Arizona republican., 1908-07-11

1.-the country to. the town. Even Mark
 Twain and George Ade have turned farmers.
 ! It seems rather surprising, therefore, on hunting up David Graham Phillips, ! one of the most successful of the strong group of younger novelists, to find that ] the trail leads to the fourteenth and | top floor of a lofty studio apartment ! building, room with broad northern | windows looking off over acres of
 Manhattan roofs to the spidery outlines i of growing East river bridge. Since | the scientists tell us that we are all ! creatures of environment, the thought occurs that this location may contain I the answer to some of the questions l that naturally arise in connection with ! the novelist's work. Here in the heart of hustling New York, with the puls- l ing life of millions of ordinary, unideal- lzed men and women flowing through I the streets over which these windows l look, was it not inevitable that a man | should write of the systematized war | fare of modern business, the sordid l as well as the self sacrificing phases Tor human character, the pettiness and | hypocrisy of married life as well as it's I ldealism. Similarly if Dickens had
 been country gentleman instead of in | close communion with Bloomsbury and | Holburn would he have written as he
 did? Isn't it the breathing of this
 metropolitan atmosphere of strife and
 pretense, of hypocrisy and open aban-
 don, of cruelty and prodigality that
 makes this writer dig deep into the facts of modern life as it is lived that
 makes his stories Init a man where
 he lives" as 1 heard business man
 confess one day in Pullman smoker
 and that makes women bristle and
 protest at the merciless tearing away
 of carefully constructed feminine
 masks? Maybe if Phillips had joined the country colony he would be satis-
 fled to write about the four hundred
 or golf and tennis girls, or the bold re-
 former who carries all before him in stories.
 This line of thought was interrupted by the entrance of MT. Phillips him. self. He wore a long dressing gown and explained that he had but shortly | finished bath and breakfast The time
 was late forenoon but this does not
 mean that MT. Phillips sleeps more
 than the allotted hours of the average
 man. As he explains deprecatingly it is the survival of habits acquired in the days when he was a newspaper re- porter which leads him to do much of his writing after midnight, to retire shortly before sunrise and to begin his day well on toward noon.
 Leaning over a reading desk like that habitually used by clergymen and public speakers, on which most of his
 work is done. for M- Phillips writes
 his stories standing Lp at this pulpit like desk, the novelist smilingly shook his head at the explanation I had for mulated of the particular tread of his literary activities.
 That's an interesting theory" he commented, but I'm afraid it is hard ly correct Each one of us must write
 abont what interests him, what appeals to him, what demands to be written by him. The setting may differ ac- cording to environment but the essen tial truth must be life as we see it. or
 those phases of life which We see most clearly"
 But you must admit that your
 books result in far more controversy and discussion than do the stories of
 many other successful writers. How
 do you explain that?"
 q don't" said MT. Phillips promptly.
 T never thought ot it. Still it may
 be true and it may be because I write about what is as distinguishable from
 what was or what ought to be. You see truth in the story. truth that is somehow personally disagreeable or disquieting?
 Some people say that everything in old Wives for New is true enough but that it is not wise to speak of
 these things. Now this amounts to a defense of lying and suppressing truth and smoothing things over Haven't we had about enough of this kind of smooth, snug lying?, Does it increase your respect for liar to discover that
 he is lying because his salary depends on it, or to get a judgeship or a dog catchership? Or, because he, the hus-
 band is lying for fear he would be less respectable if truthful? Or that she,
 the wife, is lying because she is getting
 board and clothes and a chance to lazy about. No, whenever anyone tells you a truth should be suppressed for lyhateSer lofty reason, be sure he or she means that the telling of that truth imperils his or her personal com fort in some way in which it ought to be imperiled or destroyed.
 Some people say that old Wives for New is fndelicate.' That Is not my fault. I do not make life as it is. I do not establish the standard of deli lcacy and indelicacy. And if truth is indelicate I rather think the trouble is not with the truth but with the standards of delicacy. Healthy minds are not shocked They look at all things cleanly and shudder only at hy- pocisy. Our coarse and ignorant hab- it ofrcOnfusing the natural with the nasty. leads us into moral degenera- ton"
 MT. Phillips consulted his watch and voiced his regret that the fifteen min utes allotted for our talk had expired. He accompanied me to the door,
 f- fl. l,1