The Topeka state journal., 1921-11-16
TOPEKA STATE JOURNAL
Information Bureau
FREDERIC j. HAsKIN, Director.
Washington, D. c.
a BANNER YEAR FoR BooKs.

A BANNER YEAR FOR BOOKS.
Washington, D. c., Nov. 1.-THE
book week recently celebrated in New
| York has already had its imitators in
the form of book weeks and book fairs
in other cities, and these are only
few of the many symptoms that the
United States of America, known the
world over as the most materialistic
and unintellectual of countries, has
suddenly developed an interest in
books many times greater than it ever
had before.
Books are selling in America at an
unusual rate, and some are reaching
very high totals of circulation, but the
significant fact is not so much the
| number as the character of the books
| that are being sold. Various period
Gals and booksellers publications put
out from time to time lists of books
| at public libraries. These are surely
the best possible index to what the
people are reading and they show that
| Americans are reading better books
! than ever before
In former years these best sellers
and books most in demand at libraries
were almost all of kinds that had
proved their commercial value, just as
! certain brands of soap, perfume and
tooth powder have done. They were
| trade-goods, purely, having no literary
value, and often pretending to none.
The principal types of these stand
ard trade novels were the wild west
story, the detective or mystery story,
the southern mountaineer. feud-and-
moonshine story, and the domestic
sentimental love story, and the moral
pornosraphy story, in which the hero
and heroine go thru q long series of
| sexual gymnastics hallowed in the end
by matrimony.
Novels of these types have ap-
peared in this country every spring
and fall for many years as regularly
as the seasons come around. Some of
them have been written with genuine
skill and have really entertained read
ers of certain large classes. Others
have been so feeble in conception and
execution as to bore even the travel
ing salesman and the ladies afflicted
with insomnia and idleness who make
up so large a part of the reading pub
lie
All of them were made according to
a well-Worn formula and had no more
relation to the life they purported to
depict, or to any other phase of life,
than movies of the poorest sort. They
were the literary successors to the
dime novels-to Diamond Dick"
Mick Carter Ten Night in a Bar
Room" East Lynne" and why
Girls Leave Home" Those. best SELL
ers of the last generation were often
bound in gaudy paper covers and sold
very cheaply. They were widely read.
But their reputation became steadily
worse. Dime noveP' and paper-back
novel; and ''yellow-back noveP' be-
came terms of reproach and con-
tempt. People were ashamed to be
caught reading them. Their vogue
declined. but not the appetite for
cheap Illusion, machine-made thrill.
easy moralizing and vicarious croft
cism which they fed. Accordingly the
dime novel merely changedefts dress
1t was bound in boards, illustrated
and sold at a price that slowly ad-
vanced wfrom SO cents to $500. A
book that would have been sneered at
in paper covers was devoured in
board covers. 1t was not that the
public taste had changed, but simply
that the paper cover was no longer
respectable. So strong was the Fever-
sion against paper covers that most
booksellers will not today stock
book in paper covers. It was recently
urged by a prominent British man of
letters that the first novels of young
writer's be brought out in paper covers
so that the cost of such an uncertain
venture would not be so great He
was laughed at. No one would buy
anything in a paper cover.
Meantime, Diamond Dick" has
gone marching on in respectable
board covers. He has merely changed
his name to "Pie-eyed Pete Of Polecat
Canyon" or "Stuttering Simpson or
he has put on skirts and run wild as
Scrap Of the Lazy X" or Susan of
Piute Pass" His name is legion and
always he is the same. When the
reader open aN wild west story he
knows just what he is going to find
"a beautiful girl who rides wild
horses strappin cow-puncher who is
a cross between Sir Galahad and Billy
Sunday, a villain, usually Mexican or
half-breed, who is coming to a bad
end after nefarious attempt on the
heroines virtue. The action will be
plasteretd with purple sunsets rock
walled mazes of mysterious canyon,
shimmering leagues of alkaline desert.
When the writer cannot think of any,
thing else to do, he will let the coyotes
howl for a while.
One could go on to describe all of
the other well known standard types
the detective story in which a
wealthy clubman is always murd cred
in his library, and after suspicion has
hoVered over the head of some nubile
young woman and her handsome :
lover for a while, the deed is found
to have been done by the butler; the
mountain story in which a beautiful |
mountain belle vamps a revenue Of |
f1cer and precipitates a lot of sanguin- |
ary shooting; the sweet story of pure
love in which the smile and the tear
alternate with mechanical regularity |
until the final clineh and the fade-out !
into virtuous bliss; and the sort of |
thing we have with us now, in which |
Strapplng Arab man handles and |
disrobes a beautiful debutante thru |
out several hundred pages, but all is |
made well in the end with a license. |
All of these types are still with US, |
and all of them are still read. Then |
what is the evidence for a literary |
awakening? 1t is in the fact that good /
books are at last competing with the |
trade goods on an equal footing. Three |
out of five books most in demand at |
public libraries are the work of first |
class novelists who are praised. by all |
discerning critics. On a list of thirty |
books most in demand at the stores |
are at least seven that stand in the |