第87章 The Literary Back-Stairs (2)

Despite all the rubbish written to the contrary, manuscripts sent to the magazines of to-day are, in every case, read, and frequently more carefully read than the author imagines.Editors know that, from the standpoint of good business alone, it is unwise to return a manuscript unread.Literary talent has been found in many instances where it was least expected.

This does not mean that every manuscript received by a magazine is read from first page to last.There is no reason why it should be, any more than that all of a bad egg should be eaten to prove that it is bad.The title alone sometimes decides the fate of a manuscript.If the subject discussed is entirely foreign to the aims of the magazine, it is simply a case of misapplication on the author's part; and it would be a waste of time for the editor to read something which he knows from its subject he cannot use.

This, of course, applies more to articles than to other forms of literary work, although unsuitability in a poem is naturally as quickly detected.Stories, no matter how unpromising they may appear at the beginning, are generally read through, since gold in a piece of fiction has often been found almost at the close.This careful attention to manuscripts in editorial offices is fixed by rules, and an author's indorsement or a friend's judgment never affects the custom.

At no time does the fallacy hold in a magazine office that "a big name counts for everything and an unknown name for nothing." There can be no denial of the fact that where a name of repute is attached to a meritorious story or article the combination is ideal.But as between an indifferent story and a well-known name and a good story with an unknown name the editor may be depended upon to accept the latter.Editors are very careful nowadays to avoid the public impatience that invariably follows upon publishing material simply on account of the name attached to it.Nothing so quickly injures the reputation of a magazine in the estimation of its readers.If a person, taking up a magazine, reads a story attracted by a famous name, and the story disappoints, the editor has a doubly disappointed reader on his hands: a reader whose high expectations from the name have not been realized and who is disappointed with the story.

It is a well-known fact among successful magazine editors that their most striking successes have been made by material to which unknown names were attached, where the material was fresh, the approach new, the note different.That is what builds up a magazine; the reader learns to have confidence in what he finds in the periodical, whether it bears a famous name or not.

Nor must the young author believe that the best work in modern magazine literature "is dashed off at white heat." What is dashed off reads dashed off, and one does not come across it in the well-edited magazine, because it is never accepted.Good writing is laborious writing, the result of revision upon revision.The work of masters such as Robert Louis Stevenson and Rudyard Kipling represents never less than eight or ten revisions, and often a far greater number.It was Stevenson who once said to Edward Bok, after a laborious correction of certain proofs: "My boy, I could be a healthy man, I think, if I did something else than writing.But to write, as I try to write, takes every ounce of my vitality." Just as the best "impromptu" speeches are those most carefully prepared, so do the simplest articles and stories represent the hardest kind of work; the simpler the method seems and the easier the article reads, the harder, it is safe to say, was the work put into it.

But the author must also know when to let his material alone.In his excessive regard for style even so great a master as Robert Louis Stevenson robbed his work of much of the spontaneity and natural charm found, for example, in his Vailima Letters.The main thing is for a writer to say what he has to say in the best way, natural to himself, in which he can say it, and then let it alone--always remembering that, provided he has made himself clear, the message itself is of greater import than the manner in which it is said.Up to a certain point only is a piece of literary work an artistic endeavor.A readable, lucid style is far preferable to what is called a "literary style"--a foolish phrase, since it often means nothing except a complicated method of expression which confuses rather than clarifies thought.What the public wants in its literature is human nature, and that human nature simply and forcibly expressed.This is fundamental, and this is why true literature has no fashion and knows no change, despite the cries of the modern weaklings who affect weird forms.The clarity of Shakespeare is the clarity of to-day and will be that of to-morrow.