Why Don't They Stop?

( Originally Published Early 1900's )

WHY are there so many able English novelists, and so few really distinguished American novelists? It is because the American writer will not pay the price of distinction, being too concerned with prices of a different character.

We are all weary of the economic interpretation of everything, including literature, because economics usually have to be explained by the soul of man or the climate. But it seems that the social economics of the United States does explain much in the present status of American literature.

The American novelist begins his career with a "crude but powerful" novel that does not succeed, and a few well-made short stories that do. Two years later his mind has cleared, his eye sharpened, his pen grown more skilful. He writes a novel that serializes successfully, disposes of 20,000 copies, and then sells his story to the melting pot of the movies for a very substantial check. His six months' work has brought him what for most professional men would be two years' good income. His name is known, his market is ready, all he has to do is to write. Skill he possesses and a knowledge of his public. Only his art is incomplete. It lacks finish, it lacks depth, it lacks most of all the maturity that comes from ardent, unremitting labor; and he knows it. His style is good; it is not excellent. It expresses his imaginings; it will not, like a great style, preserve them. Why doesn't he stop large-scale production, and learn to write?

This is the turning point, and nine out of ten able Americans turn to the left. They increase facility; they do not intensify their art. They lay hands upon more of the public; they do not tighten their grip. They write more books, but not better books.

Why don't they stop? Since they belong to a nation of speculators, why are they so unwilling to speculate with their popularity? Why do they invest their capital of reputation dully in the routine of a standardized output, instead of using it to produce some-thing new, something better, which will bring them satisfaction as well as cash? Are they timid, these captains-of-fiction, or are they more enamored of luxury than of their profession?

Neither implication is wholly true, but there is truth in both. If Geoffry Wildairs, the successful author, makes $10,000 a year, he contracts obligations in the form of automobiles, clubs, and a taste for Southern climates in February that require fifteen thou-sand to satisfy them; and there is no sure way of making ten thousand grow to fifteen thousand while perfecting one's art, while, having learned to write well, learning to write better. Therefore he pursues the nymph of luxury instead of the goddess of fame, and finds her quite as elusive, and knows her to be less excellent.

No one asks the American novelist to starve like his Grub Street predecessor. For Geoffry Wildairs and his fellows that is quite unnecessary. We grant him five, ten, even fifteen thousand a year as a "living wage"; and his attempt to dig in, to consolidate his art, is not likely, as publishing goes nowadays, to cause much, if any diminution. But he must say: "I have enough income to keep me afloat; now for good work."

Why doesn't he say it? Is the professional spirit less strong in America than in England and France? Has writing with us become a business, with the code of a business instead of a profession? Do we lack the strength of resistance which alone enables a writer to write for sufficient profits from great excellence, instead of great profits from continuing mediocrity? For it is weak to write a "strong novel"'when one can write a good one. And in the long run it is foolish. Not even in this heyday of short-story and movie profits can an author keep up with a profiteer, a picture star, or a stock manipulator. The ultimate luxury is ever beyond his reach. He may achieve four bathrooms, but scarcely an indoor swimming pool. He may own two cars and a saddle horse, but three and a stable will be out of his reach.

When the money begins to come in a steady flow instead of drop by drop, when one's name goes from the bottom to the top of the column, then is the time to take counsel with perfection, to consult the de-sires of the spirit, to ask whether it is better to be the author of five good books or ten thousand facile pages.

There are, at a guess, fifty American novelists making this year incomes so large that only extravagance can spend them. Ten of these are writing precisely what their Lord and Maker in His inscrutable wisdom created them to write. Ten are convinced that next year they will slow down production and go on a quality instead of a quantity basis. Ten have hardened their hearts and long since thrown over vain regrets for what they might have written. Five have won through to a success they never expected by doing the best that was in them, let come what might. And the rest, however high-hearted and flippantly cynical in public, are familiar with the dead spaces of the night when there is gnashing of teeth for the re-ward which alone tempts them—the reward of a durable excellence—now known to be forever out of reach.