CHAPTER II

WHY “BAD” NOVELS SUCCEED AND “GOOD” ONES FAIL

_The First May Have No Literary Quality, but They Have a Genuine Quality--Power of Construction the Main Thing in Story-Writing-- Literary Reviews of Novels are Regarded as of Little Value by Publishers--Odd Incidents and Facts in the Business._

A report on the manuscript of a novel made by a “literary” reader not long ago ended with this sentence: “This novel is bad enough to succeed.” He expressed the feeling of a great many literary persons that fiction often succeeds in the market in proportion to its “badness.” And surely there are many instances to support such a contention from the “Lamplighter” to “When Knighthood Was in Flower.” But the “literary” view of fiction is no more trustworthy than the “literary” view of politics or of commerce; for it concerns itself more with technique than with substance.

It is a hard world in which “Knighthood,” “Quincy Adams Sawyer” and “Graustark,” to say nothing of “The One Woman,” “Alice of Old Vincennes” and a hundred more “poor” books make fortunes, while Mr. Howells and Mr. James write to unresponsive markets and even Mr. Kipling cannot find so many readers for a new novel as Mr. Bacheller of “Eben Holden.” It seems a hard world to the professional literary folk; but the professional literary folk would find it a hard world anyhow; for it has a way of preferring substance to color. And novels, after all, have less to do with literature than they have to do with popular amusement.

Heaven forbid that I should make defence of bad writing, or of sensational literature, or of bad taste, or of any other thing that is below grade; but, as between the professional literary class, and the great mass of men who buy “Eben Holdens” and “David Harums” the mass of men have the better case.

Why does a man read a novel? Let us come down to common-sense. He seeks one of two things--either a real insight into human nature (he got that in “David Harum”) or he seeks diversion, entertainment. A writer’s style is only a part of the machinery of presentation. The main thing is that he has something to present. Even though I am a publisher I think that I know something about literary quality and literary values, and it must be owned at once that hardly one in a dozen of the very popular recent novels has any literary quality. But every one of them, nevertheless, has some very genuine and positive quality. They were not written by any trick, and their popularity does not make the road to success any easier to find. They have qualities that are rarer than the merely literary quality. Mr. Henry James’s novels have what is usually called the literary quality. Yet half the publishing houses in the United States have lost money on them, while the publisher and the author of “Richard Carvel” and “The Crisis” and “The Crossing” made a handsome sum of money from these books, which have no literary style.

This does not mean a whining confession that “literature” does not pay. For my part I cannot weep because Mr. James and Mr. Howells do not find many readers for their latest books. They find all they deserve. Mere words were never worth much money or worth much else. But, while Mr. Churchill is not a great writer (since he has no style), and while few persons of the next generation of readers (whereby I mean those of year after next) are going to take the trouble to read his books, yet, for all that, they have a quality that is very rare in this world, a quality that their imitators never seem to see. They have construction. They have action. They have substance. A series of events come to pass in a certain order, by a well-laid plan. Each book makes its appeal as a thing built, finished, shapen, if not well-proportioned, substantial. It is a real structure--not a mere pile of bricks and lumber. The bricks and lumber that went into them are not as fine nor as good as somebody else may have in his brickyard and his lumber pile. But they are put together. A well shapen house of bad bricks is a more pleasing thing than any mere brick-pile whatever.

I recall this interesting experience of a man whose novels are now fast winning great popular favor. He sat down and wrote a story and sent it to a publisher. It was declined. He sent it to another. Again it was declined. Then he brought it to me. (He told me of the preceding declinations a year later). I told him frankly that it lacked construction. I supposed that that was the last that I should see of him. But about a year later he came again with another manuscript and with this interesting story.

“Like a fool,” said he, “I simply blazed away and wrote what I supposed was a novel. Nobody would publish it. When you said that it lacked construction, I went to work to study the construction of a novel. I analyzed twenty. I found a dozen books on the subject which gave me some help. But there are few books that do help. I constructed a sort of method of my own.”

That man yet has no sense of literary values, as they are usually considered. The only good quality of his style is its perfect directness and clearness. He writes blunt, plain sentences. But every one of them tells something. He does not bother himself about style, nor about literary quality. He fixes his mind on the story itself, to see that it has substance, form, action, proportion. And he worked out this new novel with these qualities in it.

It was a dime novel in praise of one of the cardinal Christian virtues--very earnest, very direct. But the persons in it were real. They not only said things, they did things; and many of the things they did were interesting. One of our salesmen was asked to read the manuscript. “It’ll sell,” said he. Our literary adviser said that it was a bald moral Sunday school play. “You could put it on the stage by cutting it here and there,” he declared. “But it has no literary quality.” Both were right. The book has sold well. It has amused and interested its tens of thousands.

The author’s next book after that was very much better. Having learned something of the art of construction he began to think of such a detail as style. He re-wrote the book to make it “smooth.” But the point is, he first paid attention to his construction and made sure that he had a story to tell.

The enormous amount of waste work done by unsuccessful novel writers is done without taking the trouble first to make sure that they have a story to tell.

Few persons have any constructive faculty. This is the sad fact that comes home at last to a man who has read novels in manuscript for many years. A publisher comes to look for construction in a novel before he looks for style or literary quality.

This confession is enough to provoke the literary journals to condemn the publishers as mere mercenary dealers in sensational books. Yet, while a book that is well constructed may not be “literature,” very few books have a serious chance to become literature unless they have good construction.

I, for one, and I know no publisher who holds a different opinion, care nothing for the judgment of the professional literary class. Their judgment of a novel, for instance, is of little value or instruction. It may be right--often it is. It may be wrong. But whether right or wrong (and there is no way that I know to determine finally whether any judgment be right or wrong) it is of no practical value. A literary judgment of a new novel cannot affect the judgment that men will form of it ten years hence. Therefore it is of no permanent value. Neither can it affect the sales of a new novel. It is therefore of no practical importance for the moment. I look upon reviews of novels as so much publicity--they have value, as they tell the public that the book is published and can be bought, and as they tell something about it which may prod the reader’s curiosity. Further than this they are of no account. Not one of the three publishers whose personal habits I know as a rule takes the trouble to read the reviews of novels of his own publishing.

Novel making, then, is an industry, and the people who make them best concern themselves very little about what is usually meant by “literary values,” and very little about their popularity. The writers who deliberately set out to write novels of great popularity have almost always missed it. The industry is an art, also, but it is not an art of mere fine writing. It is chiefly an art of construction--an art of putting things in due proportion. This assumes, of course, that the novelist has things to put.

The truth is, the delicate and difficult art of finding out just what the public cares for--the public of this year or the public of ten years hence--has not been mastered by many men, whether writers or publishers. If you find out what the great public of today wants, you are a sensationalist. If you find out what the great public of ten or twenty years hence will want, you are a maker or a publisher of literature. And the public of the future is pretty sure to want something different from the public of today.

Within six months after the publication of a popular novel the publisher of it (other publishers, too) will receive a dozen or a hundred stories that have been suggested by it. Many an author of such a manuscript will write that he has discovered the secret of the popular book’s success and that he has turned it to profit in his own effort. Such letters are singularly alike. The writers of them regard success as something won by a trick, as a game of cards might be won. These remind one, too, of the advertisements of patent medicines--except that the writers of them are sincere. They believe heartily in their discovery. Thus every very popular novel gives a great stimulus to the production of novels. “To Have and To Hold” brought cargoes of young women for colonists’ wives to hundreds of amateur story writers.

But stranger than the popularity of very popular novels, or than the utter failure of merely “literary” novels, is the moderate success of a certain kind of commonplace stories. I know a woman of domestic tastes who every two years turns off a quiet story. She has now written a dozen or more. They are never advertised. But they are well printed and put forth by one of our best publishers. The “literary” world pays no heed to her. Her books are not even reviewed in the best journals. They lack distinction. But every one is sure to sell from ten to fifteen thousand copies. No amount of advertising, no amount of noise could increase the number of readers to twenty-five thousand; and there is no way to prevent a sale of from ten to fifteen thousand copies. Why this is so is one of the most baffling problems of psychology. But it is the rule. Authors of novels are known and rated among publishers as ten thousand, or twenty-five thousand, or fifty thousand, or one hundred thousand writers. Book after book reaches a certain level of popularity and--stops. Mr. Marion Crawford, Mr. Hopkinson Smith, Miss Wilkins--all these have their more or less constant levels.

The lay world has no idea of the number of novels that fail. There are one-book authors all over the country. The publishers’ hope always is that a new writer who makes a pretty good novel will do better next time. Thus the first book is accepted for the sake of the next one. The first fails, and the second is not wanted. There are dozens and dozens of such cases every year. The public doesn’t know it, for the very abyss of oblivion is the place where a dead novel falls. Nobody knows it--that is the tragedy--but the publishers and the author.

A case came to light a little while ago of a man who had years ago written novels that failed. He had been forgotten. But he took a new start. Yet he feared that his first failures would damn him with the publishers. He took another name, therefore. Not even his publishers knew who he really was. He succeeded and he concealed his identity until he died.

The publisher’s loss on an unsuccessful novel may be little or big. All publishers lose much on unsuccessful ventures in fiction, chiefly on young authors who are supposed to have a future, or on old authors who have a “literary” reputation and have reached that ghostly period of real decline when they walk in dreams from one publishing house to another.

But there is generally a reason for success or for failure. The trouble is that the reason often does not appear soon enough. The chief reason for the success of a novel is the commonplace one that it contains a story. It may be told ill or it may be told well, but there is a story. And the chief reason for failure is the lack of a story. A novel may be ever so well written,--if it have no story, the public will not care for it.

I wonder if there be any light in this very obvious discovery. Simple as it seems, it costs every publishing house a pretty penny every year to find it out; and as soon as we find it out about one writer we forget it about another! It is a great truth that does not remain discovered.