doing the thing that we really want to do, but I am convinced that we are unconsciously doing our best, just the same. It all resolves itself into this statement--a good workman cannot deliberately do a poor piece of work.

"I am free to confess that I have done my very best in everything I have undertaken. It may fall short of excellence as viewed from even my own viewpoint, but it is the best I know how to do.

"So you may take it from me that the writer who declares that he is going to do something really worth while, just as soon as he gets through doing the thing that the public expects him to do, is deceiving himself and no one else. An author cannot stand still in his work. He either progresses or retrogrades, and no man progresses except by means of steady improvement. He cannot say, 'I will write a poor book this year and a great book next year.'"

Mr. McCutcheon is so unashamedly a romanticist that I expected to find him an enthusiastic partisan of the first and greatest master of the romantic novel in English. But, to my surprise, he said:

"I suppose the world has outgrown Sir Walter Scott's novels. It is quite natural that it should. The world is older and conditions have changed.

The fairest simile I can offer in explanation is that as man himself grows older he loses, except in a too frequently elastic memory, his interest in the things that moved him when he was a boy."

But while Mr. McCutcheon believes (in defiance of the opinion of the publishers who continue to bring out, year by year, their countless new editions of the Waverley Novels in all the languages of the civilized world) that the spell of the Wizard of the North has waned, he nevertheless believes that the romantic novel has lost none of its ancient appeal.