The Irony of Fate

I WAS born on the day that Hawthorne died, and I have always expected to wear his mantle. But after long years of incredibly persevering industry I have barely succeeded in winning the distinction, which at one time he claimed for himself, of being “the obscurest man of letters in America.” I begin to suspect that something more than industry, something more than ambition, something more than a curious coincidence in dates, goes to the making of a novelist; but I cannot help feeling that a malign fate has marked me for failure where others, no more suitably equipped, have succeeded. I have the honor of belonging to a large family, inextricably connected by ties of marriage with innumerable other large families, all instinct with reverence for the family reputation. To this widely ramified connection everything imaginable has happened. Once, inadvertently, I wrote a story about a remote cousin, which was unexpectedly accepted, bringing down upon me the wrath of more relatives than I can count, for my base treachery in revealing family secrets. Ever since that time a watch has been set upon current literature, as unremitting as that of the Russian censors, and my kinsfolk, not literary by nature, have been trained into literary ferrets. I am additionally handicapped by a keen sense of honor, which forbids my making copy of my confidential friends. In my best days I had an active imagination, but even that could not keep pace with the actual experiences of my family and friends. During my long years of industry my literary method was as follows: Having shut myself up in the seclusion of my attic-study, I would first practice deep breathing for five minutes, saying to myself with each inhalation, “I was born on the day that Hawthorne died.”Feeling then through every fibre the gentle glow of well-being, I would ask myself, “What, in my place, would Hawthorne do now ? Hawthorne would write.” And having so said, I would set myself to four hours of concentrated effort, letting my imagination soar into the empyrean, using my best judgment for reins and literary taste for a bit. Then, little by little, I would write my story, making it as strong, as well-balanced, and as clear-cut as lay within my power. Afterward, I would go over it carefully with a magnifying glass, and cut out everything that ever happened to any one of my relatives or friends. I had been writing for the magazines for seven years without eliciting any more personal return than a printed formula of declination, when one day I received a handwritten note from a famous editor: “Why do you persist in sending us stories with the tale left out ? Your style is good, but your writing lacks substance.”

I saw my mistake at once. The imagination alone is insufficient, if facts be subtracted from its product, and my imagination in its widest sweep was subtended, if I may be allowed the technicality, by a common store of facts. It is a great misfortune when the family imagination is specialized in one individual, while the family memory remains a stock property. It then behooves me, I soliloquized, to abandon the use of my imagination and work out my stories on scientific principles. If Cuvier could construct, an extinct monster from a solitary bone, surely I am not yet too old to learn to construct a story from an isolated fact. I had been interested in several touches that marked the work of one of our most objective and popular novelists. They had set me to wondering what manner of man he might be when he was alone with himself, and more out of curiosity than for any other reason I began to write a story which would account for and reveal the kind of person I surmised him to be. I had never heard an unpleasant word in regard to him, I had never read a word that was not highly flattering, but two or three sentences in a widely circulated novel had painted for me a picture. Only when my study was finished did I begin to suspect that I had written a highly original story about a living and breathing man. I sent it to an editor with a psychological bent, and received from him a surprising letter full of unstinted praise. My story was a wonder of psychological analysis, but it was so literally, word for word, the private history of one of our best known writers that its publication would furnish sufficient ground for a libel suit. Alas! I had outrivaled Cuvier, for he could construct merely an extinct monster, while my monster was alive and up-to-date and dangerous!

I began, then, to brood over my fate, for it seemed, almost, that I must be demon-haunted. My wife had never approved of my writing. She thought I might much better take care of the garden and mow the lawn. She had the nearsighted look when she spoke to me that people wear when they speak to a failure. I was a failure, I knew full well, but how could I account for it ? I had as good an intelligence as many of our successful writers, as great preseverance, and a better use of language; yet their stories were taken and mine were left. I have a nature in which injustice rankles, and I would always rather feel myself in the wrong than feel myself wrongfully accused. I had failed, therefore I must have deserved to fail, but how? So I set to work to construct out of my self-knowledge a character for which failure would be the only justice, a character that would bring down the roof of the temple upon its head by its own self-seeking, yet in a manner so impersonal and detached that all the region round would echo with Olympian laughter. In order to paint such a portrait of myself it was necessary to omit all my redeeming qualities and to bring out the other kind with a merciless touch. Yet I tried to relieve the shadows with humorous lights, which would unmistakably indicate that I was not a hater of the human race, but a lover who would say: “This creature have I held up to ridicule that you may see why men fail and take warning!” And then, having created out of my inner consciousness a bit of life as pitiless and as ironical as a Greek tragedy, I sent it to an editor whom I had had in mind throughout the writing; the only editor in America that I could depend upon to appreciate the subtle humor, the biting satire, the underlying truth.

I waited eagerly for his answer. It came, with a burst of confidence that astounded me. He could not speak highly enough of my story. “It is a masterpiece of narrative and portraiture,” he wrote, “but by some unaccountable coincidence you have painted the portrait of my wife’s brother. My wife has strong family feelings, and my brother-in-law has a fiery temper, so I dare not print it. But if you can get some other editor to publish it I will be your friend for life.”

I, too, have a fiery temper, but what good does it do ?