The New York herald., 1922-02-26

son asks whether being a
newspaper writer isn't fatal
to being literary. 1t is as if the spec
tacle of a man talking TO an audience
in a great arena were to excite a
fear that the poor chap would never
again be able to speak properly in a
parlor. The implication seems to be
that it would be q dreadful thing il
any one with the wish or the faculty
for being literary should be blighted
by journalism, or if not blighted at
least tainted to a degree that ham,
pered his flight. Many a literary
aspirant has asked me. with solemn
concern, whether writing for news
papers was not likely to spoil style
beyond recovery. There has been the
effect of wondering whether literary
Virginity should not be saved for
ritualistic consecrsltion TO a higher
career, for the moment OF marriage
to the bookish life.
These anXieties are often the
greater because the feared effects are
obscure. Perhaps there has been an
adventure or two with no immediate
ly apparent signs of infection. To
write for a newspaper and feel as
literary as before must, gather, ex-
cite an awed suspicion that the in
fection may be subtle and that you
may discover when it is too late that
your constitution is hopelessly un-
dermined or that newspaper influ-
ence threatens to have a wood alco-
hol effect on your spiritual sight.
1 have found it rather reassuring
to the dubious to remind them that
Dickens, Barrie, Kipling, Poe, Walt
Whitman, Mark Twain, Bret Harte.
Ambrose Bierce, Howells and many
another. dead and living, have been
newspaper men without discernible
handicap by reason of that circum-
stance.
The truth is, of course, that the
worst writing and the best writing
appears in newspapers; the worst,
because of the natural hazards of
hurry; the best, because the great
audience reached by newspapers nat
urally tends to enlist the imagina-
ton and powers of expression in the
most gifted men and women and be-
cause the institutional privilege and
enterprise of newspapers may offer
opportunities beyond the range of
other avenues of print.
What we call art (it is one of the
funniest words we have) represents
seeing, feeling and expressing. There
is nothing in any of these functions
that is interfered with by a news
paper in itself; it is the audience
consideration that affects the express
sion when the expression is affected
at all. One must speak clearly to a
big audience, and speaking clearly
never hurt any one. Newspaper writ
ing has taught writers TO remember
that audiences are interested i'm more
than literary" things. Whether a
man is selling, or preaching, or en-
tertaining it is well that he should
learn to remember other people and
their situation at the time he ap-
proaches them. Ii is the writer who
is elf-centered, who is wondering
about his own soul rather than other
peoples souls. who thinks being lit
erary is writing down in pretty words
an expression of himself. rather than
writing down in the simplest possible
words a communication of himself to
others who has most to fear from
facing the newspaper audiences. 1t
makes a mighty difference in the
definition of art whether the artist
says expression" or says com
munication."
AS a matter of fact there is no