Part 5

The book reporter who had any sense of news values grasped this immediately. Books that a month earlier would have been worth 1,000 to 1,500 word articles were worth a few lines or no space at all. On the other hand books which had a historical value and a place as interesting public records, such as _Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story_, were not diminished either in interest or in importance.

Some books which had been inconsequential were correspondingly exalted by the unprecedented turn of affairs. These were books on such subjects as the re-education of disabled fighters, the principles which might underlie the formation of a league of nations, problems of reconstruction of every sort. They had been worth, some of them, very small articles a week earlier; now they were worth a column or two apiece.

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No doubt we ought to conclude this possibly tedious essay with some observations on the one per cent. of books which call for swift surgery. But such an enterprise is, if not impossible, extraordinarily difficult for the reason that the same operation is never called for twice.

In a sense it is like cutting diamonds, or splitting a large stone into smaller stones. The problem varies each time. The cutter respects certain principles and follows a careful technique. That is all.

We shall, for the sake of the curious, take an actual instance. In 1918 there was published a novel called _Foes_ by Mary Johnston, an American novelist of an endowment so decided as fairly to entitle her to the designation “a genius.”

Miss Johnston’s first novel had appeared twenty years earlier. Her first four books--nay, her first two, the second being _To Have and to Hold_--placed her firmly in the front rank of living romantic writers. The thing that distinguished her romanticism was its sense of drama in human affairs and human destiny. Added to this was a command of live, nervous, highly poetic prose. History--romance; it did not matter. She could set either movingly before you.

Her work showed steady progress, reaching a sustained culmination in her two Civil War novels, _The Long Roll_ and _Cease Firing_. She experimented a little, as in her poetic drama of the French Revolution, _The Goddess of Reason_, and in _The Fortunes of Garin_, a tapestry of mediæval France. _The Wanderers_ was a more decided venture, but a perfectly successful. Then came _Foes_.

Considered purely as a romantic narrative, as a story of friendship transformed into hatred and the pursuit of a private feud under the guise of wreaking Divine vengeance, _Foes_ is a superb tale. Considered as a novel, _Foes_ is a terrible failure.

Why? Is it not sufficient to write a superb tale? Yes, if you have essayed nothing more. Is a novel anything more than “a good story, well told”? Yes, if the writer essays to make more of it.

The novelist who has aimed at nothing beyond the “good story, well told” has a just grievance against any one who asks anything further. But against the novelist who has endeavored to make his story, however good, however well told, the vehicle for a human philosophy or a metaphysical speculation, the reader has a just grievance--if the endeavor has been unsuccessful or if the philosophy is unsound.

Now as to the soundness or unsoundness of a particular philosophy every reader must pronounce for himself. The metaphysical idea which was the basis of Miss Johnston’s novel was this: All gods are one. All deities are one. Christ, Buddha; it matters not. “There swam upon him another great perspective. He saw Christ in light, Buddha in light. The glorified--the unified. _Union._” Upon this idea Miss Johnston reconciles her two foes.

This perfectly comprehensible mystical conception is the rock on which the whole story is founded--and the rock on which it goes to pieces. It will be seen at once that the conception is one which no Christian can entertain and remain a Christian--nor any Buddhist, and remain a Buddhist, either. To the vast majority of mankind, therefore, the philosophy of _Foes_ was unsound and the novel was worthless except for the superficial incidents and the lovely prose in which they were recounted.

It might be thought that for those who accepted the mystical concept Miss Johnson imposed, _Foes_ would have been a novel of the first rank. No, indeed; and for this reason:

Her piece of mysticism was supposed to be arrived at and embraced by a dour Scotchman of about the year of Our Lord 1750. 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-doer.

Now however reasonable or sound or inspiring and inspiriting the mystical idea may have seemed to any reader, he could not but be fatally aware that, as presented, the thing was a flat impossibility. Scotchmen of the year 1750 were Christians above all else. They were, if you like, savage Christians; some of them were irreligious, some of them were God-defying, none of them were Deists in the all-inclusive sense that Miss Johnston prescribes. 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 did. Least of all could it have occurred to such a man as Miss Johnston delineates in Alexander Jardine.

The thing is therefore utterly anachronistic. It is a historical anachronism, if you like, the history here being the history of the human spirit in its religious aspects. Every reader of the book, no matter how willing he may have been to accept the novelist’s underlying idea, was aware that the endeavor to convey it had utterly failed, was aware that Miss Johnston had simply projected _her_ idea, _her_ favorite bit of mysticism, into the mind of one of her characters, a Scotchman living a century and a half earlier! 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 century, not even though he lay in the flowering grass of the Roman Campagna.

... And so there, in _Foes_, we have the book in a hundred which called for something more than the intelligent and accurate work of the book reporter. Here was a case of a good novelist, and a very, very good one, gone utterly wrong. It was not sufficient to convey to the prospective reader a just idea of the story and of the qualities of it. It was necessary to cut and slash, as cleanly and as swiftly and as economically as possible--and as dispassionately--to the root of the trouble. For if Miss Johnston were to repeat this sort of performance her reputation would suffer, not to speak of her royalties; readers would be enraged or misled; young writers playing the sedulous ape would inflict dreadful things upon us; tastes and tempers would be spoiled; publishers would lose money;--and, much the worst of all, the world would be deprived of the splendid work Mary Johnston could do while she was doing the exceedingly bad work she did do.

Perhaps the most disturbing thing about the blunder in _Foes_ was the fact that there was no necessity for it. The Christian religion, which was the religion of Alexander Jardine, provides for reconciliation, indeed, it exacts it. There was the way for Miss Johnston to bring her foes together. Of course, it would not have been intellectually so exciting. But there is such a thing as emotional appeal, and it is not always base; there are emotions in the human so high and so lofty that it is wiser not to try to transcend them....

The appearance of part of the foregoing in _Books and the Book World_ of _The Sun_, New York, brought a letter from Kansas which should find a place in this volume. The letter, with the attempted answer, may as well be given here. The writer is head of the English department in a State college. He wrote:

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“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 Reporting_].... College professors do not like to be disturbed--and most of us cannot be, for that matter. The TNT in those pages was not meant for us, perhaps, but it should have been.

“When I read _Book Reporting_ I dictated three pages of protest, but did not send it on--thanks to my better judgment.... Then I decided, since you had added so much to my perturbation, to ask you to help me.

“We need it out here--literary help only, of course. This is the only State college on what was once known as the ‘Great Plains.’ W. F. Cody won his sobriquet on Government land which is now our campus. Our students are the sons and daughters of pioneers who won over grasshoppers, droughts, hot winds and one crop farms. They are so near to real life that the teaching of literature must be as real as the literature--rather, it ought to be. That’s where I want you to help me.

“I am not teaching literature here now as I was taught geology back in Missouri. That’s as near as I shall tell you how I teach--it is bad enough and you might not help me if I did. (Perhaps, in fairness to you, I should say that for several years never less than one-third of those to whom we gave degrees have majored in English, and always as many as the next two departments combined.)

“Here’s what I am tired of and want to get away from:

“1. Testing students on reading a book by asking fact questions about what is in the book--memory work, you see.

“2. Demanding of students a scholarship in the study of literature that is so academic that it is Prussian.

“3. Demanding that students serve time in literature classes as a means of measuring their advance in the study of literature.

“Here’s what I want you to help me with in some definite concrete way: (Sounds like a college professor making an assignment--beg pardon.)

“1. Could you suggest a scheme of ‘book reporting’ for college students in literature classes? (An old book to a new person is news, isn’t it?)

“2. Give me a list of books published during the last ten years that should be included in college English laboratory classes in literature. I want your list. I have my own, but fear it is too academic.

“3. What are some of the things which should enter into the training of teachers of high school English? Part of our work, especially in the summer, is to give such training to men and women who will teach composition and literature in Kansas high schools.

“Your help will not only be appreciated, but it will be used.”

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To answer adequately these requests would take about six months’ work and the answers would make a slender book. And then they would exhibit the defects inseparable from a one man response. None of which excuses a failure to attempt to answer, though it must extenuate failures in the attempt.

We shall try to answer, in this place, though necessarily without completeness. If nothing better than a few suggestions is the result, why--suggestions may be all that is really needed.

And first respecting the things our friend is tired of and wants to get away from:

1. Fact questions about what is in the book--memory work--are not much use if they stop with the outline of the story. What is _not_ in the book may be more important than what is. Why did the author select this scene for narration and omit that other, intrinsically (it seems) the more dramatically interesting of the two? See _The Flirt_, by Booth Tarkington, where a double murder gets only a few lines and a small boy’s doings occupy whole chapters.

2. Scholarship is less important than wide reading, though the two aren’t mutually exclusive. A wide acquaintance doesn’t preclude a few profoundly intimate friendships. Textual study has spoiled Chaucer, Shakespeare and Milton for most of us. Fifty years hence Kipling and Masefield will be spoiled in the same way.

3. Time serving over literature is a waste of time. There are only three ways to teach literature. The first is by directing students to books for _voluntary_ reading--hundreds of books, thousands. The second is by class lectures--entertaining, idea’d, anecdoted, catholic in range and expository in character. The third is by conversation--argumentative at times, analytic at moments, but mostly by way of exchanging information and opinions.

Study books as you study people. Mix among them. You don’t take notes on people unless, perchance, in a diary. Keep a diary on books you read, if you like, but don’t “take notes.” Look for those qualities in books that you look for in people and make your acquaintances by the same (perhaps unformulated) rules. To read snobbishly is as bad as to practise snobbery among your fellows.

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We go on to the first of our friend’s requests for help. It is a scheme for “book reporting” for college students in literature classes and he premises that an old book to a new reader is news. Of course it is.

Let the student take up a book that’s new to him and read it by himself, afterward writing a report of it to be read to the class. When he comes to write his report he must keep in the forefront of his mind this one thing:

To tell the others accurately enough about that book so that each one of them will know whether or not _he_ wants to read it.

That is all the book reporter ever tries for. No book is intended for everybody, but almost every book is intended for somebody. The problem of the book reporter is to find the reader.

Comparison may help. For instance, those who enjoy Milton’s pastoral poetry will probably enjoy the long poem in Robert Nichols’s _Ardours and Endurances_. Those who like Thackeray will like Mary S. Watts. Those who like Anna Katharine Green will thank you for sending them to _The Moonstone_, by one Wilkie Collins.

Most stories depend upon suspense in the action for their main effect. You must not “give away” the story so as to spoil it for the reader. In a mystery story you may state the mystery and appraise the solution or even characterize it--but you mustn’t reveal it.

Tell ’em that Mr. Hergesheimer’s _Java Head_ is an atmospheric marvel, but will disappoint many readers who put action first. Tell ’em that William Allen White writes (often) banally, but so saturates his novel with his own bigheartedness that he makes you laugh and cry. Tell ’em the truth, 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 assertion: “Is this a fact or is it my personal opinion?” _And a fact, for your purpose, will be an opinion in which a large majority of readers will concur._

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“Give me a list of books published during the last ten years that should be included in college English laboratory classes in literature. I want your list. I have my own, but fear it is too academic.”

The following list is an offhand attempt to comply with this request. It is offered merely for the suggestions it may contain. If the ten year restriction is rigid we ask pardon for such titles as may be a little older than that. Strike them out.

For Kansans: Willa Sibert Cather’s novels, _O Pioneers!_ and _My Antonia_, chronicling people and epochs of Kansas-Nebraska. William Allen White’s _A Certain Rich Man_ and _In the Heart of a Fool_, less for their Kansas-ness than for their Americanism and humanity.

For Middle Westerners: Meredith Nicholson’s _The Valley of Democracy_. Zona Gale’s _Birth_. Carl Sandburg’s _Chicago Poems_. Edgar Lee Masters’s _Spoon River Anthology_. Vachel Lindsay’s longer poems. Mary S. Watts’s _Nathan Burke_ and _Van Cleve: His Friends and His Family_. Lord Charnwood’s life of Lincoln. William Dean Howells’s _The Leatherwood God_. Booth Tarkington’s _The Conquest of Canaan_ (first published about fourteen years ago) and _The Magnificent Ambersons_. Gene Stratton-Porter’s _A Daughter of the Land_, her _Freckles_ and her _A Girl of the Limberlost_. One or two books by Harold Bell Wright. _The Passing of the Frontier_, by Emerson Hough, and other books in the Chronicles of America series published by the Yale University Press.

For Americans: Mary S. Watts’s _The Rise of Jennie Cushing_. Owen Wister’s _The Virginian_ (if not barred under the ten year rule). Booth Tarkington’s _The Flirt_. Novels with American settings by Gertrude Atherton and Stewart Edward White. Mary Johnston’s _The Long Roll_ and _Cease Firing_. Willa Sibert Cather’s _The Song of the Lark_. Edith Wharton’s _Ethan Frome_. Alice Brown’s _The Prisoner_. Ellen Glasgow’s _The Deliverance_. Corra Harris’s _A Circuit-Rider’s Wife_. All of O. Henry. Margaret Deland’s _The Iron Woman_. Earlier novels by Winston Churchill. Ernest Poole’s _The Harbor_. Joseph Hergesheimer’s _The Three Black Pennys_, his _Gold and Iron_ and his _Java Head_. Historical books by Theodore Roosevelt. American biographies too numerous to mention. _From Isolation to Leadership: A Review of American Foreign Policy_ by Latané (published by the educational department of Doubleday, Page & Company). Essays, such as those of Agnes Repplier.

Each of these enumerations presupposes the books already named, or most of them. Don’t treat them as pieces of literary workmanship. Many of them aren’t. Those that have fine literary workmanship have something else, too--and it’s the other thing, or things, that count. Fine art in a book is like good breeding in a person, a passport, not a Magna Charta. “Manners makyth man”--yah!

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We are also asked:

“What are some of the things which should enter into the training of teachers of high school English?”

We reply:

A regard for literature, not as it reflects life, but as it moulds lives. A profound respect for an author who can find 100,000 readers, a respect at least equal to that entertained for an author who can write superlatively well. For instance: Get it out of your head that you can afford to condescend toward a best seller, or to worship such a writer as Stevenson for his sheer craftsmanship.

An instinct for what will nourish the ordinary man or woman as keen as your perception of what will be relished by the fastidious reader. Don’t insist that people must live on what you, or any one else, declare to be good for them. It is not for nothing that they “don’t know anything about literature, _but know what they like_.”

A confidence in the greater wisdom of the greatest number. Tarkington got it right. The public wants the best it is capable of understanding; its understanding may not be the highest understanding, but “the writer who stoops to conquer doesn’t conquer.” Neither does the writer who never concedes anything. The public’s standard can’t always be wrong; the private standards can’t always be right.

Arnold Bennett says, quite rightly, that the classics are made and kept alive by “the passionate few.” But the business of high school teachers of English is not with the passionate few--who will look after themselves--but with the unimpassioned many. You can lead the student to Mr. Pope’s Pierian spring, but you cannot make him drink. Unless you can show him, in the Missourian sense, it’s all off. If you can’t tell what it is a girl likes in Grace S. Richmond how are you going to show her what she’ll like in Dickens? Unless you know what it is that “they” get out of these books they _do_ read you won’t be able to bait the hook with the things you want them to read. Don’t you think you’ve got a lot to learn yourself? And mightn’t you do worse than sit down yourself and read attentively, at whatever personal cost, some of the best sellers?

It all goes back to the size of the teacher’s share of our common humanity. A person who can’t read a detective story for the sake of the thrills has no business teaching high school English. A person who is a literary snob is unfit to teach high school English. A person who can’t sense (better yet, share) 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 English.

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A word about writing “compositions” in high school English classes. Make ’em write stories instead. If they want to tackle thumbnail sketches or abstracter writing--little essays--why, let ’em. Abstractions in thought and writing are like the ocean--it’s fatally easy to get beyond your depth, and every one else’s. Read what Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch says about this in his _Studies in Literature_. Once in a while a theologian urges us to “get back to the Bible.” Well, there is one sense, at least, in which the world would do well to get back to the Bible, or to the Old Testament, at any rate. As Gardiner points out in his _The Bible as English Literature_, it was the fortune or misfortune of ancient Hebrew that it had no abstractions. Everything was stated in terms of the five senses. There was no such word as “virtue”; you said “sweet smellingness” or “pleasant tastingness” or something like that. And everybody knew what you meant. Whereas “virtue” means anything from personal chastity to a general meritoriousness that nobody can define. The Greeks introduced abstract thinking and expression and some Germans blighted the world by their abuse.

What should enter into the training of high school teachers of English? Only humbleness, sanity, catholicity of viewpoint, humor, a continual willingness to learn, a continuous faith in the people--and undying enthusiasm. Only these--and the love of books.

LITERARY EDITORS

BY ONE OF THEM

V

LITERARY EDITORS, BY ONE OF THEM

The very term “literary editor” is a survival. It is meaningless, but we continue to use it because no better designation has been found, just as people in monarchical countries continue to speak of “King George” or “Queen Victoria of Spain.” Besides, there is politeness to consider. No one wants to be the first to allude publicly and truthfully to “Figurehead George” or “Social Leader Victoria.”

Literary editors who are literary are not editors, and literary editors who are editors are no longer literary. Of old there were scholarly, sarcastic men (delightful fellows, personally) who sat in cubbyholes and read unremittingly. Afterward, at night, they set down a few thoughtful, biting words about what they had read. These were printed. Publishers who perused them felt as if knives had been stuck in their backs. Booksellers who read them looked up to ask each other pathetically: “But what does it _mean_?” Book readers who read them resolved that the publication of a new book should be, for them, the signal to read an old one. It was good for the secondhand trade.

We’ve changed all that, or, if we haven’t, we’re going to. Take a chap who runs what is called a “book section.” This is a separate section or supplement forming part of a daily or Sunday newspaper. Its pages are magazine size--half the size of newspaper pages. They number from eight to twenty-eight, depending on the season and the advertising. The essential thing to realize about such a section is that it requires an editor to run it.

It does not require a literary man, or woman, at all. The editor of such a section need have no special education in the arts or letters. He must have judgment, of course, and if he has not some taste for literary matters he may not enjoy his work as he will if he has that taste. But high-browism is fatal.

Can our editor “review” a book? Perhaps not. It is no matter. Maybe he knows a good review when he sees it, which will matter a good deal. Maybe he can get capable people to deal with the books for him. Which will matter more than anything else on earth in the handling of his book section.