The New York herald., 1922-07-30

II.
Far be it from me to assume any
.nagisterial position-I am doing no
more than expressing a persona
opinion, for what it may be worth,
as the outgrowth of over thirty
years experience as reviewer. II
you demand a positive, complete an
swer to the question, What is litera-
ture?" / must say, 1 dunno, but I've
got a "hunch." AS to the value of
any personal opinion, / recall that
in my cub reporter days 1 was once
assigned to cover a good old fash
ioned revival meeting, and when the
exhorter demanded that all who
wanted to be saved should rise I
kept my seat with youthful obstin-
acy. Qd probably get up to-day to
save bother) A mild old lady who
sat behind me-or, rather, who now
stood behind me-spoke to me re-
proachfuuy. I explained that 1 was
there merely as reporter. to which
she retorted: young man, even a
reporters soul may be worth say
ing!"
So, even a professional reviewers
opinion may be worth something.
There are, of course, accepted
canons of criticism that are valid as
Tar as they go. To be literature. in
stead OF mere reading matter, book
must obviously have both substance
and manner. 1t must have some
thing to say. something really worth
saying, and it must be efficient in
expressing its message. Excellence
of style alone, with an emptiness be-
hind 1t, does not endure. Nor does
even a nugget of solid truth wear
very well if it is put out in the
rough. What usually happens in
that case is that some more skilled
artificer comes along and works over
the raw material into lasting form.
1t is possible to lay down rules, mar
row and broad, precise and vague, as
to what is art"
But then along comes somebody
like Theodore Dresser and blithely
kicks over the whole pile, defying all
accepted rules, from those of humble
grammar and syntax up to higher
laws of dramatic construction. He
can turn his plot upside down, or feed
1t out in raw, disjointed fragments:
he can misuse wordsEnot with in
tent. but because he misunderstands
their true meaning-and can indulge
In the utmost eccentricities of die
ton. Yet it would be a rash person
who would deny to-day that SISTER
Carrie" and Twelve Men" are Litera-
ture with large L. It Is not that
he Is evolving new form, as the
1ers H6rists fancy (mistakenly) that
they are doing. He is doing nothing
OF the kind; he is simply, brutally
directly mishandling the old forms.
at almost every point, and is getting
away with it,"
Nevertheless, the obvious rules
suffice to sift out the great mass of
current production of printed matter.
The test of truthfulness to human
nature, of reality in the substance
easily throws the great majority of
books into the class whereof it is said
that for them ''posterity is six
months off" Not that they do not
fill legitimate place in the mys-
terious scheme of things. Most of
them provide mild, probably in
nocuous amusement for the moment,
especially for a class of readers, of
whom there are literally millions,
who, If they had been born fifty
years or more ago never would have
read anything at all. Modern popu-
lar education has lifted whole strata
of the people out of illiteracy to the
point where they can enjoy and prof
it by the works of Harold Bell
Wright, or "glad' books. or the cru
der forms of detective-mystery yarns,
Wild West movie stuff and the sem
timental "he-she," heart tbrob' love
story. Unfortunately, too, they are
educated up to the poisonous and
perverted sex stories. But on the
| whole this popular mass of fiction is