13
The recorder of new books generally compiles a list of Books Received or Books Just Published and he does it in this uninspired and conscientious manner:
IN THE HEART OF A FOOL. By William Allen White. A story of Kansas in the last half-century, centered in a single town, showing its evolution from prairie to an industrial city with difficult economic and labor problems; the story told in the lives of a group of people, pioneers and the sons of pioneers—their work, ambitions, personal affairs, &c. New York: The Macmillan Company. $1.60.
That would be under the heading Fiction. An entry under the heading Literary Studies or Essays might read:
OUR POETS OF TO-DAY. By Howard Willard Cook. Volume II. in a series of books on modern American writers. Sketches of sixty-eight American poets, nearly all living, including Edgar Lee Masters, Amy Lowell, Witter Bynner, Robert Service, Edgar Guest, Charles Divine, Carl Sandburg, Joyce Kilmer, Sara Teasdale, George Edward Woodberry, Percy Mackaye, Harriet W. Monroe, &c. New York: Moffat, Yard & Co. $1.60.
These we hasten to say would be unusually full and satisfactory records, but they would be records just the same—formal and precise statements of events, like the chronological facts affixed to dates in an almanac. If all records were like these there would be less objection to them; but it is an astonishing truth that most records are badly kept. Why, one may never fathom; since the very formality and precision make a good record easy. Yet almost any of the principal pages or magazines in the United States devoted to the news of new books is likely to make a record on this order:
IN THE HEART OF A FOOL. By William Allen White. Novel of contemporary American life. New York, &c.
Such a record is, of course, worse than inadequate; it is actually misleading. Mr. White’s book happens to cover a period of fifty years. “Contemporary American life” would characterize quite as well, or quite as badly, a story of New York and Tuxedo by Robert W. Chambers.