Читать книгу Short Story-Writing: An Art or a Trade? - N. Bryllion Fagin - Страница 3

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Moods may be uncomfortable, and sad, and painfully disturbing, but, on the other hand, they make pleasant music occasionally. Here I sit in the dusk, looking out into the street that is ordinarily so familiar to me, but has suddenly become blurred and weirdly mysterious in the gathering murk. A veil is over my eyes, which see the familiar houses across the street, the young poplars in front of them, the few passers-by. But my mind does not discern these objects; it sees far subtler things—floating, flimsy, evanescent. The dusk is in my mind, evoking thoughts, illusions, pictures—and speaking, questioning, singing. The dusk is an overture to the things I have set out to say, playing innumerable variations of my theme, whispering in every note: “Stories, Stories, Stories!”

There are so many stories afloat in the world! Every door and window and curtain and shade has a story to tell; every clod and tree and leaf; and every pebble of a human being washed by the waves of life. And how many of these stories have I helped to be told? And how many have I helped to be maimed, mutilated of soul? Yes, and how many have I helped to kill?

For I have been teaching, for a number of years, the “Technique of Short Story-Writing,” and my guidance and judgment have meant life and death to countless stories born in the breasts and minds of trustful people. I have been the great discourager and encourager of genius and quasi-genius, and I know my hands are not without stain of literary blood.

I am not reproaching myself. Among the many hundreds of men and women who derive their daily bread and clothes and gasoline by directing the story-fancy of the country’s million or more literary aspirants, I class myself among the most conscientious and least harmful. The share of injury I may have contributed has simply been the unavoidable accompaniment of being engaged in a profession grounded upon the popular belief that literature is a trade, like plumbing, or tailoring, or hod-carrying, and requires but an understanding of the stupendous emoluments involved and a will to learn. That it is in the interests of the profession to foster and perpetuate this popular belief needs no elaborate substantiation. But that the belief itself should be based on a measure of solid truth is a sardonic phenomenon calling for enlightening discussion.

Professor Arlo Bates in one of his talks on writing English once said: “Given a reasonable intelligence and sufficient patience, any man with the smallest gifts may learn to write at least marketable stuff, and may earn an honest livelihood, if he studies the taste of the least exacting portion of the public, and accommodates himself to the whim of the time.” It is the business of my profession to dedicate its services to the promotion of the production of this “marketable stuff,” and to elevate its own calling it has blatantly labeled this product as “literature.” With this end in view numerous textbooks have been written, thousands of magazine articles have been published, and millions of copies of pamphlets and other advertising matter distributed broadcast over the country. The magic slogan is “Writers are made—not born!” Then follows a “heart-to-heart” talk on the advantages of a literary career, and the flourishing of some dozen notable successes, measured in formidable numbers of dollars received, usually headed by Jack London and ending with Fannie Hurst or some still more recent “arrival,” and finally concluding with the weighty query, explicitly propounded or subtly implied: “Why aren’t you a story writer?”

The young man or young woman just out of the gray portals of some fresh-water college and not knowing what to turn to next, or the insipid clerk dreaming over his ledger, or her typewriter, of some Tyltyl cap thus suddenly comes into possession of a startling idea. Why not be a story writer? The work does not seem hard; compensation is said to be good; and one is master of one’s own time and destiny. The would-be casts his lot on the side of practical reasoning, pays in a sum of money to a school of fiction-writing or enrolls for a course with one of our universities, buys a typewriter on the installment plan, and begins to collect editorial rejection slips. When the course is completed another one is taken up, perhaps with another school, thus crediting all lack of achievement to the insufficiency or inefficiency of the instruction received so far, and the typewriter continues to click and the periodic comings of the postman are again awaited eagerly; for hadn’t a major part of the instruction been devoted to the inculcation of the conviction that the world is exceedingly tardy in extending its acknowledgment of genius? Why, think of Jack London; read his “Martin Eden”—biographical, you know. Then, Masefield, dishwashing in New York, and returning to England to become the foremost poet of the day; and Maupassant working away at his little masterpieces for seven long years before even venturing to bring them before the cold light of the unappreciative world; and Kipling, knocking about the streets of New York with his wonderful Indian stories in his pockets and no editor or publisher willing to look at them; and Knut Hamsun, working as a common farm hand in North Dakota, and later as a common conductor collecting fares on a Chicago street-car line, finally returning to his native Norway to fame and fortune and, ultimately, to a Nobel prize in literature. Then think of our own more recent story writers—Hergesheimer, writing away in obscurity for fourteen years; Fannie Hurst, submitting thirty-five stories to one periodical and succeeding with the thirty-sixth—and now receiving $1800 for every short story she writes, you know—etc., etc.

Fully ninety per cent. never do succeed and finally become discouraged and drop out of the ranks. Of the other ten per cent. many live to see their names in print over a story or poem or article in some obscure periodical, while a few ultimately become our best sellers and their names adorn the conspicuous pages in our most popular fiction periodicals. Among the ninety per cent. are the hopelessly incompetent, with a sprinkling of artistic idealists who utterly fail to accommodate themselves to the taste of the public and the whim of the time. Among the ten per cent. are the keen, shrewd, practical craftsmen who are able to get at the spirit of the literary mart. To the chosen ones among these comes the adulation of the populace and the golden shekels blazing a glittering path across the pages of special feature articles in our Sunday newspapers. And these are the writers who justify my profession in spreading the gospel that one needs but a will to learn to achieve a successful literary career.

If, with some such unpopular fellow as Nietzsche, we should rise to a sublime pinnacle of contemptuous detachment, we might say that the ninety per cent. of failures do not deserve our pity. It is best for a fighting, competitive world that weaklings and incompetents are failures. We might even say that the few artistic idealists among them deserve no better. Life is a process of adaptation and compromise and, among men, a pair of sturdy legs are of greater utility than a pair of feeble wings. Perhaps there is a stern justice in the fate of a Chatterton or, say, a François Villon. But is it not equally possible that by the grim, whimsical jugglings of the gods a mist may sometimes envelop the battlefield of men, such let us say, as brought confusion to the last hordes of the noble Arthur, when

“... friend and foe were shadows in the mist,

And friend slew friend not knowing whom he slew;

... and in the mist

Was many a noble deed, many a base,

And chance and craft...”?

Verily, such a “death-white” mist does envelop our literary battlefield, and, in the confusion, my profession, supported by the vast majority of editors and professional critics, is aiding the weak to conquer the strong. Blinded by the mist, we aid aspirants to rise to power by craft and cunning, and when they emerge to reign for a single day we crown them, thus contributing to the future nothing but the dust of our petty kings. Those who would reign for centuries are jeered at, discouraged, vanquished.

A dozen names leap to mind—pathetic examples of great talent forced to decay, of great sincerity diluted and polluted, of noble fires extinguished. But of all these names the two most pregnant with tragedy are those of Mark Twain and Jack London. The author of “Huckleberry Finn” and “Tom Sawyer,” deep, penetrating, cynical, was obliged to play the amusing clown until the end. The author of “The Call of the Wild” and “Martin Eden” until his dying breath continued to fill his lucrative contracts with popular claptrap. If no one in particular can be blamed, the sickly light shining upon our literary firmament must take responsibility. There are formative years when a writer’s talent matures, mellows, is molded. The attitude of the populace and, above all, of the oracles on the mountains and in the temples is eagerly watched and heeded. In the case of Jack London the influence of this attitude as a determining factor in the evolution of his career is a matter of record. One of the editors of The Seven Arts, a monthly magazine that was too lofty of purpose and too pure of policy to continue existence, once invited Jack London to submit any stories he might have that had failed of acceptance with the popular magazines because of lack of adaptation. London’s reply was that no such stories existed, and concluded with a statement that explains very ingenuously the melancholy disillusionment that pervades the best of his work. “I don’t mind telling you,” he wrote, “that had the United States been as kindly toward the short story writer as France has always been kindly, from the beginning of my writing career I would have written many a score of short stories quite different from the ones I have written.”[1]

It is clear, of course, to what particular brand of kindliness London had reference. For the United States is kindly toward the short story writer, very kindly indeed. It was kindly toward Jack London—but not in the way of helping him to bring forth the best that was in him. And this was his tragedy—and therein lies the unkindliness of the United States toward all its short story writers. It wanted none of the work of Jack London the man with a soul and genuine emotions which burned for expression; it remunerated lavishly Jack London the writer chap for his artificial concoctions that he despised. It made Joseph Hergesheimer wait fourteen years for the most moderate recognition while giving such a writer as H. C. Witwer almost instantaneous acclaim. It calls Ellis Parker Butler a great humorist and George Ade a mere fable writer. It proclaims O. Henry a prince of story writers and doesn’t even know that the unfortunate Ambrose Bierce once lived among us. And the vast majority of priests and oracles in my profession persist in justifying and perpetuating this kind unkindliness and in instructing the new generation according to its tenets. Example par excellence: Speaks an instructor in story writing in one of our leading universities, in a critical and biographical survey of our short story writers, of “Robert W. Chambers, imaginative artist,” and of Jack London, “at best a third-rate writer.”[2]

The sum and substance of all we preach may be summarized in the one commandment we zealously enforce above all others: “Thou shalt not write anything an editor won’t buy.” Then we analyze what editors do buy, arriving, by the process of induction, at rules and regulations, which we promptly proceed to incorporate into textbooks for the unlettered. Some of our rules are flexible, others are not, depending solely upon the attitude of their compiler. An editor of a prominent periodical once outlined the qualifications that recommended a literary offering to him. He had set up before him an ideal reader, an imaginary lady with a family of daughters up in Vermont, and any manuscript submitted to him had to answer satisfactorily this mighty query: “Would the old lady want her daughters to read this?” If this editor happened to write a textbook for the instruction of the would-be story writer, the old-lady-and-daughters question would undoubtedly figure quite prominently therein. I am not aware of any textbook on the subject by this gentleman, but other writers have had this question, or similar ones, in mind in evolving laws for the would-be successful.

I admit that I have taught people to answer these mighty queries, before permitting them to entrust their precious wares to the Post Office. For most editors have a question of some sort— Will it please some imaginary old man, or country girl, or young parson, or the editor’s own blue-eyed little girl, or, especially, his advertisers; and when a man or a woman pays hard-earned dollars for the information of how to “get by” the unfriendly editor, my professional ethics demand that I supply this information to the limits of my knowledge. Moreover, when a man or a woman hands in a story which has no earthly chance of being accepted by any magazine because it is burdened with a soul which violates every tradition and rule and policy by which magazines are governed, it becomes my duty to enlighten this student that his is not the way to “get by.” For even such a student—an exception, to be sure—has read our advertising literature, has studied the popular psychology of success, and often, like the other plodders, sincerely believes that a published story is a masterpiece, a rejected one worthless. If a story brings five dollars it is a poor one; if it brings fifty it is a good one; if it brings five hundred it is a work of art. Getting-by, then, becomes the supreme problem, and getting-by means having in mind the old lady with her daughters or the old man with the gout. And who can answer what becomes of poor Lafcadio Hearn’s queer idea that

“Literary success of any enduring kind is made only by refusing to do what publishers want, by refusing to write what the public want, by refusing to accept any popular standard, by refusing to write anything to order”?

Poor, poor indeed!