Chapter I: Part 1

THE BOOKMAN ANTHOLOGY
OF ESSAYS [_1923_]

Edited by JOHN FARRAR

THE BOOKMAN _Books_

A series of volumes dealing with literary subjects, sometimes grave, sometimes gay; but designed to acquaint the reader with the current tendencies of writing in America.

A PARODY OUTLINE OF HISTORY
_Donald Ogden Stewart_

THE BUSINESS OF WRITING:
A Practical Guide for Authors
_Robert Cortes Holliday_ and
_Alexander Van Rensselaer_

THE BOOKMAN ANTHOLOGY OF VERSE [1922]
edited by _John Farrar_

TIMOTHY TUBBY’S JOURNAL
_Anonymous_

THE BOOKMAN ANTHOLOGY OF ESSAYS [1923]
edited by _John Farrar_

THE LITERARY SPOTLIGHT
_Anonymous_
with an introduction by _John Farrar_

NEW YORK: GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

THE
BOOKMAN ANTHOLOGY
OF ESSAYS

[_1923_]

EDITED BY
JOHN FARRAR

NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1923,
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

THE BOOKMAN ANTHOLOGY OF ESSAYS [1923]. I

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

PREFACE

This book is not properly titled. It should not have been called “The Bookman Anthology of Essays.” This is not a collection of essays; but of sketches, of discussions, of literary jottings, miscellaneous pieces that have been published in +The Bookman+ during the past two years. My excuse for collecting them is that for the most part they are worth while in themselves, and, as a whole, seem to me to show the present-day literary attitude in America.

For a true anthology of essays one would be obliged to secure the work of English writers such as Chesterton, Lucas and Belloc, American writers such as Agnes Repplier, Samuel Crothers and Gamaliel Bradford. Perhaps some day it will be my good fortune to prepare such a volume; but for the present, I have attempted to give you an informal survey of the way those who write our books and our magazines are thinking to-day. These pieces of prose are not from the pens of members of any single school or group of writers. Personally, I am one of those who believe that such schools or groups do not exist in the United States. At any rate, here are varying shades of opinion, varying methods of writing, varying moods. A Negro discusses the position of his race among American writers; one dramatic critic recounts anecdotes of O. Henry, another, memories of Sarah Bernhardt; Heywood Broun describes the reading of a great prizefighter; Hugh Walpole chides the volatile Mr. Mencken, and Mr. Mencken replies. Charles Henry Meltzer was a dramatic critic in New York many years ago, Alexander Woollcott now serves in that capacity. Both of them are represented here. Arthur Bostwick is a famous librarian, William McFee, a ship’s engineer who writes novels. William Lyon Phelps is a critic of enthusiasm and of experience. Burton Rascoe is a young man with a biting tongue and a fresh standard. Here they speak for themselves. My attempt has been, as you see, to present contrasts, and to present them without prejudice.

The only Englishmen included here are William McFee and Hugh Walpole, both of whom have such definite connections with America that they seem a part of our literary scene. McFee has made New York his home port for many years and is about to become a naturalized American. Walpole went to school in New York when he was a boy, has lectured here with success, and, to my mind, understands and seems to like the United States, better than any other of the procession of visiting English novelists.

To understand current literary tendencies in America would be a Herculean task. To sympathize with such tendencies after they were understood would, I fancy, require the ability of a chameleon. To study them, however, is fascinating. As a public we are yet so young and so impressionable that we veer to the right and to the left with the slightest inflation of our sails; and following in the footsteps of Mr. Barnum, our mentors are peculiarly adept at furnishing the wind of publicity. This keeps our literary study clubs, our college curricula and our literary magazines and newspaper supplements in such a state of flux that analysis of a year’s opinions issuing from the same fountain-head would be sure to uncover mirth-provoking inconstancy. In spite of all this, we are gradually developing a national taste in reading and a national interest in things cultural. I want you to note the curious and constant use by my contributors of the name of Harold Bell Wright as a symbol of American taste.

I hope that in the following pages you will find a key which is not too heavy, which will unlock one door, at least, of the fortress of American opinion. As in “The Bookman Anthology of Verse” I hoped that you would read casually at first, here, too, I should be pleased if you would skim the volume rapidly, gaining from it, if my attempt has been successful, an informal, gay and yet real panorama of the world of letters in America to-day. When you return to your individual favorites, when you look, perhaps, further than this volume for more of their work, I hope you will find that writing in America, while it is formative, often crude, and occasionally ill-mannered, is gaining a vitality of expression and viewpoint which the literature of more polished countries is losing, or has lost.

J. F.

_New York City,_
_September, 1923_.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The editor would like to thank the publishers and the authors of the following volumes for permission to reprint certain things from them:

+George H. Doran Company+--for Heywood Broun’s “Mr. Dempsey’s
Five-Foot Shelf” from _Pieces of Hate_; Aline Kilmer’s “On Works
of Reference” from _Hunting a Hair Shirt and Other Spiritual
Adventures_; Oliver Herford’s “The Hundredth Amendment” from
_Neither Here Nor There_.

+Duffield and Company+--for John Erskine’s “Spotlight or Fame” from
_The Literary Discipline_.

+Century Company+--for Alexander Woollcott’s “O. Henry, Playwright”
from _Shouts and Murmurs_.

+Harcourt, Brace & Co.+--for Kenneth Macgowan’s “Religion and the
Theatre” from _Continental Stagecraft_.

INDEX OF AUTHORS

+Austin, Mary+, 214

+Bostwick, Arthur E.+, 117

+Brawley, Benjamin+, 259

+Broun, Heywood+, 17

+Brown, Abbie Farwell+, 77

+Dell, Floyd+, 137

+Erskine, John+, 37

+Fisher, Dorothy Canfield+, 236

+Gale, Zona+, 152

+Hawthorne, Hildegarde+, 103

+Herford, Oliver+, 250

+Holliday, Robert Cortes+, 184

+Kilmer, Aline+, 131

+Macgowan, Kenneth+, 172

+Masson, Thomas L.+, 46

+Maurice, Arthur Bartlett+, 113

+McFee, William+, 27

+Meltzer, Charles Henry+, 69

+Mencken, H. L.+, 65

+Phelps, William Lyon+, 158

+Preston, Keith+, 88

+Rascoe, Burton+, 226

+Rinehart, Mary Roberts+, 94

+Walpole, Hugh+, 54

+Woollcott, Alexander+, 197

INDEX OF ESSAYS

+Bernhardt, Sarah+, 69
_Charles Henry Meltzer_

+Church and the Library, The+, 118
_Arthur E. Bostwick_

+Criticism and Bad Manners+, 138
_Floyd Dell_

+Dempsey’s Five-Foot Shelf, Mr.+, 18
_Heywood Broun_

+Dickens of It, The+, 89
_Keith Preston_

+Gentle Argonauts, The+, 28
_William McFee_

+Hundredth Amendment, The+, 250
_Oliver Herford_

+Landmark Passes, A+, 114
_Arthur Bartlett Maurice_

+Mencken, H. L., An Open Letter to+, 55
_Hugh Walpole_

+Mencken, Mr., Replies+, 66
_H. L. Mencken_

+Murray Hill’s Recollections of James Huneker+, 185
_Robert Cortes Holliday_

+Negro in American Literature, The+, 259
_Benjamin Brawley_

+Nietzschean Pilgrim Fathers+, 237
_Dorothy Canfield Fisher_

+New Word in Play Producing, The+, 153
_Zona Gale_

+O. Henry, Playwright+, 198
_Alexander Woollcott_

+On Works of Reference+, 132
_Aline Kilmer_

+Peabody, Josephine, “The Piper,”+ 77
_Abbie Farwell Brown_

+Religion and the Theatre+, 173
_Kenneth Macgowan_

+Santayana’s, George, “Life of Reason,”+ 227
_Burton Rascoe_

+Spotlight or Fame?+, 38
_John Erskine_

+Surrender Books+, 47
_Thomas L. Masson_

+Unreality of Modern Realism, The+, 95
_Mary Roberts Rinehart_

+Why of the Best Seller, The+, 159
_William Lyon Phelps_

+Women as Audience+, 215
_Mary Austin_

+Wright American, The+, 104
_Hildegarde Hawthorne_

THE BOOKMAN ANTHOLOGY
OF ESSAYS [_1923_]

THE
BOOKMAN ANTHOLOGY
OF ESSAYS

_Heywood Broun_

Large, shambling, often ill at ease, kindly, yet with that curious detachment which marks those who are much absorbed in their own thought, Heywood Broun invariably impresses one as possessing a child-like eagerness. Whether as sport writer, feature writer, critic of books or plays, colyumnist, essayist or novelist, his writing is characterized by the same freshness, the same accuracy of reporting. He was born in Brooklyn. For a time he attended Harvard University. His greatest enthusiasm is, perhaps, for baseball, though he likes poker. I like best to think of him in his office at the New York “World”, about fifteen minutes before copy is due for the morning paper, surrounded by papers, letters from contributors, his own jottings, what not, spinning a yarn from nowhere, gathering an opinion from the wind as it whistles around the tower of the Pulitzer Building. His wife is Miss Ruth Hale, writer and motion picture critic. His child is well known to the public through his father’s writings as “H 3d.” I have attended football games, theatres, dinners, and heaven save me, teas, with Mr. Broun. He always shows fresh curiosity for events as they unfold, a gentle sympathy for all types of men and a thorough disrespect for all forms of snobbery. It is natural that in the following essay he should defend the somewhat frowned on champion of the ring. Dempsey’s child-like determination could not but appeal to the mind of Mr. Broun. If he were not so clever, he would be sentimental; as it is, he is thoroughly human.

MR. DEMPSEY’S FIVE-FOOT SHELF

It is hardly fair to expect Jack Dempsey to take literature very seriously. How, for instance, can he afford to pay much attention to George Bernard Shaw who declared just before the fight that Carpentier could not lose and ought to be quoted at odds of fifty to one? From the point of view of Dempsey, then, creative evolution, the superman and all the rest, are the merest moonshine. He might well take the position that since Mr. Shaw was so palpably wrong about the outcome of the fight two days before it happened, it scarcely behooves anybody to pay much attention to his predictions as to the fate of the world and mankind two thousand years hence.

Whatever the reason, Jack Dempsey does not read George Bernard Shaw much. But he has heard of him. When some reporter came to Dempsey a day or so before the fight and told him that Shaw had fixed fifty to one as the proper odds on Carpentier, the champion made no comment. The newspaper gossiper, disappointed of his sensation, asked if Dempsey had ever heard of Shaw and the fighter stoutly maintained that he had. The examination went no further but it is fair to assume that Dempsey did know the great British sporting writer. It was not remarkable that he paid no attention to his prediction. Dempsey would not even be moved much by a prediction from Hughie Fullerton.

In other words literature and life are things divorced in Dempsey’s mind. He does read. The first time we ever saw Dempsey he discussed books with not a little interest. He was not at his training quarters when we arrived but his press agent showed us about--a singularly reverential man this press agent. “This”, he said, and he seemed to lower his voice, “is the bed where Jack Dempsey sleeps”. All the Louises knew better beds and so did Lafayette even when a stranger in a strange land. Washington himself fared better in the midst of war. Nor can it be said that there was anything very compelling about the room in which Dempsey slept. It had air but not much distinction. There were just two pictures on the wall. One represented a heavy surf upon an indeterminate but rather rockbound coast and the other showed a lady asleep with cupids hovering about her bed. Although the thought is erotic the artist had removed all that in the execution.

Much more striking was the fact that upon a chair beside the bed of Dempsey lay a couple of books and a magazine. It was not +The Bookman+ but “Photo Play”. The books were “The Czar’s Spy” by William Le Queux, “The Spoilers” by Rex Beach, and at least one other western novel which we have unfortunately forgotten. It was, as we remember it, the Luck of the Lazy Something or Other. The press agent said that Jack read quite a little and pointed to the reading light which had been strung over his bed. He then went on to show us the clothes closet and the bureau of the champion to prove that he was no slave to fashion. We can testify that only one pair of shoes in the room had grey suède tops. Then we saw the kitchen and were done.

There had been awe in the tones of the conductor from the beginning. “Jack’s going to have roast lamb for dinner to-night”, he announced in an awful hush. Even as we went out he could not resist lowering his voice a little as he said, “This is the hat rack. This is where the champion puts his hat”. We had gone only fifty yards away from the house when a big brown limousine drew up. “That”, said the press agent, and this time we feared that he was going to die, “is Jack Dempsey himself”.

The preparation had been so similar to the first act of “Enter Madame” that we expected temperament and gesture from the star. He put us wholly at ease by being much more frightened than anyone in the visiting party. As somebody has said somewhere, “Any mouse can make this elephant squeal”. Jack Dempsey is decidedly a timid man and we found later that he was a gentle one. He answered, “Yes sir” and “No sir” at first. If we had his back and shoulders we’d have a civil word for no man. By and by he grew a little more at ease and somebody asked him what he read. He was not particularly strong on the names of books and he always forgot the author, which detracts somewhat from this article as a guide for readers. There were almost three hundred books at his disposal, since his training quarters had once been an aviation camp. These were the books of the fliers. Practically all the popular novelists and short story writers were represented. We remember seeing several titles by Mary Roberts Rinehart, Irvin Cobb, Zane Grey, Rupert Hughes, and Rex Beach. Older books were scarce. The only one we noticed was “A Tale of Two Cities”. This Dempsey had not read. Perhaps Jack Kearns advised against it on account of the possible disturbing psychological effects of the chapter with all the counting.

Dempsey said he had devoted most of his time to western novels. When questioned he admitted that he did not altogether surrender himself to them. “I was a cowboy once for a while”, he said. “There’s a lot of hoakum in those books”. But when pressed as to what he really liked his face did light up and he even remembered the name of the book. “There was one book I’ve been reading”, he burst out; “it’s a fine book. It’s called ‘The Czar’s Spy’.”

“Perhaps”, suggested Ruth Hale of the visiting party, “a grand duke would say there was a lot of hoakum in that.”

Dempsey was not to be deterred by any such higher criticism. Never having been a grand duke, he did not worry about the accuracy of the story. It was in a field far apart from life. That we gathered was his idea of the proper field for fiction. In life Dempsey is a stern realist. It is only in reading that he is romantic. A more impressionable man would have been disturbed by the air of secrecy which surrounded the camp of Carpentier. That never worried Dempsey. He prepared himself and never thought up contingencies. He did not even like to talk fight. None of us drew him out much about boxing. Somebody told him that Jim Corbett had reported that when he first met Carpentier he had been vastly tempted to make a feint at the Frenchman to see whether or not he would fall into a proper attitude of defense.

“Yes”, giggled Dempsey, “and it would have been funny if Carp had busted him one on the chin.” This seemed to him an extraordinarily humorous conceit and he kept chuckling over it every now and then. While he was in this good humor somebody sounded him out as to what he would do if he lost; or rather the comment was made that an old time fighter, once a champion, was now coming back to the ring and had declared that he was as good as he ever was.

“Why shouldn’t he?” said Dempsey just a little sharply. “Nobody wants to see a man that says he isn’t as good as he used to be.”

“Would you say that?” he was asked.

“Well”, said Dempsey, and this time he reflected a little, “it would all depend on how I was fixed. If I needed the money I would. I’d use all the old alibis.”

We liked that frankness and we liked Dempsey again when somebody wanted to know how he could possibly say anything in the ring during the fight to “get the goat of Carpentier”. “We ain’t nearly well enough acquainted for that”, said Dempsey and we gathered that he was of the opinion that you must know a man pretty well before you can insult him. The champion is not a man to whom one would look for telling rejoinders, though he has needed them often enough in the last year and a half. Criticism has hurt him, for he is not insensitive. He is merely inarticulate. This must have been the reason which prompted some sporting writers to feel that he would come into the ring whipped and down from the fact that he had been able to make no reply to all the charges brought against him. It did not work out that way. Dempsey did have a means of expression and he used it. There is no logic in force and yet a man can say, “Is that so?” with his fists. Dempsey said it. As the Freudians have it, fighting is his “escape”. Decidedly he is a man with an inferiority complex. But for his boxing skill he would need literature badly. As it is he does not need to read about hairbreadth escapes. He has them, such as in the second round of the fight on Boyle’s Thirty Acres. In summing up we can only add that as yet literature has had no large effect upon the life of Jack Dempsey.

But what does Carpentier read? That we must confess was part of our assignment. We have nothing to report. The challenger was in secret training throughout. Evidently his trainers hoped to worry Dempsey by not letting him know whether Carpentier was with Racine or Paul de Kock. And all the time Dempsey was sticking to “The Czar’s Spy” and worrying not at all. We don’t know then whether or not Carpentier is interested in literature or influenced by it, but the drama has made him. He is drama. No piece of acting was ever so perfect as the tragedy which Carpentier played in Jersey City. We liked Dempsey but no sooner had Carpentier come into the ring than we began to cheer him and kept it up. The crowd cheered him when he took off his bath-robe, when he was photographed, when he almost knocked Dempsey down, and when he was himself knocked down. Leaving the ring a little later, he was cheered as no other beaten fighter has ever been cheered in America.

We wish every young American playwright who is about to write a tragedy had seen the fight. They would realize then that the school founded by Eugene O’Neill is based on a misconception of the spirit of tragedy. It does not lie in the fact that man is small and helpless in the hands of fate which outclasses him in reach and in weight. The tragic fact is that man is almost good enough to win in his inspired moments. He can rock fate but he cannot down it. That is the pity of the struggle. But come to think of it there is nothing so terribly sorrowful in tragedy after all. Fate, like Jack Dempsey, wins the title; but the gesture remains with man, the light heavyweight. As he goes down he hears no slow toll of numbers. All that is drowned out by the cheering.

_William McFee_

William McFee was born, I believe, on his father’s ship. Most of his life he has spent in ships as a sea-going engineer. He has shown me the engine room of a fruit vessel with as much pride as the script of a new novel. A strong man, and a bluff man, with a seaman’s sense of humor and a book lover’s wisdom, he does not bemoan the vanished days of sailing vessels. His romances are those of the swift modern ships, of merchantman and transport. As an essayist and critic he is almost as well known as for his novels. Now, he has left the sea, bought a cottage at Westport, Connecticut, where he intends living with his mother who has come from England to join him. But the last one hears of him is sailing off with Captain David Bone, author of the “The Brassbounder,” on the “Tuscania”. On that trip one can picture many a chat such as the one described in the following essay. However, when he does settle down in the New England country, he will doubtless dream of the sea, and write his romances. Here is an Englishman who has firmly adopted the ways of America. A quiet, deep-thinking man, William McFee, with a personality that is sturdy, rather than magnetic, dependable rather than fiery.

THE GENTLE ARGONAUTS

The group in the smoke room this morning was a fairly representative microcosm. There were two men making the round trip because it was the slack of the year in their businesses, and Europe was too far, too costly, and too inconvenient. There were a couple of salesmen voyaging with the idea of conquering the West Indies for their houses, an official, with a monocle, proceeding to some distant British possession; and one or two of the ship’s officers, who regarded the glittering beauty of the blue waters with bored and introspective eyes. In a far corner a young gentleman with extremely sleek black hair was writing a letter--he was no doubt a Latin American youth returning disconsolately to his own volcanic country after a hilarious time at an American university. In the palm court abaft the smoke room were reclining a number of dark dazzling creatures, their hands and arms and ears sparkling with massive gems, who were likewise returning to the bosoms of their families after a successful season in New York. And ever and anon there could be seen passing the open windows, as he made his morning promenade, the inevitable elderly and dried up Latin American of immense wealth, one of whom, in grey pants and alpaca coat, seems to be forever drifting to and fro on the waters of the Caribbean.

And in some way now forgotten by all concerned, the talk turned upon books.

“I never read anything,” barked one of the roundtrippers, reaching for a match. “My wife’s crazy about books--house is full of ’em--Ibáñez and Harold Bell Wright, and Shakespeare, and all those fellows. I never read any of ’em.”

There was a delighted silence while he lit his cigar.

The Englishman’s monocle showed a blind white glare as he looked out at the dancing sea.

“Oh, I shouldn’t go as far as that”, he murmured. “It is a great comfort, you know, in certain situations--the reading habit, don’t you think?”

He didn’t look it, but he had spent an anxious year in Mesopotamian prisons and would have gone mad there but for a damaged novelette which he had read so often it had rotted under his hands. He received unexpected support from the other roundtripper.

“You’ve said something,” agreed that gentleman. “I consider reading a very fine thing--a very fine thing indeed. I collect books, gentlemen, first editions of living authors. I have a remarkably fine collection--all signed first editions. I send my bookplate with a letter and the authors send it back signed.”

“What’s the good of that?” demanded his companion suspiciously. “Look at the cost!”

“Autographs,” replied the other tranquilly, “are going up. Some of mine are worth fifty dollars.”

His truculent friend let his jaw drop a little as he stared and digested this novel fact. He was interested in an indolent way. His suspicion, his truculence, his interest, all had a slightly meretricious air. He was on vacation. No doubt his attitude toward life at home was sane and humorous enough. Books were not his métier.

“Oh, no doubt,” the Englishman was saying. “It is very difficult to make a decent choice, once you leave the regular well known men. Even they,” he added, rubbing his nose with the side of his forefinger, “let you down at times.”

One of the salesmen reached behind him on the cushions and fished out a volume. “What would you say about this sort of thing,” he asked, handing it over. “Everybody seems to be reading them now.”

The Englishman accepted it gingerly, his rigid features assuming an expression of extreme concern, as though he felt he had been taken at a disadvantage. As he had. He had forgotten the American Law of Applied Responsibility. By this law, if you reveal an aptitude or a proclivity, you are instantly voted into a position where that aptitude or proclivity can be useful to the community and a source of profit to yourself. This peculiar custom is unknown in England, where a man of talent often spends half his life modestly concealing his ability, and the other half waiting for someone else to die, so that he can get a chance to use it. Realizing, however, that he was one of an imperial race, this particular Englishman braced himself, settled his eyeglass, and after examining the book said he had read it and “found it rather rot, you know.”

“Oh, no!” objected one of the officers, suddenly. “It is a very important book, if you look at it from the right standpoint. Did you read it through?”

“Couldn’t,” replied the Englishman in a small, precise voice. “I got as far as--as far as--well, anyhow, I had to chuck it. Not in my line.”

“Then you can hardly set up as a judge of it,” suggested the other. The Englishman was somewhat nettled.

“Only in so far as I couldn’t stay the whole distance,” he retorted. “That’s criticism in a way I take it. What!”

There was a general laugh and a readjustment of moods as the waiter approached with tall glasses.

“You were saying--” murmured the Englishman after a first libation.

“That a book like this one here, a solidly packed slab of fiction, is a sign of the times. It has no particular features of originality at all. But it has for its theme and milieu the Marquesas or some such island group in the South Seas, and just at present there is a very peculiar craze for the South Seas. Anything at all, so long as it is about the South Seas, may go with the public, and the publishers take the wildest chances. People without any ability to write at all are preparing huge masses of trivial travel talk and illustrating it with photographs of themselves in loin cloths grouped with native women who do not look beautiful even in the prints. Anything at all may make a hit. They, the publishers, think of ‘The Moon and Sixpence,’ forgetting that Somerset Maugham’s genius had a good deal to do with that book. They remember only that in spite of Curwood, Jack London, Ridgwell Cullum, and other specialists of the north, there is a decided set toward the South Seas.”

“How do you account for that?” asked one of the company.

“I can’t account for it, but I have sometimes felt that people were turning toward these distant spots of earth as to a kind of modern Hesperides or Fortunate Islands, where the troubles of life in steamheated apartments, department stores, and crowded subways, for instance, do not exist. The north and the west have been worked to death. The east, Europe and so forth, have gone down in our estimation as paradises. And so, led as usual by the artists, by Gauguin, Stevenson, and Somerset Maugham, we are all busy in the bazaars demanding private magic carpets to take us to the Sunny South Seas, where golden skinned men and delicious girls play _papalagis_ to the _wahines_. Or is it the _wahines_ which are played to the _papalagis_? I forget. Nor does it matter. This search for innocent and philosophic harems is bound to fail. Those islands have no existence save for the artists who discover them. If you look around the promenade deck here you will find most of the passengers reading about the distant coral groups of the Southern Pacific, with one or two exceptions who are reading about the coral lips of Ethel Dell’s heroines, or the cattle corrals of Zane Grey’s virile heroes. The author of this particular book, however, has rashly decided to do without photographs of repulsive Polynesian women. The character of his hero, a handsome Englishman in love with a Latin American president’s daughter, is out of date as well as out of drawing. Indeed there is no harm in a picture being out of drawing, as we say, if it carries you with it and conveys an authentic emotion. But to be out of date is the worst of literary crimes. All art is convention, and it is therefore imperative that you use the current convention to reveal the truth. This book reveals nothing save the author’s absurd notions of the ingredients of a romance.”

“A romance is a love story, I take it,” said someone.

“Quite possibly. Nowadays, however, a romance has to take place on an island. Have you ever reflected upon the fascination islands seem to exert upon novelists? Think of the islands of literature--a veritable archipelago! Shakespeare with his ‘Tempest’ was an early victim. Swift invented a floating island. Defoe of course you recall. Modern authors teem with islands. ‘Treasure Island,’ ‘The Island of Doctor Moreau,’ ‘L’Ile des Pingouins,’ ‘The Island Princess,’ ‘Island Nights’ Entertainments,’ ‘The Isle of Unrest,’ ‘An Outcast of the Islands.’ You can even include Kipling’s ‘Islanders’ and Galsworthy’s ‘Island Pharisees’ if you are of a sardonic turn. There is something romantic in the very nature of an island, something finite, enclosed, cut off, remote--the centre of a mysterious hemispherical universe of sea and sky. I admit this because I am under the spell of an island myself. I know an island, not so large, which is very dear to my heart. All day and all night you can hear the immense rumor of the tides of human life washing to and fro in the caverns, almost ‘measureless to man,’ of her rocks. Each day increase the great cliffs of coralline structure fashioned by her millions of tiny inhabitants. The men are not golden skinned, but they have strong hearts and steady brains and are good comrades. As for the women, who would leave them for the doubtful charms of Polynesia? The women of my island are the most beautiful in the world, for they have been garnered from all over the world.”

“Where’s this place!” barked the truculent health seeker. “In the West Indies?”

The other man smiled a little and shook his head.

“Oh no,” he said, signaling to the waiter, “we’ve just left it. I was speaking of Manhattan.”

_John Erskine_

First, the lover of literature, second, the professor, I should say of John Erskine. This large, genial but positive gentleman has long been among the undergraduates one of the most popular professors at Columbia University. Yet he has preserved, in the midst of academic strictures, an unusual tolerance for modern tendencies in letters. While he chides you gently for carelessness of viewpoint or slovenly phrase, he is willing to find whatever is good in the new thing. His own poetry in its recent collection shows beauty of phrase, incisive imagery, and adherence to old models. Always he is interested in the young poet, and we find him the willing patron and adviser of undergraduate poets and poetry societies. Born in New York City, he took both his A.B. and his Ph.D. degrees from Columbia University. This has not made him, however, insular. As President of the Authors Club he made valiant attempts to keep that institution from a too rigid adherence to dusty tradition, and, if his efforts to unite and strengthen the unruly and amorphous Poetry Society of America were not successful, failure must be traced to the nature of the organization itself rather than to any lack of effort on Dr. Erskine’s part. His viewpoint is well illustrated by this essay in which he deplores the journalistic attitude. Technique, after all, is a god which cannot be lightly discarded. An able executive, a poet of charm, a teacher of great abilities, John Erskine has been a stabilizing force in American letters.

SPOTLIGHT OR FAME?

If a popular writer today ever asks himself what his chances are for fame, he may well conclude that popularity is all he should hope for. He must see that the public have become accustomed to reading books but once, as they read a newspaper; that to maintain his position he must continue to bring out new books; and that when he comes to an end, other writers will take his place. He will notice also that authors who once reached a large audience now miss their old effect even though they continue to produce books--as though they had left the track of popularity without knowing it. He may wonder whether they are merely repeating themselves before an audience that must have novelty, or whether--(comfort too tempting!)--their work has improved beyond the public taste.

However he analyzes it, the tendency he observes in our writing is a tendency toward journalism instead of art. The reward of journalistic success may be popularity, the temporary spotlight, but it cannot be fame. Fame is continued admiration for something that endures. The service that journalism renders us is too great not to have a vast appreciation, but the service is for a day, and the interest of a day is novelty, news, and the reward of news is the headline or the spotlight, not fame. Our books are largely written as news, advertised as news, criticized as news. Mr. Van Loon writes that James Harvey Robinson’s new book “is a bomb.” Another very contemporary critic says that Mr. Van Loon’s own new book “has all the thrills of a Nick Carter detective story”. Since the books so described are studies in history, we might expect them to have the praise of being true, but truth and news are not necessarily the same thing. To call a book a bomb or to compare it to a Nick Carter story is to give it the praise of news, which goes off but once. Mr. Van Loon and Mr. Robinson must write other books if they wish to hold the spotlight; the bombs of memory, however cherished, cannot compete with actual noises.

The journalistic tendency is felt perhaps in all the arts, but most in books and in the theatre, less in music, still less in painting, and least in architecture and sculpture. From these last we can learn, if we need a reminder, what are the conditions of enduring art, and what, in contrast to popularity, is fame. Sculpture and architecture, from the substantial nature of their medium, must submit to be looked at more than once, to be lived with, finally to be judged by the good opinions of many men over a long period of time; and a good opinion of such work, so lived with, will depend less on the first impression than on habitual contact. For such work popularity is difficult, if not impossible. “Three Soldiers” is a popular book; the Farragut statue in Madison Square is not a popular statue. What statue is popular? It can have only the better kind of success, if any; like the Farragut, it can be famous, loved and returned to over an indefinite length of time. For we can read a book once and throw it aside, or hear music or see a play but once, and then criticize it; it lies entirely in our choice whether we shall read or hear twice. How different our criticism would be if it were based on at least half a dozen readings and hearings.

It would be a misfortune to seem to be attacking journalism as such; what is here intended is only to distinguish between journalism and art. Art is the expression of life we can live with habitually. But there is much about life which we ought to know, and yet we do not care to dwell on, nor even enjoy hearing the first time. To give us this, along with other news, is the function of journalism. Mrs. Stowe’s disclosure of Byron’s private life may have been as necessary to print as she thought it was, in the interest of justice and morality, but it was journalism, not art. As much may be said today for Mr. O’Neill’s plays, which as they follow each other in journalistic succession maintain a journalistic success by bringing headline news of society. If Mr. O’Neill should stop writing now, would his plays hold the stage? Of course the question is irrelevant if he is primarily concerned with educating us to the truth, as Mrs. Stowe was, but if he has an artist’s interest in the permanent audience, in the judgment that ripens with long acquaintance, he may ask himself whether he has written anything yet that human beings will care to live with. “Three Soldiers”, to return to the striking example, was frankly advertised and properly criticized as journalism, as news, revelations of the now-it-can-be-told kind. In what he had to tell, Mr. Dos Passos, like Mrs. Stowe in her Byron story, may have been wrong, and nothing worse can be said of news than that it is not correct. But whether wrong or right, the book will be read widely as long as the psychology of the American soldier is a subject of popular debate, and then it will become as forgotten as Mrs. Stowe’s far more sensational paper. For all we know, Mr. Dos Passos may be an artist as well as a journalist. When he begins the career of the artist, he will learn the old truth about art, that it is long, and that its reward in fame comes slowly. The same experience will come to Scott Fitzgerald and Dorothy Speare, or to any others who bring us news of the Younger Generation; they now enjoy our gratitude for the news, but in that kind of popularity there are always the seeds of neglect and obscurity--they must bring us more news, and more news, and they must keep up to date, or we will have another town crier. And what town crier, for all the attention he got, ever had fame?

It would be a misfortune also to seem to say that the author who misses popularity is necessarily an artist, or that even temporary success is not to be admired. But in American letters we are beginning to wonder why our great successes are so transitory; why a writer who sells more copies of his first book than did Thackeray or Dickens, does not continue like them to reach a large public with succeeding books; and why he does not, like them, continue to be read after he has ceased to write. The explanation suggested is that most American writers, not only today but throughout the last twenty-five years, have written as journalists--have put out their material not as life but as news about life, and the critics have discussed it as news, and the readers have come to look for the news in it, and for nothing else. Some novelists still writing began their work with successful stories of local color, which we read in order to learn about Louisiana or Pennsylvania or the middle west; having got the information we were looking for, we went elsewhere to look into other novelties. It goes without saying that in this process we readers have done injustice to many a work of art; “Old Creole Days” and “Main Traveled Roads” have something for the permanent reader, as well as for the news seeker, and “Trilby”--to speak of an English book, is still a magnificent romance of friendship and chivalry, though it expired of its own success as a bulletin from the Latin Quarter and a document in hypnotism.

Are we doing a similar injustice to works of art today, by asking of them only a temporary service? How many of us will read a novel or a poem more than once, or will go several times to the same play? How many young writers care to aim at such an audience, who ask of art the privilege of entering themselves into the novel or poem or play, of living the lives of the characters, of falling in love with hero or heroine, of hating the villain, and of repeating this experience with deeper emotions on each rereading? The future of our literature is bound up with such questions. We shall have plenty of stories of the studious or psychological kind, plenty of philosophical or social minded novels and poems, but that is not enough; we must have the opportunity to reach experience in our own imagination, and do our own thinking about it. The author’s point of view, if presented apart from life or with life only as an illustration of it, is after all nothing but news. We read a book by Mr. Keynes to get his latest ideas on the economics of the Treaty, or a book by Mr. Shaw to see what he will say next, or one by Winston Churchill, once an artist, to see whether we share his opinion of the churches or his guesses about immortality; but to art we return to meet old friends like Tom Sawyer or Leatherstocking or David Harum or Doctor Lavendar, to be with them, to come under their influence, to reflect upon their fortunes. I thought I saw such art in “The Age of Innocence”, but most of my neighbors read the book as a sort of Baedeker of old New York, to catch Mrs. Wharton in mistakes of information. Now I think I see such art in Joseph Anthony’s “The Gang”, which I read with pleasure the more undisturbed because my neighbors find in it no news at all, and therefore leave it alone.

_Thomas L. Masson_

For nearly thirty years Tom Masson was the Managing Editor of “Life”. He watched it through various phases of humor and propaganda. He knew the writers of light and of heavier verse, the artists of gay or of poignant sketches, the fashioners of new anecdotes, the cullers of old. This short, slight, wiry Connecticut Yankee, who peers at you through large and heavy spectacles, has probably read, written, and planned more jokes than any other living human being. His voice is as dry and as sharp as his wit. Now, when he is not editing his department, “Short Turns and Encores”, for “The Saturday Evening Post”, he sits out in New Jersey and busily writes essays and short stories. For such a quiet little man to have been the cause of so many riotous laughs seems odd. I have never heard him laugh loudly himself--just a soft, short, nervous, almost apologetic laugh, as if it seemed to him a sin really to laugh at a thing which might not be as funny as it should be. However, there is always the twinkle behind the glasses. Like “Surrender Books” his essays are often quiet bookish observations, usually with a quaint viewpoint, developed and explained by several thousand rambling but delightful words. His acquaintance among American writers is unlimited, for there is no man so dull that he does not like to consider himself funny; and I fancy many a lay reader of these paragraphs will look back with a blush to the time when Tom Masson rejected, or perhaps accepted, a whimsical or at least a would-be amusing manuscript.

SURRENDER BOOKS

There is a class of books that nobody apparently has ever thought of grouping before. Yet they have a very definite place in the mind of each one of us who is devoted to reading, and to know what they are is to have information of great value. They are what I may term surrender books. And presently I hope by example to explain them very definitely.

Of course, lists of books that one ought to read always vary according to taste, and nothing indeed has involved so much controversy as what these books should be. There cannot in the nature of things be any uniform method of selection, this always depending upon individual taste, previous education, heritage, environment, etc. But it seems to me that it is possible to create a new standard which deals with surrender books alone, and I should think that lovers of books generally would be fairly well agreed as to what these are. We may expect differences, but not the violent differences we have observed among those who just make lists of the best books.

What then is a surrender book?

By “surrender” I mean that power a book has over you to make you surrender yourself to it completely. There are plenty of good books that do not have this power. It is also true that many of the books that do have this power are not necessarily novels. The surrender books indeed are in a class by themselves--as I have hinted, a unique class quite apart from anything else in literature. I possess a few of them, and I would not part from these books for anything in the world that I can think of. I cannot, however, explain them definitely all at once. I can do so only little by little. If I should attempt to make a complete definition of a surrender book, you would immediately begin to qualify it; yet it is quite definite, when you understand the conditions.

A surrender book is one that carries with it a complete atmosphere. It is just as if the author had the power to invent a world of his own, in which there is nothing superfluous, and from which, when you once get into it, you do not want to part. Furthermore, all the outside world has left you; nothing else matters. The power to do this is a distinct power; it appears to me to be a peculiarity of some authors. It may not be the highest power. But there it is--a quite definite thing.

A surrender book is one that we are quite content to be let alone with. It is not necessarily an exciting book, which, so to speak, acts upon us like a disease. It may have that quality, and yet it may not. “The Count of Monte Cristo” is a surrender book; it has its imperfections, but it qualifies. And also, in my experience, so does James Ford Rhodes’s history of the United States. Mr. Rhodes first got together the materials to make his world, then he assimilated them, and after that, by the peculiar power I have referred to, he created his illusion. When you step into the first volume, you are living over again, with him, the history of your country. He has made an atmosphere for you; you are carried along by it, it envelops you completely. You don’t care much what happens outside. I suppose, indeed, that it may be said of a surrender book that it has the power of hypnotizing you. Now the same thing is true of Jane Austen as of Mr. Rhodes. I am aware that there are people who don’t like Jane Austen. Mark Twain couldn’t abide her. He ranted when he mentioned her name. He said that any library would be a good one without the works of Jane Austen in it. But Mark Twain’s literary judgment wasn’t worth a whoop. There is nothing superfluous about Jane Austen. She has the power of making you feel that you are there, moving about, guided by her fairy wand, and not caring to be anywhere else.

I should say after all that the quality which enables an author to produce this illusion is one in which he is able to inspire our immediate confidence. If you are at the circus and you see a trapeze performer hesitate over his act, you are at once filled with nervousness about him. Every moment that you view him is an agony. But if he shows that he is perfectly able to control himself, you view his performance with pleasure and serenity. This surrender power is due to the care with which the author has written his book; but this is by no means all. Many an author who has taken infinite pains is deadly dull, and irritatingly accurate. Neither is it due to a dramatic quality. Some authors, who have this dramatic trick, are constantly leading up to climaxes which absorb you at the time, and yet you have not surrendered as a whole. You still retain your self-possession, you are still looking and have one eye on the outside world.

I confess that I have often tried to define this surrender quality in such a manner that I would cover it altogether and have not succeeded. The best thing I can do is to give examples.

“Vanity Fair” for instance is not a surrender book; there are parts of it altogether too detached. This does not detract from its glory; only, it doesn’t happen to be that kind. For surrender value I should much prefer “The Newcomes”, but Thackeray is not a perfect type of a surrender author. Neither, on the whole, is Dickens. He carries you off your feet; he bangs you up against the wall; he certainly absorbs you; he is like a contagion. But think of Parkman and his stories of conquest and Indians. Here, by that subtle alchemy of which I have spoken, you are immediately carried into another world, with swift and sure touches. After you have once read, as an instance, “Conspiracy of Pontiac”, how different is everything. To me the supreme pleasure of reading, after you have gotten through a surrender book, and it has become a possession, is to want to live it all over again. Nothing but high genius in writing has the power to enable you to do this.

Perhaps the biggest books in the world are not the surrender books. Neither Shakespeare nor Plato nor the Bible could qualify. There is a sense in which they are too big. There are, of course, stories in the Bible that have great surrender value. A reading of Shakespeare may easily be an absorbing occupation. I remember when, as a boy, I read his plays for the first time, their story value fascinated me, held me. But to meet these three works and come finally to enter into them and understand them requires a long experience with life. Indeed, it is not until we approach the end of life that, as we ponder over them, their great beauty and their profundity almost overawe us.

If you are a natural born reader, however, you can begin at almost any time to collect surrender books. “Les Miserables” is one of them. This is what Walter Scott might call a big bowwow surrender book. You must lead up to it almost with fasting and prayer; especially in these days, when a snatching of newspaper headings, and a fitful flitting from magazine page to magazine page, weakens one’s sense so of true literary values. I read “Les Miserables” when I was convalescing from a long illness, when my mind had been swept clean. It was a wonderful experience. But I suppose the most wonderful surrender experience in the world would be to have nothing to do but to read Balzac through.

And think of some of our modern authors in comparison with these surrender books I have mentioned! They make one shudder with their mosaic qualities, with their utter inability to transport you anywhere without your sinking on the ground and resting every few moments. I have in mind some of our more recent books where I felt as if I were obliged to hold up the author’s words all the time, as I went along.

You say of some books: “It takes him so long to say anything.”

But that isn’t quite it.

It took Victor Hugo long to say some things, but how well he said them! And while he was saying them you forgot that he was saying anything. You were moving along with him, almost without being aware of it. Think of the flight of Jean Valjean! Has the surrender value of that part ever been equaled?

_Hugh Walpole_