The sun., 1919-07-13
ON CLIPPING WINGS: PROLOGUE.

fiction manuscripts to be sent to market; and it is
our awful purpose to consider him here and now,
and to 60 on considering him in this place during
the next four weeks. He is worth it surely All the
book world loves the Young Writer-prOfesses to,
at least.
Ours will be neither the publishers nor the pub
lies viewpoint on him-nOr, for that matter, his
own STILL 1T won't be absolutely foreign to his
own Cali it well disposed but disillusioned elder
brothers.
Who and what is the Young Writer, the sufferer
"from an alarming disease affecting numerous
classY' And how, as WILL SHAKESPEARE asked
DRAYToN about BEN JONSoN, how did he get that
way? How is he proceeding? In mercy we shall try
hard to refrain from saying how he ought to pro-
coed. Every else is constantly telling him that,
and considering the writing temperament the in
frequency of the consequent homicides is credit to
civilization.
On the true genius, the CHATTERToN, SHELLEY,
POE, RUDYARD KIPLING, STEPHEN CRANE we shall
waste no time. You do not arrive at anything that
matters about genius. You walk round and round
him, like an Eskimo around fallen meteor; you
worship the god and pity the poor devil and get no
closer With the terreStrially gifted young person
bent on writing fction-talented for fiction if you
hke-it is otherwise. In him known causes have
L
he can go splendidly, although measurably far and
high. At his worst, 81 peSSimum requIis crcunt-
spiee-to crib grand air of classical profundity.
Columbia Cleared. /
Let us open on him with general affirmation.
Please memorize it if this topic attracts you; it is
the keynote of everything to come in the four in
staments We threaten. They say, o they say, until
walls and trees wearied, that the United States
of America does not produce first class authors be-
cause it doesn't want them-because it wants dol
lars instead, SO that exceptionally capable youth
which might have written is shunted off on the bust
ness rails and arrives millionaire and in author
ship we have to put up with the works of our sec
ond raters
That hoary old pillar of wisdom cannot stand
searching look between the eyes. For thing, the
U. S. A. does produce some first class authors But
1t ism enough to name them and rest your case as
the other side will promptly establish the fact that
their number, in proportion to our population and
its opportunities, is unsatisfactOry-that while We
have five or ten times as many respectable journey
men authors as any other country we lack our pro-
pOrtiOnate share of the very best.
Conceding that
The reason rhy the United States does not pro-
duce more first class authors u.s. not that 1t doesn't
much, and thereby ruins great deal of itsapromis-
ing young material.
Which the same we have risen to explain. But
first to finish the clearing of the ground it non
sense to talk about youthful ability as if it were
amorphous carbon and would turn into diamonds
or graphite or coal, according to its situation. Mr.
FRANK HARRIS, who is, or was at one time, worth
listening to on writers, once said that there must be
twenty Shakespeares in America, who, because it
was America, were great fnanciers instead Reader,
if there were twenty Shakespeares in America we
should be getting twenty series of Shakespearian
masterpieces also (never mind astrology and fate)
the boy named JOHN ID. ROCKEFELLER who was hoe
ing potatoes up State si1ty-ive years ago was
geared to become exactly what he did, and would
have made failure of it if he had crossed his own
nature and tried to write.
Aso-coming down from that plane-all but
chemical trace of the multitude of Americans who
are writing are writers because they were so con-
stituted. To have tackled nearly any of them in
the formative period and have tried to make
merchant would have been to make sick and I'M