The Daily Alaska empire., 1932-11-22
By H. u MENCKEN

0y n. L MENOAEN
 There never was a better time than this for young authors of any talent to get on their legs, but they seem to be coming forward very slowly.
 But half dozen first books of excellent quality have come out curing the past year, but certain iy there has been no such upSurg- ing of really first-rate years of the century, and again in the first years of the war. No Main Street" has been heard of since Lewis's, and no Spoon River Anthology" snice Mastere's.
 The American novel, in fact, is in a very flabby state, and Amer ican poetry is almost dead. re- member when Miss Harriet Monroe in Chicago used to discover a new poet every month or so. but now it is two or three years since she found her last.
 Its Not the Hard Times"
 The hard times have nothing to oo with the matter. Just as many good magazines are in being as ever before; the mortality has been maintained at the other end of the line. And the publishers, after bad scare, have begun to pour out books again. Most of these books, unhappily, are bad, but that is surely not the publishers fault. They would print better ones if they could get them. But the supply seems to be small.
 A magazine editors job, in these days, is very onerous. He has to hunt down most of his more com petent authors, and drag them in by their heels. Of the stuff that comes to him unsolicited, not one per cent is fit to print.
 There is an immense amount of writing in the United States, but all save a minute portion of it is intuitive and conventional. and wholly lacking in ideas. It is rare day which sees a really first rate manuscript come in from stranger-that is, manuscript done by someone who has some thing new to say, and knows how to say it in plausible and charm ing manner.
 Now and then, of course, it hap pens, else suicide would be a com- mon among editors as it is among high grade investment bankers But it surely doesn't happen often.
 l spend four hours in dark and sound proof room, trying to figure out why this should be so. One of tine guesses often return to is that correspondence schools of au- thorship are to blame.
 Before there were any such schools the novice got his training by reading his letters Now he gets it mainly from Quacks who can't write themselves, and are bent only upon fitting him for the back work of the cheap maga- zines. Many young authors believe that they can do that hack work tor a while. and then escape to better things. It is delusion.
 Give a youngster two years in the pulp magazines, and he is ruined forever There have been few exceptions, but they do not run one to a thousand.
 Another thing that works against a steady supply of competent nov ices is the change that has come over journalism. Most American authors, in the old days, began in newspaper offices, and if they were careful to get out of the city room in time they got a good training there.
 Today most of the newspapers are sacrificing every other quality tO ckCCA- AAiS ASPO4 VI ANO 1OkA6CI writes his own story; he telephones it in to rewrite man. To the rewrite man it is simply so many words He has not seen it, and so his account of it is bound to be more or less flat and stale.. Thus, the impulse to write well fades out, and good manuscripts come from newspaper offices only rare- ly. They used to come in flood.
 Business Men Turn Literary
 Perhaps somewhat curiously some of the best writing have seen of late has been done by bus mess men. In these days they have plenty of time on their hands and most of them are full of in- dignation, and eager to unload it. The combination of leisure and