The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1916-1920, 1919-08-03
ON CLIPPING WINGS: THE BoYG.

voice dltfuSed through megaphone. lie can very
well be definitely represented; the actor would
need to be several times as bulky as Messrs.
ARBucKLE and built like human dOughnut into
the bargain =
development and inertia were the tactics OF the
Boyg He did nothing; neither could his VICTIM
surrounded with his impenetrable rubbery tough
ness. The great Boygs attentions amounted to life
internment. Peer Gynt, after noisy despair in the
end prevailed and the excuse of the Boyg is sig
nifcant "He was too strong-there were women
behind him.
Incorrigible PSYCHOLOGISTS have interpreted this
monster a>~symbol Of nine-and-sixty different
things. In our opinion, they 60 too far afed. Any
young struggling writer can always put out his
hand and touch the Boyg; IBsEN personally knew
him all too well, and wrote Peer Gynt with hands
raw and bleeding from battering against him.
Roughly, the Boyg is the general market for be-
ginner's creations, and when the beginner, in our
American cant phrase is striving to get i'm he is
actually striving to get out-out through this ami
mate prison wall to move among spirits receptive
to his efforts
The exasperating Boyg has virtues, after all. He
is potent developer and educator as well test
that only the fit survive.
Now consider this troll as he is-a circle of maya
zine editors and book publishers including the
professional manuscript readers of both. The maya
zine people are the in point, since at them the
beginners efforts are usually directed. BRANDER
MATTHEWS has lately called the magazines the half
way house between journalism and literature-=an
easygoing rhetorical flip that has small meaning
and less application; he might better have called
them the halfway house between obscurity and
substantial recognition
Little Essay on "Conmercialism"
The first thing our beginner should fix in his
mind is thing no beginner worth trying to help
does fix there A magazine is a commercial prod
net. made on business lines and backed, as rule,
by business men, who naturally take thoroughly
businesslike view of it, and reasonably expect
return from their capital invested. Their editor
must govern himself accordingly.
All that is undoubtedly bad and perverse in the
light of superb ideals Nevertheless it exists and 1t
will continue to exist until the millennium Our
beginner ought to recognize it and study how to
cope with it, instead of souring his soul before it
and kicking against the Boyg who thrives on kick
ings He Il have to recognize it sooner or later the
sooner the better for him.
But let us not make an ogre of this word COM
mercialism-or if we must, let us measure our ogre
and girS I'D our loins instead of running away.
what does cOmmercldlISH ucduf IL AnCo1lS IAio1
the primary aim is to sell many copies as posi-
BILE. and thus to have a circulation that will COM
mand the patronage of advertisers on whom SO per
cent of periodicals necessarily depend, not only for
revenue but even for full self-support And how
are these copies to be soldf By publishing things
in every issue that one or another numerous class
of readers will want to see
From one or two fragrant and at least temporarily
prosperous examples we. might conclude in our
haste that Just what is published is not of much
moment, so long as plenty of ''blurb" IA good
natured term for hes) is smeared around it. But
that is not quite correct The glare of the blurbng
may attract public attention in the first places still
all the blurbing master blurber could reel off in
hashish delirium will not avail to hold the public
aless the rnogaaines ioGres somehow make good.
Their manner of making good may he wholly diff
ferent from the representations but you cannot get
anybody to read, and keep reading, anything that
is unsatisfactory to him by yelling its praises at
tbe ton of vour lungs The simple soul who knows