Life — April 13, 1905 — page 4: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

“White there is Life there's Hope.” LY, APRIL 13, 1905, No. 1172 New Yor. VOL. HERE is wet a Battle ses. of the Books = going on which is not without interest to persons who get glimpses of it. A glimpse is as much as one gets, for it is not yet a line- of-battle — con- test, but an af- fair of skirmishes and raids, with quick withdrawals to intrenchments. The fight is between all who find a profit in the class of books known as ** big-sellers,"’ and those who don’t. The publishers try to promote the man- ufacture and distribution of the big- sellers. They do so for a legitimate commercial reason, because th make money that to them looks hon- est, by selling a great many copies of a single book. The big-sellers are all— virtually all—novels. The Hostiles de- nounce the trade in them on the ground that they are bad books, and that it is discreditable to multiply them, By “bad books" they do not mean im- moral or unclean books. The big-sell- ers are nearly all clean, and are usually moral. The Hostiles call them “bad” because they say they are not literature, but mere trash, and they upbraid the publishers for advertising them as great and good, and promoting tattle about the authors of them as though they were truly great writers and not mere successful disseminators of twaddle and rubbish. The Hostiles are ready to insist that the mere fact that a novel sells a hundred thousand copies is prima facte evidence that it is trash. The Merchants deny that that is true, and point to Mrs. Ward and to Kipling as shining instances of real authors of books of literary value which are big-sellers notwithstanding “LIF E- their merit. Mrs, Ward is the strong defence of the Merchants. They speak highly of her, going so far as to say that she is a cracker-jack—a shocking epithet to apply to a dignified lady, but they do. The Hostiles say ‘The Masquerader” is good for nothing on earth but to sell ; that ‘‘ David Harum,” the record seller, is a lump of putty with glass jewels stuck in, and that “The Virginian" is not very much better; they say that Walter Pater never read ‘* Ben Hur,"’ and would not have read ‘Mrs Wiggs” if his precious life had been prolonged a thousand years. When they speak of Hall Caine and Marie Corelli they go behind the barn, so as not to be overheard. ‘They say ‘The Simple Life’’ is not in the same class with ‘‘ Marius, the Epi- curean"’ (which is true); that Irving Bacheller is entirely unknown to any true fame; that Bertha Runkle isn’t in it; that Jack London is a brute, and the author of ‘ Raffles" a crimi- nal; and that Sherlock Holmes has got no line whatever on the higher life ! Altogether, they are harsh to the verge of acrimoniousness about the big-sellers, their makers, their vendors and espe- cially their advertisers. E confess to being not altogether undisturbed by the onslaughts of the Hostiles The habit of reading books may be a bad one, but once formed it hangs on obstinately. Existence in this young century is fairly strenuous even for would-be lazy people. and for our humble part we are so grateful at times to any writer that affords us sincere diversion as not to care very much, for the moment, whether he is writing literature or not. We bave found joy in Bernard Shaw, regardless of bis stand- ing with the Hostiles—but he is not a big-seller. Winston Churchill isa seller, We have read him, and may do it again when the Hostiles are not look- ing. ‘*Ben Hur" we read when too young to be fully responsible. ** David Harum" and “ Mrs. Wiggs," because of their notoriety, areas necessary to know about Trilby’’ or the Czar of Russia. Besides, we liked them, A Sherlock Holmes story is better than a drink to go to bed on: it expunges thought from the mind. We got nearly two-thirds through ‘The Mas- querader" at the first go, and may fini it sometime. To confess all our faults would require too much space. We only mention some of them, because they have made us indulgent towards the Merchants and tolerant of their clients and their clients’ output. HE Merchants’ advertisements are more or less absurd. They ad- vertise books as other vendors proclaim soap, but we cannot take that as hard as the Hostiles do. The kind of soap that has popular qualities and can pay the cost of advertising is the kind that many people want. The sort of book that will pay for its advertising is the sort that many people want, and to tell them that ‘It Floats,”’ or that ‘* They Won't Be Happy Till They Get It,"’ isn’t a really heinous sin. We cannot feel as bad as the Hostiles do about the big-sellers, or think that the manner of their exploitation is so dismally harm- ful. Nobody who knows anything is fooled by them. If they prevent better books from being written and pub- lished, there is more ground for expos- tulation; but do they? Are writers who are capable of first-rate literature turning to fourth-rate literature be- cause it pays better? Are publishers declining literary works-of-art because profitable trash is ‘' better money"? We do not thin Every sort of good book is pretty scarce, even good trash. Good-sellers are scarce. Works of high literary value are scarce. Of course demand for them, and public apprecia- tion of them, stimulates production. Of course our great reading public has pretty crude taste, but still we do not believe that work of value is lost for lack of a market, or that genius dies a- borning because the magazines deny it cradle room. Good trash has always been a good-seller, The chief differ- ence between our time and former times is that literacy has outrun culti- vation, with the natural consequence that the trash market has outrun the market for real literature. comicbooks.¢om