TWO CONVERSATIONS
CANDID PUBLISHER.—Sir, I am proud to meet you. Your book is admirable; it is exquisitely touching and beautiful.
Reasonable Author.—Your commendation is most pleasing to me. I was at no time in doubt of your favorable action in the matter.
C. P.—You did not hear me out. Publication of a book entails a considerable expense.
R. A.—Naturally.
C. P.—The money does not always come back.
R. A.—I have been so informed. Publishers sometimes accept work that is very bad literature.
C. P.—Yes, we try to.
R. A.—Try to? You cannot mean that you prefer such work.
C. P.—We must publish what will sell. Do you read the most popular books of the year—the “best-selling” novels?—nearly all “best sellers” are novels.
R. A.—God forbid! I sometimes look at them.
C. P.—Do you ever findonethat has any literary merit?
R. A.—Certainly not. I did not expect my book to be popular, but hoped that it might have a steady and perhaps increasing sale and eventually become famous. You sometimes publish new editions of the great works in our language—“the English classics.” Do you lose money by them?
C. P.—Not usually. They have had the advantage of generations of advertising by scholars and by critics whose words had weight in their time and have in ours. If your excellent book finds a publisher pretty soon and is kept going until the year 2100, we shall be glad to put it on our list. You see it is very simple: you have only to conform to the conditions of success.
R. A.—I see. But are these the only conditions? Some great work succeeds in its author’s time—that of Tennyson, Thackeray, Dickens, Carlyle, and so forth, in England; and in America that of—m, er, huh.
C. P.—Is it surely great work? The ink is hardly dry. The literary fashions determining its form and substanceare still with us. Posterity will have to pass judgment upon it, which posterity will indubitably do without reference to our view of the matter. Then, if you and I happen to be in communication with this vale of tears we shall know if these noted authors were mining the great mother-lode of human interest, or, occasionally touching some of its dips, spurs and angles, taking out barren rock. It looks to us like a rich enough ore, but it is a long journey to where there is an assaying-plant capable of dealing with that particular product. When it is “heard from” we shall not be here. Those who mined it are gone already.
R. A.—Then there can be no valuable contemporary criticism?
C. P.—None that any one can know to be valuable.
R. A.—And no man can live long enough to know if he is a good writer?
C. P.—The trade of writing has that disadvantage.
R. A.—We are getting a long way from business. Am I to understand that you reject my book because, as you say, “it is exquisitely touching and beautiful”?
C. P.—You outline the painful situation with accuracy.
R. A.—Well, I’ll be damned!
C. P.—Sure!—if you find a sentimentalist who will publish your book. He will do the damning.
Editor.—Glad to see you, sir. Take a chair.
Visitor.—I am the proprietor ofThe Prosperous Monthly.
Ed.—Take two chairs.
Vis.—I called to congratulate you on the extraordinary success ofThe Waste Basket. I should not have thought it possible for you to break into our field and play this game as well as we. And with so fantastic a title!
Ed.—For my success I am greatly indebted to yourself.
Vis.—Not if I know it: we have fought you, tooth and nail.
Ed.—Oh, that is all right; if it had been expedient we should have fought back. Our prosperity depended on yours.
Vis.—Heaven has withheld from me the intelligence to understand.
Ed.—Have any of the contents of this magazine ever seemed familiar to you?
Vis.—I am not much of a reader; my editor has fancied that some of your articles lacked originality, but has confessed that he could not quite identify their authors.
Ed.—Just so; I accept nothing for my magazine that has not been first submitted to yours. If it has not been when offered, I require that to be done.
Vis.—That is monstrous nice of you. Such knightly courtesy to a senior competitor is most unusual. I thank you—come and dine with me to-morrow at seven (handing card).
Ed.—With pleasure. Good day.
Vis.—Good day. (Exit Visitor.)
Ed.(solus).—If he thinks it out, I shall miss a dinner.