III
The third complaint of the author—from whom I have wandered—is that critics do not agree. To argue that whenever two critics hold different opinions, the criticism of one of them must be valueless, is absurd. The immediate question is, valueless to whom—to the public or to the author?
If the author is meant, the argument assumes that criticism is written for the instruction of the author, which is not true. Grammar and facts a critic can indeed correct; but he never expects to change an author’s style or make his talent other than it is. Though he may lash the man, he does not hope to reform him. However slightly acquainted with psychology, the critic knows that a mature writer does not change and cannot change; his character is made, his gifts, such as they are, are what they are. On the contrary, the critic writes to influence the public—to inform the old, to train the young. He knows that his chief chance is with plastic youth; he hopes to form the future writer; still more he hopes to form the future reader. He knows that the effect of good reviewing stops not with the books reviewed, but influences the reader’s choice among thousands of volumes as yet undreamed of by any publisher.
If, on the other hand, the public is meant, the argument assumes that one man’s meat is not another man’s poison. The bird prefers seed, and the dog a bone, and there is no standard animal food. Nor, likewise, is there any standard intellectual food: both critics, however they disagree, may be right.
No author, no publisher, should think that variety invalidates criticism. If there is any certainty about critics, it is that they will not think alike. The sum of x (a certain book) plus y (a certain critic) can never be the same as x (the same book) plus z (a different critic). A given book cannot affect a man of a particular ability, temperament, training, as it affects one of a different ability, temperament, and training. A book is never complete without a reader, and the value of the combination is all that can be found out. For the value of a book is varying: it varies with the period, with the nationality, with the character of the reader. Shakespeare had one value for the Elizabethans; he has a different value for us, and still another for the Frenchman; he has a special value for the playgoer, and a special value for the student in his closet. In respect of literary art, pragmatism is right: there is no truth, there are truths. About all vital writing there is a new truth born with each new reader. Therein lies the unending fascination of books, the temptation to infinite discussion. To awaken an immortal curiosity is the glory of genius.
From all this it follows that critics are representative; each one stands for a group of people whose spokesman he has become, because he has, on the whole, their training, birth from their class, the prejudices of their community and of their special group in that community, and therefore expresses their ideals. Once let publisher and author grasp this idea, and criticism, however divergent, will come to have a vital meaning for them. The publisher can learn from the judgment of the critic what the judgment of his group in the community is likely to be, and from a succession of such judgments through a term of years, he can gain valuable information as to the needs, the tastes, the ideals of the public, or of the group of publics, which he may wish to serve. Accurate information straight from writers serving the public—that, I cannot too often repeat, is worth more to him than any amount of obsequious praise. That precisely is what he cannot get until all critics are what they should be—lawyers whose only clients are their own convictions.
The author also gains. Although he is always liable to the disappointment of finding that his book has failed to accomplish his aim, he nevertheless can draw the sting from much adverse criticism if he will regard, not its face value, but its representative value. He is writing for a certain audience; the criticism of that audience only, then, need count. If he has his own public with him, he is as safe as a man on an island viewing a storm at sea, no matter how critics representing other publics may rage. Not all the adverse comment in this country on E. P. Roe, in England on Ouida, in France on Georges Ohnet ever cost them a single reader. Their audience heard it not; it did not count. There is, of course, a difference of value in publics, and if these writers had a tragedy, it lay in their not winning the audience of their choice. But this does not disturb the statement as to the vanity of adverse criticism for an author who hears objurgations from people whom he did not seek to please. Sometimes, indeed, such objurgations flatter. If, for example, the author has written a novel which is in effect an attempt to batter down ancient prejudice, nothing should please him more than to hear the angry protests of the conservative—they may be the shrieks of the dying, as was the case, for instance, when Dr. Holmes wrote the Autocrat; they show, at any rate, that the book has hit.
Now, each in its degree, every work of art is controversial and cannot help being so until men are turned out, like lead soldiers, from a common mould. Every novel, for example, even when not written “with a purpose,” has many theories behind it—a theory as to its proper construction, a theory as to its proper content, a theory of life. Every one is a legitimate object of attack, and in public or private is certain to be attacked. Does the author prefer to be fought in the open or stabbed in the dark?—that is really his only choice. The author of a novel, a poem, an essay, or a play should think of it as a new idea, or a new embodiment of an idea, which is bound to hurtle against others dear to their possessors. He should remember that a book that arouses no discussion is a poor, dead thing. Let him cultivate the power of analysis, and seek from his critics, not praise, but knowledge of what, precisely, he has done. If he has sought to please, he can learn what social groups he has charmed, what groups he has failed to interest, and why, and may make a new effort with a better chance of success. If he has sought to prevail, he can learn whether his blows have told, and, what is more important, upon whom. In either case, to know the nature of his general task, he must learn three things: whom his book has affected, how much it has affected them, and in what way it has affected them. Only through honest, widespread, really representative criticism, can the author know these things.
Whatever their individual hurts, the publisher of books, the publisher of book-reviews, and the author should recognize that the entire sincerity of criticism, which is the condition of its value to the public, is also the condition of its value to them. It is a friend whose wounds are faithful. The lesson that they must learn is this: an honest man giving an honest opinion is a respectable person, and if he has any literary gift at all, a forcible writer. What he says is read, and, what is more, it is trusted. If he has cultivation enough to maintain himself as a critic,—as many of those now writing have not, once servility ceases to be a merit,—he acquires a following upon whom his influence is deep and real, and upon whom, in the measure of his capacity, he exerts an educational force. If to honesty he adds real scholarship, sound taste, and vivacity as a writer, he becomes a leading critic, and his influence for good is proportionally enlarged. If there were honest critics with ability enough to satisfy the particular readers they served in every periodical now printing literary criticism, public interest in reviews, and consequently in books, would greatly increase. And public interest and confidence once won, the standing, and with it the profit, of the four groups commercially interested in literature would infallibly rise. This is the condition which all four should work to create.
Would it arrive if the publisher of books should repudiate the Silent Bargain? If he should send with the book for review, not the usual ready-made puff, but a card requesting only the favor of a sincere opinion; if, furthermore, he showed his good faith by placing his advertisements where the quality of the reviewing was best, would the critical millennium come? It would not. I have made the convenient assumption that the critic needs only permission to be sincere. Inevitable victim of the Silent Bargain he may be, but he is human and will not be good simply because he has the chance. But he would be better than he is—if for no other reason than because many of his temptations would be removed. The new conditions would at once and automatically change the direction of his personal interests. He and his publisher would need to interest the public. Public service would be the condition of his continuing critic at all. He would become the agent, not of the publisher to the public, but of the public to the publisher. And although then, as now in criticism of political affairs, insincere men would sacrifice their standards to their popularity, they would still reflect public opinion. To know what really is popular opinion is the first step toward making it better. Accurately to know it is of the first commercial importance for publisher and author, of the first public importance for the effective leaders of public opinion.
This new goal of criticism—the desire to attract the public—would have other advantages. It would diminish the amount of criticism. One of the worst effects of the Silent Bargain is the obligation of the reviewer to notice every book that is sent him—not because it interests him, not because it will interest his public, but to satisfy the publisher. Thus it happens that many a newspaper spreads before its readers scores upon scores of perfunctory reviews in which are hopelessly concealed those few written with pleasure, those few which would be welcome to its public. Tired by the mere sight, readers turn hopelessly away. Now, many books lack interest for any one; of those that remain, many lack interest for readers of a particular publication. Suppose a reviewer, preoccupied, not with the publisher, but with his own public, confronted by the annual mass of books: ask yourself what he would naturally do. He would notice, would he not, those books only in which he thought that he could interest his readers? He would warn his public against books which would disappoint them; he would take pleasure in praising books which would please them. The glow of personal interest would be in what he wrote, and, partly for this reason, partly because the reviews would be few, his public would read them. Herein, again, the publisher would gain; conspicuous notices of the right books would go to the right people. An automatic sifting and sorting of his publications, like that done by the machines which grade fruit, sending each size into its appropriate pocket, would take place.
But the greatest gain to criticism remains to be pointed out. The critics who have chosen silence, rather than submission to the Silent Bargain, would have a chance to write. They are the best critics, and when they resume the pen, the whole industry of writing will gain.