The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1921-11-15

WASHINGTON. D. c., Nov. Is. II
The book week recently celebrated in |
New York has already had its imita-
tors in the form of book weeks and !
book fairs in other cities, and these
are only a few of the many symptoms /
that the United States of America, !
known the world over as the most ma I
terialistic and unintellectual of coun-
tries. has suddenly developed an in
terest 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 periodi-
Gals and booksellers publications put
out from time to. time lists of books
most in demand at book stores and at
public Libraries. These are surely the
best possible index to what the people
are reading and they show that Amer
! leans are reading better books than
| ever before.
| In former years these best sellers
and books most in demand at libraries
! were almost all kinds that had proved
! their commercial value, just as certain
! brands of soap, perfume and tooth
| powder have done. They were trade
! goods, purley, having no literery value
and often pretending to none.
The principal types of these STAN
dard trade novels were the wild west
story, the detective or mystery story,
| the southern mountaineer, feud-and-
moonshine story and the dOmestic-sen-
timental love story, and the moral por-
biography story, in which the hero and
heroine go through a long series of
SEXUAL gynastics hallowed in the end
by matrimony.
Novels of these types have appeared
in this country every spring and fall
! for many years as regularly as the sea-
sons come around. Some of them
| have been written with genuine skill
| and have really entertained readers of
| certain large classes. Others have
been so feeble in conception and excu-
ton as to bore even the travelling
salesman and the ladies afflicted with
insomnia and idleness who make up
so large a part of the reading public.
All of them were made according
to a well-worn formula and had no re-
lation to the life they purported to de-
pict. or to any other phase of life, than
movies of the poorer sort. They were
the literary successors to the dime
novels-to Diamond Dick" Mick Car
ter" Ten Nights in the Bar Room, "
East Lynne" why Girls Leave
Home Those best sellers of the last
generation were often bound in gaudy
paper covers and sold very cheaply.
They were widely read But their re
putation becam e steadily wirse
Dime novel" and "paper-back novel;
and "yellow-back novel; became terms
of reproach and contempt. People
were ashamed to be caught reading
them. Their vogue declined. but not
the appetite for cheap illusion, machine
made thrill, easy moralizing and vi
cariOus eroticism which they fed. Ac-
cordingly the dime novel merely
changed its dress dress. It was bound
in boards, illustrated and sold at a
price that slowly advanced from 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 reversion against paper covers
that most booksellers will not today
: stock a book in paper covers. 1t 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 uncer
tain ventures 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 Polecat Can
ii yon," or "Sputtering Simpson" or he
has put on skirts and run wild as
j. Scrap of the Lazy K" or "Suzan o
Piute Pass" His name is legion anC
{ always he is the same. When thu
reader opens a wild west story hi
5 knows just what he is going to find
), a beautiful girl who rides wild horses
s strapping cow-puncher who is
e cross between Sir Galahad and Bill,
q Sunday, william, usually Mexican o
halfbreed, who is coming to a bad emf
! after a nefariOus attempt on the hero
inc virtue. The action will be plaster
: ed with purple sunsets, rOckwalleC
maZes or mysterious canyons, SHIN
L meTing leagues of alkaline desert
< When the writer cannot think of any
e thing to do he will let the coyote
n howl for a while
/ One could go on to describe all III
II other well known standard types-th
r detective story in which a wealth.
5 clubman is always murdered in hi