The Literary Racket

( Originally Published 1944 )

I laugh in tears, take comfort in despair;

A GREAT many of us speak loftily of literature, not knowing, precisely, what we mean. Thousands of dreadful fakers take advantage all the time of the fact that literature remains a mystery to most people. Let us examine, then, precisely into what is literature.

Literature is two things: a contemporary thing, and a posthumous thing. Generation after generation we go through the same process. Certain soothsayers with crystal balls set themselves up in business as holy rollers of literature. They lurk in colleges and other dank places, live under stones, crawl out some-times to be maestros on radio programs, but wear al-ways a dour mien and a thoughtful frown. They tell us what is literature and what is not literature. They have many reasons for saying what is and is not literature. One reason is the amount of money the publishers spend with the newspaper or magazine for which the soothsayer of belles lettres works. Another reason is whether or not the author praised is related to the flack, or to the flack's wife, or his mistress. Perhaps the author praised has merely serviced the praiser piquantly, or lent him money, or given him money, or allowed him to win at poker. Maybe the bribe is such an innocuous thing as an invitation to the big-shot author's home on weekends.

This is the contemporary side of the thing which occurs in each age. In each successive generation all the literature that all the critics praised dies the death, and the following generation picks out an entirely different set of belles lettres and says that that was the real literature of the time. It is entirely possible that the generation following us will say that our current comic strips contained the Great Imaginative Literature of our generation, and that everything Clifton Fadiman and the rest of the literary professoriat praised was a lot of subsidized junk ballyhooed into big sales by clever publicity and something approaching strong-arm "must-for-culture's-sake" reasons.

What a contemporary critic says about a contemporary piece of writing is mere propaganda subsidized, streamlined, and forwarded just as the sale of laundry soap is forwarded by propaganda, streamlined hyperbole, and the like. Whether it is or is not literature has nothing to do with the matter. The ballyhoo is all that has anything to do with it; but millions of morons are so constituted that they will sit and drive themselves blindly through the most boring junk they can find if the New Yorker says it is the smart thing to do, and if Harry Hansen stakes his life on it that some culture pollen will rub off on the reader much as powder from a butterfly's wings might rub off on him if he went around chasing butterflies. (It would be much 'better to go chase butterflies; you'd get exercise at least out of that.)

However, when the returns from all the precincts are in, a hundred years or so later, belles lettres begin to take on a much more stable coloration. The picking and choosing, then, is not done by literary pimps for book clubs, but by readers who keep on reading certain things from generation to generation because they like them. For instance, seven million copies of "The Winning of Barbara Worth have been sold. Every critic in the country damned the novel up hill and down dale when it came out. Mention it to this day to any reviewer or critic and he will scream for his smelling salts and lisp pitifully for someone to open wide the window. But people liked "The Winning of Barbara Worth." Personally I think it stinks, but who am I to fly in the face of seven million happy readers?

I once met one of the greatest of all practicing critics in our generaton, William Lyon Phelps. In my humble estimation James Branch Cabell is the greatest novelist the United States has ever produced. I spoke to Phelps of him, since Phelps had then recently compiled a list of the one hundred best American novels, but had included nothing by Cabell. Phelps' attitude was typical of all critics. He looked at me patronizingly, and said: "My deah boy, Cabell's vogue has passed. He will not be read beyond this generation."

That is the sort of fiat you can always depend upon from any critic who rides herd on millions of morons possessed of culture complexes. Phelps knew (there was no room for argument anywhere) that Cabell would not be read by the next generation. When I suggested that maybe he might be, Mr. Phelps was much twitted.

One thing we can always be sure of, the things that the critics in one generation ballyhoo are always (and I am speaking retrospectively with actual history as my proof) forgotten in the next; while in the next generation, and succeeding ones, the things that survive and are read and reread turn out to be things the critics previously scorned.

But critics, those charlatans who outdo even the politicians in daffy pronunciamentos, would always have you believe that there is a veddy teddible difference between writing and literature. A Communist critic, if he is a devout Communist, will tell you that literature is something that makes Stalin look Big as All Outdoors, and everything else is just writing. A Catholic critic will tell you that everything which shows a Proper Understanding of the One True Faith is literature, and everything else is writing. . . . And so on.

Actually there is no such thing as literature, in the sense that literary taffy-pullers speak of it. All literature is just writing; and any writing may be literature. With all their temerity in the matter of absolute fiats, no critic or reviewer, no set of critics or reviewers, in any age has ever been able to describe the difference between just writing and literature.

What is the difference, then, between writing and literature? How do you tell, certainly, whether a book is literature or just writing?

Here, take this book in your hand. Don't be alarmed at the feel of it. That funny feel is due to the fact that it's covered with paper that looks like cloth. Look in the book. Can you tell if it is or if it isn't literature? Of course you can't, because you are an honest man.

If you wanted to find out what kind of paper is in the book you could go to a paper expert, and he would tell you, precisely. No matter how many paper experts you consult, they will all give you the same answer, and it will be the correct answer. A paper expert has to know his ear from his elbow in order to hold his job. A critic doesn't have to know any-thing to hold his job; he just has to know somebody.

All right, now, hang on to your book. Take it to a spiritualist medium and get her to conjure up the soul of William Lyon Phelps. When his soul has been conjured up, show him the book and ask him if it is or if it isn't literature. He will snort thinly in his ectoplasm that it is "Pecksniffian rubble." Fair enough. William Lyon Phelps is a great critic. Dead now, he is probably telling God which parts of the Bible should never have been written. You have received a decision, just as you received a decision as to what kind of paper was in the book. Now are you satisfied?

You remember that when you asked the first paper expert what kind of paper was in the book, he told you; and all the other experts agreed with him. Now just to make sure you have a real decision on your hands take the book to Burton Rascoe and ask him if it is or if it isn't. Burton Rascoe says: "It is immortal prose." (In my opinion Burton Rasaoe is the best critic in the country, absolutely incorruptible in his decisions.)

Now you have two great men's opinions, but you have a tie. So you consult a third. You go to Harry Hansen. You show him the book. Harry says: "Well, I'll tell you, it isn't so much a matter of if it is, or if it isn't, as it is a matter of could it be, won't it be, or someday wouldn't it be, if perchance this, that, the other, and then some, I have a date with an inter-urban train for five minutes from now, do you mind, old fellow, just read Harper's, there you will find the true facts of life about belles lettres. . . ." And so it goes.

Visit all the top-shot critics in the country and you still won't be sure whether what you hold in your hands is literature or junk. So then again we have the same problem: what is literature? "War and Peace," by Tolstoy, is supposed to be the all-time tops in nifty novel notions. When it was first published most critics said it was awful. Now all critics agree that it is great. If it is great now it was great in the first place. People keep dragging it out and reading it for some reason. I would stake my life on it that they do not keep on reading it because it is literature; I think they keep on reading it because it is interesting.

Is literature, then, something written that is interesting? Against such heresy Clifton Fadiman, Harry Hansen, and every other Big League critic in New York would throw himself with horrible howls of protest. An interesting book is anathema to a critic. The duller a book is, the more prosy it is, the more uninteresting it is, the more likely will the book be to get critical contemporary approval. The reason why all critics throw themselves with gusto against the claim that literature should be interesting is that more interest is shown by readers (by quantity) in Hearst serials than in all the belles lettres published in New York put together. But how can we with any possible show of confidence say for certain that the next generation will not decide that Hearst serials were the greatest literature of our time, while all the cultural stuff foisted on us by book-of-the-day, -week, -month, and -hour clubs was junk? A book, when it is sold through high-pressure advertising and recommended by some Brahman of galloping belles lettres, doesn't have to be interesting. It is read by morons with culture complexes because they think they must read it. They have been told it is literature, and so they expect it to be dull. They believe that it is literature because they have been told that it is such.

After a few years of such dallyings readers come to believe that anything which interests them is hack writing and only that which bores them is literature. A few more years and that nonsense will kill the novel as dead as narrative poetry has been killed in this country, because the same process was once applied to narrative poetry. A Hearst serial has to be interesting or it will not get read at all. People paid a few cents or a nickel for the paper, and for their dough they got the usual doctored bullcon that passes for news in this land of Free Speech. The reason they bought the paper was to get the "news." They feel that they got the worth of their investment right there. If they then read the serial they do so not be-cause some Jack-in-the-box of belles lettres leered at them and told them they must if they want to be cultured; they read it because they want to. And it has to be doubly good because, having read one day's instalment, the reader will not bother to get the next day's instalment unless what he read vitally held him.

Literature, then, is something people read because they think they have to; and writing is something people read because they want to.

THE LEAST READ OF ALL WRITING IN THE COUNTRY IS THE TREMENDOUS SPATE OF BOOKS FROM THE EASTERN PUBLISHING MARKET.

THE MOST READ OF ALL WRITING IN THE COUNTRY IS THE TEN-TIMES-GREATER EFFLUX OF WHAT ARE CALLED PULP-PAPER MAGAZINES.

The reason people read books less than they do magazines is because most of the books are dull; i. e., "literature," and most of the magazines interest them.

You could take any novel that the critics are going to say is tremendous, tomorrow, publish it in a pulp-paper magazine, and any critic you gave it to except Burton Rascoe would say that it is junk.

On the other hand, you could lift from the editorial files of many a pulp magazine today a serial, present it under the name of some author who ranks high in the Eastern literary soirees, and when it was published the bigger critics (if the publisher was lavish in his advertising appropriations) would declare it to be immortal literature.

This once actually happened. Alfred A. Knopf has a high rating as a publisher. He published a pulp novel called "The Thin Man," and with Woollcott leading the pack critics whooped it up for "The Thin Man." If these same critics had been handed "The Thin Man" in its pulp-paper printing they would have declared it to be junk.

YOU CANNOT POSSIBLY KNOW AND NOBODY ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH CAN POSSIBLY TELL YOU WHETHER OR NOT WHAT YOU ARE WRITING TODAY IS OR IS NOT LITERATURE.

There simply is no such thing as "literature" in the connotation of the word that we have come to accept. Anything can turn out to be literature. Almost every-thing we call literature today, from the past, was called junk by the critics when it was published, Almost everything which, in the past, was blessed by the high priests of literary criticism of the time is called junk now, and forgotten.

I feel absolutely certain that in the next generation practically everything the book clubs published and paid to have praised today will be called junk. I feel just as certain that what will be hailed as the great writing of this generation will be pulp-paper stuff nobody in critical circles even notices today.

Critics and reviewers do not hunt for good writing. They have no curiosity concerning it whatever. They accept certain publishers as the nuts in publishing, and consider what these publishers, with large advertising appropriations, publish, and ignore everything else. It is quite possible that some lousy vanity press this year turned out the greatest novel of this generation. If it did no critic will ever even see it, let alone appraise it vanity publishers have no advertising appropriations. (Please do not misunderstand me here. I am not recommending vanity publishers. I think they are a disgraceful crew.)

It is quite possible that the greatest short-story writer of our generation is today writing the greatest short stories of our time for some obscure pulp magazine. If he is, no critic of our time will find him or appraise him. Critics do not search for great writing or great writers they accept what Story Magazine and the publishers offer them.

Story Magazine has managed, oddly enough, to gain a reputation of literary probity and excellence by the mere expedient of never printing anything in the magazine but dull stories. These, morons with culture complexes think, must be literature, because they have been taught by book clubs that literature is something excessively dull. Future generations will in all likelihood laugh at the files of Story Magazine and pick its winners from the files of magazines no swanky literary critic would touch today.

I repeat: there is no such thing as literature; there is just interesting writing and uninteresting writing. All writing that is interesting almost always depends for its longevity from generation to generation upon the personal idiosyncrasies of the author. The personal idiosyncrasies of the author may be glandular or psychological, but they are not, per se, literature. "War and Peace" is simply lousy with what all critics today agree is the wrong thing to do when writing a novel —and so are a hundred other books one could name as fast as one could put tongue to words. It is from the despised novelists of today that posterity will pick its darlings; not from the touted, pimped for, and ballyhooed dull stuff recommended by the book clubs.

What standards have you then by which to judge?

You have none. Nobody can tell you if you are or if you aren't a belles lettres baby. You can't tell you. I can't tell you. This entire reading generation can't tell you. Only ten generations can tell you for sure.

What you are up against is not a matter of learning to write or not write belles lettres. What you are up against is a racket-how to foist your short stories on some moronic underpaid jerk who has managed to wangle a job as an editor and who knows no more about if it is or if it isn't than you do. Moreover, as I pointed out in "Why Write a Novel," these editorial jerks for the past quarter-century have sat an average of two and a half years in their jobs and then gone into some other racket.

What you have to do if you want to write for money is to gauge the degree of idiocy of a given set of editors and give the wights what they want, whatever the hell that may be. But don't let any of them tell you it is or isn't good or bad, literature or not literature. They don't know. Nobody knows but posterity. The writing of prose today is merely a racket. Approach it as a racket. Approach it, even, with something of the rumbustiousness of a gangster. Bribe your way in. Wheedle your way in. Run with the mob. But when you get in, and have arrived, you still won't know, and nobody will know, whether you really are writing well or ill. It's on the lap of the gods, and the gods have lousy laps. They are forever spilling people through them.

William Saroyan is a wonderful example to follow. From the first, everybody in editorial New York tried to bloody him and smear him, but he rushed on, unreasoned with and unhindered. In another few years all those who did everything they possibly could to make him stop writing the way he wanted to write, and to write the way they wanted him to write, will acclaim him. Yet posterity may ignore him or hail him as the only great writer of this generation. How did Saroyan achieve this? By simply having confidence in himself and in nobody else. He viewed the whole literary scene as a racket, and he hijacked it. When what he wrote was called junk by critics, was it junk? Now that it is beginning to be called literature, is it literature?