A PLAGUE OF LOCUSTS.
The Americans are the most curious people since the Athenians.
Our big American periodicals buy their “great features” by contracting with the busy bees of the London literary world, for so many thousands of words before there are even ideas to be put into words. It is a way of encouraging literature which destroys the personality that is the soul of literature. It develops the taste of readers of literature by strangling all the original thinkers and writers who may spring up here in America. These periodicals aim simply to put before the public a bill of well known names—which usually belong to some of the busiest, most slip-shod and worthless writers of our time. But genius two thousand miles away has twice the potent fascination of genius that lives in Boston or Hoboken. They command the services of all the writers of England and the Continent who are on the topmost wave of the hour’s popularity, and whose names and achievements are viewed in this country through a rosy and delusive glamor of European reputation that effectually silences all criticism. If English romancers cost such a pretty penny, surely no obscure American critic or man of letters will dare to be so captious as to declare that at least half the literature made in England for this appreciative American people is palpable balderdash, wholly out of tune with the large democratic spirit of our age.
Of course we are not going to deny the abilities of the greatest European writers and artists of the day. That would be too absurd; and we thank the good God that a proper sense of humor is one of the unfailing elements of good nature, good taste and charm that our readers may always count upon finding in the Fly Leaf. In some cases, they are men of the finest genius, who would grace the literature of any era; and it will never be the province of the Fly Leaf to decry men who have honestly won their laurels.
But we have particularly in mind some of the mere industrious mechanics of letters, who build their domestic and sanguinary romances after the pattern desired by the exemplary publishers, who are most romantic for the dollar’s sake. And the publishers have somehow become invested with the onerous charge of the world’s morality, and insist that we poor critics shall be driven into crime and immorality by sheer intolerable dulness, and not by any potent allurements of the sort employed by some of the delightfully audacious French romancers. If we must make a choice between the female theological novelist of the Humphrey Ward stripe and Catulle Mendes, we prefer to be debauched morally rather than mentally.
In the case of these eminently successful writers who are so liberally encouraged to save us the trouble of producing a native literature peculiar to the soil and conditions of life and thought here, it is not too much to say that the genius is so excellently and artistically simulated by ingenious puffery, that the average American reader, gobbling up his culture and luncheon in one frantic breath, does not stop to inquire whether this London hall mark is genuine or fraudulent.
It is not generally known, or even suspected, in this land of guileless innocence, outside “the Trade” and journalism, that a good many British authors flourish in American literature as full fledged masters of the Yellow-jacket, who are very much more famous in this country than they are at home. In fact, a crowd of English mediocrities, of no more significance in their Grub-street than the most ordinary denizen of our own Grub Street is here, are received by our critics and public as writers of the first order of merit. They flood the American newspapers and magazines from Portland, Maine, to San Francisco, until there is actually no sort of opening left to the men and women who are trying, under the most discouraging circumstances, to produce an American literature.
This is due largely to the adroit exploitation of the literary syndicates, and partly due to the apathy and timorousness of the American reading public, that is almost afraid to recognize American authors without the endorsation of the London press. And the English critics damn all American writers on principle.
But the magazine publishers are largely responsible, as they set the pace in Anglo-mania in literature; and today about the only circumstance that is peculiarly American in American periodical literature is this: the copyright law obliges the publishers to have the typography and printing done in this country. The literature is all made in Great Britain, because there is nothing interesting to write about in America and God does not allow genius to sprout here!
But a stir is beginning to be felt among the younger people in every city and state of this country, and the Young Man and the Young Woman—as entirely distinct from “The Young Person”—of contemporary America, are beginning to want to see this life here at our doors put into literature, and to read poetry and romance through eyes in sympathy with modern life. It will, therefore, be one of the principal aims of the Fly Leaf to foster and encourage this new spirit of independence and self-reliance and faith in the common life and beauty of this country. There are men and women in America who have something to say, too.
We protest that the periodicals, ostensibly appealing to Americans, should deal with the life and interests here, and should mirror American literary life and thought. How else are we to foster a literature here? The periodical world is the trial arena for the men who may be the giants of thought and poetry in a few years. But no arena, no circus; no audience, no gladiators. Poets and romancers are not produced when public apathy drives all the writers into clerking, or advertisement-writing or journalism. America is filled with literary talent, and yet a birch broom is more to be depended upon than the pen for mere bread, for the American market is monopolized by aliens.
We are devoured by a plague of locusts.