The sun., 1919-05-18

would not much matter But novel is different.
The customer wanting JENKINsoN's History OF
France would order it or go elsewhere most likely.
The customer wanting JENKNsoN's new novel is
quite often content with HARRINGTON s instead.
When you go to the ticket agency to get seats at
a Broadway show and find they have none left for
WhOop Ter Up you grumble, and then buy seats at
Let's All Co. Not that you really care. Not that
any one really cares. The man who produced
WhOOp er Up is also the producer of Let's All Go,
the two theatres are owned by single group, the
Gbrettists and the same and the music of
both is equally bad, proceeding from an identical
source. Even the stage hands work interchange
ably on strict union scale. But Mr.. JENK1NsoN
did not write TARKINGToN's novel, the books are
published by firms that have not dollar in COM
mon, and only the bookseller can preserve an eva
tanguayan Indifference over your choice.
Pages lao, Punch!
The publishers salesman comes to the book
sellers lair equipped with dummies. These show
the books exterior, its SIZE thickness paper, bind
ing and livery importantly its jacket. Within the
dummy are blank pages, or perhaps the first twenty
pages Of the book printed and to give the
volume requisite thickness. The bookseller may
read these twenty pages. If the author has got
plenty of action into them the bookseller is favor
the book upon what the salesman and the pub
lisher's catalogue tell. him. He has to- He can't
read em all.
In his interesting article on The Publishing Bust
ness, appearing in 1916 in the Publishers Weekly
and since reprinted as booklet TEMPLE SCOTT
cites HENRI BERGsoNs Creative Evolution as a
modern instance of a special sort Of book finding
its own very special, but surprisingly large public.
"Nine booksellers out of ten passed it when the
traveller brought it round" observes Mr.. SCOTT.
Fortunately, for the publisher, the press acted
the part of the expert and public attention Sc
cured" Was the bookseller to blamef Most de-
cidedly not. Creative Evolution is nothing to tie
up your money in on dim chance that somewhere
an enthusiastic audience waits for the Bergsonian
gospel.
Mr. ScoTT's article, which is inconclusive in our
opinion, points out clearly that two books are
like each other no two books are really the same
article. Much fiction, to be sure is of single
stamp; many books, and here we are by no means
limited to fiction, have whatever unity comes from
the authorship of single hand. This unity may
exist elusivey as in the stories Of JOSEPH CONRAD,
or may be confined almost wholly to the presence of
the name two title pages, in the fact that
The Vrginidr and The PentecoSt of Calamity are
both the work of OWEN WIsTER.
No! Two books are most often and emphatically
not the same article. Mr.. SCOTT is wholly right
when he points out every book should have adver
Using, or other attention, peculiar to itself A
method of reporting one book will not do for
other, any more than publishers circular describ
ing one book will do to describe a second The art
Of reporting books other news, like the art of ad
vertising books or other commodities, is of end
less differentiation In the absence of real original
ty freshness and ideas both objects go unachieved
or else are achieved by speciousness, not to say
guile. You for example, do not really believe that
by reading HANNIBAL HLcoMBE's How to Heap
Up Happiness you will be able to acquire the equiv
alent of college education in fty-two weeks. But
somewhere in How to Heap Up Happiness Mr..
HALcoMBE tells how he made money how he
learned to enjoy pictures on magazine covers or
happy solution of his unorignal domestic troubles
any one Of which you may crave to know and
honest information of which will probably send
you after the book
THE ANCIENT KINGS.