Books and Those Who Make Them

I

THE books published in America which casually reached the Russian bookshops always seemed to me a rare kind of treasure. They were printed on such a fine paper, with wonderful multicolored illustrations! I looked at them with deep respect and was very happy to buy one; this happened not often, as the prices of the American books were too high for us. The Russian book is the cheapest in the world. Even the French editions are more expensive.

Many of our book-lovers would buy American books, even if they could not read them; I knew a Russian who kept in his library all the works of Edgar Allan Poe, side by side with the French translation of them. ‘I love to look at these books,’ he would say; ‘I enjoy turning the pages.’

It is true that only the best of American editions reached us; we had a very one-sided idea about your publishing conditions: we used to think that every American printed page was an article of luxury.

When I came here, I found that it is not always so; but still, many of your books look as rich as the dresses of your women. Sometimes the luxurious covers show bad taste, sometimes the inside is not so good as the appearance. But very often one can find among them real beauty in an exquisite gown — I mean books as well as women.

They were so tempting to me (now I mean only books), especially these little ‘cosey,’intimate editions of poems. I would stop before the windows of the fashionable book-shops on Fifth Avenue and look at the beautiful leather covers as if I were a hungry bookworm, in the direct sense of the word.

I remember how I got frozen fingers in the extreme cold days of last winter: I bought the nicest little copy of the Ballad of Reading Gaol, instead of buying warm gloves. And I am not a collector of books. I can imagine how the American publishing houses influence a real bibliophile! They may ruin him, drive him to crime!

Yes, they know how to publish books. But they don’t always know what to publish. The amount of novels written on the theme ‘How they married each other’ is simply distressing! It gives me an impression that all the American girls and young men live only on love. And the eternal happy endings! And the dozens and dozens of girls — secretaries — who reform their wealthy chiefs! And the fortunes made in a fortnight!

Who first told the black lie, that books of this kind are cheerful? Suppose an unfortunate old maid read about all those happy marriages, would it not drive her to despair ? And a young man who has struggled for a few years, trying to make a tiny flower-shop pay — he would commit suicide, seeing all the prosperous millionaires in fiction!

The pictures of success are as tormenting for the unhappy as the mirages in the desert for the lost travelers. I am talking from my own experience.

When I came here, I had no friends, save books. And I read day and night, in order to acquire good English and — to save myself from loneliness.

I started with easy novels, because this was the only thing I could easily understand. But very soon I found out that my feeling of loneliness grew rapidly. No wonder, they all were so happy inside, behind the fence of the colored cover! They had dear old mothers and brave sweethearts who shelter them from danger! And they would never perish, never! Once I read a really good story about a girl who caught tuberculosis, working in a dark, unhealthy basement of a big department store. She was on the verge of despair and her sweetheart had deserted her, fearing infection, but — you can easily guess, there was another generous boy, and a good charity institution which cured poor working-people.

Oh, how bitterly I wept after I read that cheerful story! Even she was saved, that, humble, helpless girl on the verge of despair and death! And I, a well-trained journalist, with all my courage and readiness to fight for life and happiness, sit here, in New York, in such a rich city with so many opportunities, and my life is so hard, only because I don’t know English! Why does nobody teach me? Why does nobody save me, when it is so easy? Oh, how unhappy I felt, how envious I was of that shop-girl with tuberculosis!

Finally, I persuaded myself that it was only fiction, and that many people of New York are probably as unhappy as I am — I am not a tragical exception. And then I stopped crying. But if I were really naïve enough to believe that all these silly, optimistic stories are true, I would have gone to the Battery and thrown myself into the ocean long ago.

Don’t you think that it is dangerous to show too many good meals to the hungry? No doubt all the happy novels were created to keep people contented, to give them hope. But the last war took away the best hopes from many and many. You can preach in your novels: ‘Send him away with a smile’; but what can your optimistic novelists say to a mother who has learned that her boy is dead? I foresee that your after-the-war novels will be full of the boys who returned happily home, and the faithful brides who lead a virtuous life awaiting them. But those who wear the black clothes of mourning will not read them. And it is safer for the present system of society that those people do not read them.

Your ‘optimistic’ literature, which is intended to make people hopeful, may fill their hearts with bitterness, if they believe it, or with indignation, if they do not. And the masses are ceasing to believe it! It is dangerous to play on the credulity of people.

Certainly, only a part (although the largest part) of your books consists of such sentimentally optimistic mush. You have your great literature, which we used to admire from abroad. Don’t believe in your best critics, who talk with the best intentions about the decadence of the American magazines. When my internationalized American friends say with bitterness, ‘We have no real literature in America!’ it reminds me of our clever but gloomy Russian critics, who would always complain, ‘Nobody writes a decent thing nowadays.’

I would like to bring all these Russian literary undertakers to America and show them all the translations, poor as they are, of Gorky, Andreev, Korolenko (they are all living Russian writers), and make the critics read all the articles praising Russian literature. Perhaps they would feel a bit ashamed of their growling.

The same pessimistic voices I hear in your country: ‘We have no literature! We have no literature!’ Why, have you not Mark Twain, Jack London, O. Henry? What do you expect from your country — to bear you a genius every month? Of course, great writers are rare! We have only one Tolstoi. And we, exactly like you, complained that we did not have a dozen of them.

You praise our literature because you see only the best samples of it. The works of our daily literary failures do not reach you. It is a case of ‘natural selection.’ Nobody translates the mediocre, and, fortunately, only a very few of you know Russian! In Russia we praise your literature for the same reason: we see only the best part of it.

Nevertheless, those of your critics who blame your literature do it little or no harm: they love art and want to see more of it in their own country; this is the reason of their severe judgment. It was our radicals who blamed our country under the old régime. They did it because they wanted things to be improved.

The worst enemies of American literature are those critics who unrestrainedly praise it. They are like the extreme patriots of Mr. Roosevelt’s kind who say, ‘Everything American is good.’ They create false geniuses by advertising mediocrities. The pseudogreat books are sometimes translated into other languages by the credulous and unintelligent foreigners, and thus lower your literary reputation abroad.

I have never seen so many manufactured geniuses as in America! Your natural gift of advertising shows itself in all its splendor, when you advertise a writer. A second Dante, second Shakespeare, second Milton — you let us believe that there are hundreds of them here! Very often these highly praised people are just second-rate writers; and I am afraid that your honey-tongued critics are in danger that nobody would believe them if they should happen to discover a real new great writer.

II

Of course, you have in America the good old respectable magazines and publishing houses which shrink from the counterfeited geniuses and the monstrous advertising.

When I started to write in English, I wanted to see my things printed in these fine magazines; I always believed that one must begin everything from the top; that idea of mine worked well in Russia, so I tried to apply it in America, too. I wrote an article and sent it to a well-known monthly. The editors did not accept it, but asked me to come and talk with them about my future plans; they were seemingly interested in my work and wanted me to write for them.

With a beating heart I approached the huge old building, which was visited by Dickens and Thackeray and George Eliot; the building where Edgar Allan Poe recited his poems and Mark Twain smoked his pipe. (I am not quite sure whether all of these famous people actually visited the building, but I liked to imagine they did, because I read that they all contributed to the hundredyears-old magazine, which was born there.)

The first impression of it was as bad as could be. It was simply hopeless! The building stands on the dirtiest and gloomiest street of New York, and the street is darkened by the Elevated and is full of noise. I learned, later on, that there was no Elevated when this house was built, and the street looked decent then. The editor informed me with pride that it was the first fireproof building erected in this city. But I did n’t see any reason why they don’t move from this place now, when it is no longer comfortable. Its famous past does n’t make it any more attractive to live in.

Well, perhaps I am too democratic, but I must confess that I prefer good air and cleanliness and quietude to beautiful traditions.

This house, filled with traditions, has no good air and quietude at all; it looks like a dusty and noisy factory; dozens of people work together in the two large halls; the editors have no privacy at all, their writing-tables are so near to each other. I, a poor foreigner, would never consent to work under such primitive conditions.

And it was such a contrast to meet in this huge, dusty, cold-looking factory the friendly, kind, attentive people, who greeted me as if they knew me long ago.

There were two ladies with whom I talked first. On almost every one of your big magazines there are elderly, white-haired, well-preserved, kindly, sweet-voiced ladies who talk with you as if you were their daughter.

I don’t understand how the publishing companies can obtain so many distinguished, good-natured elderly women to work in their ‘book factories’ under the present conditions.

Those two lady editors, whom I met first, gave me an exceptionally good impression; I learned, later on, that the younger of them was the so-called ‘talking editor’; her mission was to talk with writers. Not an easy job, I must admit!

I personally would rather be a missionary in Hawaii than deal with conceited young poets or capricious novelists, or — green foreign journalists who cannot accustom themselves to the habits of a new country.

I believe my talking editor would be a capable missionary: she created an atmosphere of perfect confidence around a newcomer. My heart was warm when I talked with her, and I left the office in a rosy, hopeful mood.

I wrote a short story, which they accepted, and showered many compliments upon me. Another woman editor, a well-known poet, praised me and my country so much that I blushed I, a sophisticated newspaper woman!

I felt a great joy.

I need praise like the auto needs gasoline; I must get a big dose of compliments from time to time, otherwise I cannot work.

A few more of my articles were accepted a little later in other first-rate magazines. It was a glorious day for me when I saw one of them printed in the Atlantic Monthly.

It all looked like success, but it was not so wonderful as it seemed to me the first time. Life did not become easy yet.

I love English and, remembering that I am a foreigner, I always fear that I may spoil your beautiful language. I think that, in order to write decently, I ought to work very hard over every little sentence. The result is, that I write one article while an average American journalist writes five or ten. As I work so slowly and live only on my writings,

I must sell everything that I write: one large unsold manuscript means bankruptcy to me.

Well, even a good American novelist cannot sell everything he creates. So it was natural that very soon I fell into trouble.

I wrote a story and sent it to the first magazine. It was refused. I felt depressed, because I spent on this thing two months of work, and thought it very good; and I waited for the answer three weeks. When I got it, I was out of money; only thirty cents laid lonely in my old Russian purse.

The letter which accompanied the refusal was very sweet. It assured me that I have an unusual talent for writing fiction, and so on. Among a few reasons for rejection was: ‘Don’t think us hopeless optimists, but really we cannot print more stories with an unhappy ending, especially in these sad war times.’

The letter invited me to write something more cheerful.

I would gladly write something cheerful. I have a soft heart and don’t like to make people sad, even on the pages of books. I do it only when the natural developing of the theme does not permit me to end the story happily. And I see plenty of sunshine in life, not only its dark corners. But it was pretty hard to think about a new happy story with thirty cents in my pocket and the unpaid rent.

I braced myself up and went to the editor. I had a little cheerful theme in my head; I had nursed it for a long time; I told it to her and she liked it very much.

‘Yes, that sounds very interesting! Write it! I think we will accept it.’

I gathered all my courage and explained to her that I could not write anything because of ‘circumstances.’ I asked a little money in advance.

She looked shocked and surprised.

‘No, I don’t think our business manager would do it for you. It is not our custom — to give money in advance to new writers. If you were well known —

I smiled. ‘If I were well known and successful, I would not ask money! I ask it because I need it! ’

‘I am sorry, Miss Moravsky, but it is not a business proposition. We hope your next story may suit us, but we are not sure of it.’

‘ But you assured me that I can write well! You proved your good opinion of my writing by accepting my first story; you said I have a bright future before me. I have reasons to believe it, because I was a successful writer in my own country. Then why cannot your publishers help me? It is a question of death or life to me. To-day I broke my last dollar.’

I picked up a silver paper-knife and started to examine it, in order to hide the expression on my face. I felt that I was on the verge of tears, and it would be so degrading to cry before the foreigner! But my hands trembled and the paper-knife vibrated like a tuning fork. She glanced at this trembling knife and understood. She rose quickly and went to the next office-cage,

A moment later she returned, saying, ‘ I am very sorry, but, as I expected, our business manager does n’t find it possible. Then she added sympathetically, ‘Why don’t you undertake any other occupation besides writing?’

‘Because it is the only one thing which I know. I have no other profession.’

‘You may learn something. It is almost impossible for a young writer in this country to live entirely on writing! And you are here for such a short time! Wait until you become better known, and in the meantime undertake some office work. I would gladly assist you to get it. I may give you some letters of introduction.’

‘Thank you very much, but I hate regular work! It is a prison! I would never write anything good if I consent to it,’

The friendly manners and voice of the editor changed abruptly.

‘Well, if you don’t want to work — Nobody likes everyday work, I assure you, but we all are doing it just the same. Do you think I would not prefer to write in my room instead of reading manuscripts all day long?’

’But—they would fire me out the next day.’ I tried to excuse myself: ‘I cannot typewrite more than two pages an hour. Here in America you need specialists. And every professional stenographer would beat me. I will not give my best to society if I start to work in a new field which I dislike. I would be a very poor everyday worker; society can get more out of me if I have an opportunity to write.’

And I tried to prove as eloquently as I could how important it is to have some more voices from abroad, in order to unite the two great countries, Russia and America, to establish international friendship, and so on.

She listened darkly, without the slightest sympathy, and interrupted me at last: —

‘Society is not interested to get the best out of you; society wants you to work.’

‘But it is my work! My profession! To write articles is as good as to make shoes. Why, a shoemaker can live on his profession, and you want me to write only in my spare time, after I have finished another day’s work. It would be rotten writing!’

‘I don’t understand why you discuss it with me. This is a publishing house, and it is not our business to save writers.’

‘It is your business! Do you think this magazine will be prosperous if you never help any new writer to stand on his feet?’

‘We are not anxious to have more contributors, we have always plenty of material.’

’Oh, it is heartless, heartless!’ I repeated, and rose to leave the office.

She shook hands with me and said in the old sympathetic manner, —

‘I cannot change the customs of our house, but I am very sorry for you, and if you allow me to help you personally — ’

I refused with thanks, and went out, trying to be cheerful; but my pride left me as soon as I passed the door of the inhospitable magazine. I stopped at the corner, leaned against the wall, and stood there for a long time; I was incapable of moving; I gazed thoughtlessly before me and saw nothing, because my eyes were full of tears. The Elevated roared above my head; I shuddered — it awakened me. I started to think again; and, as I looked once more at the huge, fireproof building, I ardently wished it to be burnt, together with all its ‘business system.’

III

A few minutes later I sat at Battery Place and thought it all over. I always used to go to this lonely place at the harbor when I felt depressed. The waves remind me that America is not the only place to live in; that the world is great, and is going to be free and happy, and ‘let us hope that I will return home to Russia.’

I dreamed now more ardently than ever that I would return to Russia, where there are no ‘ impersonal publishing companies,’ and the kind old editors, who publish their papers themselves, understand the moral and material needs of the writers.

Then I reconsidered my talk with the talking editor and felt ashamed of myself. If the publishing company was heartless to me (how can one expect a business trust to have a heart?), then I was heartless to her: it was so tactless, so cruel, to complain to this woman about my troubles, to her who had spent many years working in that ‘ factory,’ instead of writing books in her own cosy home. And I said to her that I hate the steady hours of work and think it to be a prison, and will never consent to it! How could she sympathize with me, she who was in that prison already? Nine years at the desk of the noisy office, on that gloomy street! — no wonder that she writes so little. I remembered her beautiful book for children, and thought with regret about all the other, unborn books, killed by the hard editorial work. And I recalled the other editor, too, the noble-looking, white-haired lady poet, who resembles a white faded rose. She, too, spent many years gazing at the smoky walls of the old dull building, instead of walking along the avenues of maple trees, which she likes so much. Is it just? She writes exquisite poems; they were published by the best publishers and praised by the best critics of America, and her country could not give her anything better than everyday work in the office. In Poland, in the unhappy country which was not the ‘land of the free,’ which was never half as rich as the United States — in Poland, we would give to our poets homes to live in, and land to plant gardens and flowers. A splendid estate was given as a birthgift to Maria Konopnicka; Sienkiewicz received a similar present; our society understood that a poet cannot live by selling his poems — it is as uncertain as selling flowers. But beauty is important for every society, and our society rewarded beauty. Here it is so businesslike!—‘We have no market for poems!’

And to these two women, oppressed by the American publishing system, I dared to come for sympathy! And they were sympathetic! Oh, the people who create books in America have great hearts, but those who trade in them have not.

Who is to be blamed? I don’t know any person whom I would blame. The publishing company has no personality; we all remember the recent ‘accident of one hundred deaths ’ which happened in the subway. The judges could not find for a long time the responsible person! The trust company is impersonal, heartless, soulless. And such an institution helps books to be born! One could expect the same results from a business company in bringing up children or saving our eternal souls!

Can you imagine a real Christian church, established with the main purpose of bringing profit? Well, in Europe we consider art to be a temple. Sacred art, we call it — and we mean it. Can sacred art and business live happily together? Never; it is the worst kind of misalliance! The stronger party, business, will always make art compromise, to serve it for its profit; poets must live and suffer and create beautiful things for profit; and if the flowers of their souls are not marketable, let them fade!

And nobody, nobody on the earth cares under what circumstances they write, until they bring a completed ‘marketable thing’ to the publisher. And then, as a rule, they must wait long before they are paid. If a shoemaker brings a pair of shoes to a shop and wants to sell them, he is paid at once. The merchant does not tell him, ‘Wait until I find a customer who will buy your shoes; then I will pay you.’ But your brain-workers must wait until a magazine, or a book, is published and sold. It takes months—sometimes a year. The labor conditions of the writers are in many respects worse than those of the poorest laborers. The publishers treat them even worse than the other tradesmen treat Huns.

I don’t exaggerate a bit: Americans are willing to feed starving Germany before trading with her. Your capitalists understand that no exchange of work and goods is possible with a hungry country. They are ready to create the conditions under which it would be convenient to sell American goods to Germany and to buy the German ones. But nobody cares about the conditions under which your own native writers can create their goods. They are left entirely to themselves: if they can stand years of individual struggle and misery, they are welcomed and famous and well-paid, but sometimes it comes at the end of their life. And many of them broke their wings before they started to fly.

No wonder that your best critics state: ‘American literature is miserable.’ I don’t think it is miserable, but it might be far more rich if your publishers were more far-sighted and cared for the writer at least as much as the ordinary workingman is cared for.

Of course, that is just the minimum demand of justice: the demand that the publishers care less for profit and more for the people who make beauty. The solution lies in another direction.

I claim that the free development of art under the present work-and-profit system is utterly impossible. And every thinking person has to agree with me.

To be prosperous, a publishing company must publish books in large quantities and at reasonable prices. Now, everybody knows that a new, original, very unusual piece of art rarely appeals to the masses at once: people must be slowly brought up to it. Only a very few geniuses won the hearts of the everyday readers at once.

And when the publishing company lives for profit, it cannot afford to print ‘non-marketable books,’ no matter how beautiful they may be.

‘Useful literature,’ — books of popular science, books which describe trades, textbooks, cook-books, ‘novels for ladies ’ — all these they can produce splendidly: the useful book in America is the best result of to-day’s industry. But the books of art — oh, I am positively sure that it is easier to have them under the darkest despotism than under the present system of society.

I will prove it. In the gloomy epochs of despotism, there were princes and emperors who loved art for art’s sake. All the great art of the Renaissance was supported by the aristocrats of Italy. Even in ‘Russia of the past’ we had wonderful editions of books, highly artistic and amazingly cheap; for example, the above-mentioned folk-tales, with the drawings of Bilibin, which are now sold in New York for tenfold prices. We had schools of art, cheap, good theatres, an artistic press, established by the government. And our art and literature became famous, not only in spite of despotism, but as much because of it.

One must not accuse me of the slightest sympathy with the Russian old régime. I knew the inside of the Russian prisons as well as the inside of the Russian schools of art. Our despotism was not a good nursery for writers. But now, when it is dead, we must give it the little justice which it deserves. I assure you that the conditions of Russian life, being far from good, were still more favorable to art than present conditions in America.

Your millionaires are too badly educated to support the arts, and your publishers have too good a business education for it: they know perfectly well that great art rarely means great profit. Of course, there are striking exceptions among them; but they are so rare!

The only solution of these unbearable conditions is that society itself must take care of art. You Americans have made a few wonderful steps toward it already: your best museums of art are founded on private donations; you have splendid symphony societies, singing societies, the society of ethical culture. Why have you not publishing societies which would publish just good books, no matter what is their ‘market value? ’ It would be still better if the government of every city included it in their duties. Your municipalities take good care of pavements and public order; why do they not take care of beauty? Are poetry and art less important for the American people than good pavements? If it is really so, then how dare you talk about leading the peoples of the world toward happiness? And you do talk of it louder and louder since the last war.

I believe in America. I believe in the future American literature. I have very little personal grievance toward your country — I was comparatively well met, my case is the easiest case. But have some sympathy and pity for your own young writers; have respect and gratitude for the old American poets who created beauty all their lives and now are compelled to earn their living by unloved work. And show in practice this respect, sympathy, and gratitude! No country which does not care for people of talent can be called a great country.