The age-herald., 1901-05-11
LITERARY RUBBISH.
MT. Howells on It's Present Vogue and
 Ultimate Fate.
From Harper's Magazine.

From HarperS Magazine.
 Have you ever'' the Easy Chair asked, had your doubts whether book was especially worth reading because its sale had reached hundred thousand, or two. or even five hundred thousand?,'
 The editor looked warily about his den, and seeing that he was quite alone with the Easy Chair he confessed: Yes; I have already expressed grave doubts of that sort, but nobody else seems to have them, and as do not like to be odd, I do not keep insisting upon mine"
 T am not sure you are right" said the Easy Chair Perhaps other people have them, and if you insist upon them, you would not find yourself so odd, after all Is the fact that book has not sold half a million copies proof that 1t is poor literature?"
 T should be sorry to think so," said the editor, "I have written books and am afraid it would rule mine out, except in the very few cases where they passed that figure"
 But would you like to have written the books that sell half a million? Candidly, now!"
 "Candidly, then. I wouldn't. But would rather write them than read them; I think 1t would be easier. A certain kind of man would write one of the re- cent enormous successes because If he wished to write at all he would have no choice but to write that kind of book. He would be made so. but no one could be imaginably made so that he must read such a book, in the sense that the author must write it..
 q don't know about that" said the Easy Chair, musingly. ''The fact that there are two or three or ten or twenty men who must write trashy books possi- bly implies the fact that there are two or three or twenty millions who must read them. Have you any philosophy as to the vast popularity of the books that have been lately filling the world with the noise of their publicity? It used to be called advertising, but I rather like the Gallic neatness of the new word."
 .'No, unless 1t is the publicity that does it. Only, the publicity seems not to come first, always"
 Tt can't be publicity that does it, then. though the publicity helps. The thing seems largely meteorological. It is scarcely more an affair of volition than the weather A certain atmospheric pres sure in the material world causes 1t to rain water, and certain atmospheric pressure in the literary world causes 1t to rain rubbish. We suppose that In both cases the rain comes from the clouds. from above, but in both cases 1t comes primarily from the ground, from below. What you want to do in order to account for the literary rubbish which now pre- vails Is not to analyze the authors, who are the mere modes of it's discharge. but to ascertain the condition of their read-> CTS, from whom they received 1t as an imperceptible exhalation, and who receive back from the authors in an appreciable form"
 You mean. in other terms" said the editor, that the number of readers has enlarged the number of writers. and the writers are trashy because the readers are."
 "Oh, you musn't press the inference too far. Logic can always turn upon us and make us its prey. if we do that. You will be saying next that popular educa- ton is mistake, and that people should not be taught to read and write because they read and write rubbish"
 a"Oh, no. I should not go so far as that. But might say that they had better not be taught to write."
 And IT. said the Easy Chair putting on its traditional air of optimism, con tend that they can safely be taught to do both. You must not regard the pres- ent state as final It is not state at all in fact; 1t Is a stage, and an advance, taking in the whole body of readers upon any former stage. We must not think the lovers of a half-million copy novel are recreant lovers of Hawthorne or George Eliot, or MT. Thomas Hardy.
 "The most part of them never heard of those authors. To leave the meteorologi- cal figure we have been working, up to this point, and try something aboricultu- ral, we may liken our immeasureable mental level to the prairie country, which when men begin to plant 1t with trees. they first plant with the course, rank cottonwood. After generation or two of cottonwood they can grow aks and elms and naples n the priarie, but not at first You may be sure that the plains in which the literary cottonwoods now flourish have never grown oaks or elms or naples Up to the time the readers of the recent successes began to read them they had read dime novels and story papers, or they went to the theaters But the exhalation and precipitation of rubbish cannot go on forever"
 T don't see why it shouldn't" the ed- itor broke in. Let's hear by what new metaphor you escape the logic of your postulate."
 T have none that fits.' the Easy Chair frankly owned But all the same 1 feel sure of my position. The forces in the mental world are not governed by the same laws as those of the material world. Tn the material world 1t must keep on raining water, but 1t need not rain rub bish always in the mental world. 1mper- ceptibly the conditions will vary, and in