The Illiterate Digest

by Will Rogers

INTRODUCTION

This book should have been long before now on the Bookshelves of every reader of worth while Literature in the English speaking World, in addition to being well worn in our best reference Libraries, and should have been already translated into every known and unknown tongue. What you will immediately ask delayed such an important event? Well the principal reason is it had not been written, and the next is We had no introduction for it. You let a Book go out without an Alibi by some other writer, and it is practically a commercial suicide. When the Publishers were all clamoring for a Book from me, and were practically annihilating (Boy there is a word I never used before in my life and I hope it fits in, I read it in some War Novel) each other for the Publishing rights and assured profits, they of course felt that through my wide Literary acquaintance, gained during years of association at the Democratic National Convention, and the late World Series with some of the best contemporary Writers of modern times, I should through my Literary standing and personal friendship, allow some of them to have the honor of penning the introduction to this Time Table of National Catastrophes.

William Emporia Allen White was my first thought, on account of his having a middle name, which always sounds Literary, even if its owner is not. Then I had heard he himself had written a Book once, and by now should know what Introductions should not be. Then he went home and announced himself as a Candidate for Governor. So that eliminated him from my thoughts. To have a big broad-minded book have any narrow Political endorsement would mean certain calamity among people who think. To run for Governor is bad enough, But to run for Governor of Kansas and then write an Introduction of my worthy efforts, would simply make the book a laughing stock.

Then my thoughts turned to Arthur Brisbane, I don’t know what I could have been eating that my thoughts should have done such a mental somersault. But I guess it was because I had known Arthur for years,—I knew him before William Randolph Hearst started working for him. I approached him on it, and he said, Sorry Will but what I write must point a moral, there must be a lesson in every paragraph; mine must not only be news but it must be instructive news. For instance, I read China will not go to war on rainy days. What does that bit of news mean to the individual that dont think? Nothing! What does it mean to me? It means that a Chinaman would rather get shot than wet. It points a moral to peace: Have all so-called civilized Nations stop wars on rainy days. Then hold all wars in Portland, Oregon where it rains every day, and you will eliminate Wars and have universal Peace.

So he could see no particular Moral in writing an Introduction to my book, unless it was that Books should not depend entirely on their introductions as they do now. So I next thought of my friend Irvin Cobb. I had set next to him at so many Speakers Tables, at banquets, and had always given him any little extras that I might not want. Ice Cream and Sweets and things like that he just loves and ruins them at a Banquet. Well he was going Duck shooting down in Louisiana and said he wouldn’t miss one Duck for the pleasure of writing the Introduction to the Encyclopedia Brittanica. So you just let the old fat thing try to get my Ice Cream at another Banquet.

Of course Ring Lardner was one of my very first thoughts, because I knew he could add the little touch of comedy that the book really needed. I went to him and told him that I only wanted something light and airy, maybe just one good joke would do the trick and take away from the serious nature of the Book. He is not only a Humorist but has got plenty money to show that he is. He said before he shook hands with me, What is there in it? I said well this is just a kind of an honorary thing, a kind of courtesy from one Author to another. He then asked me why should he give me a joke for nothing? He could put the joke into his Sunday Newspaper Article; then he could put the joke into his weekly Newspaper Cartoon; then he could sell it to a Musical Comedy and they would tell it so bad it would sound new. Then the Movies would buy it and make a drama out of it; then he would still hold the Phonograph, and broadcasting rights, and after it got well enough known write a Song around it. So he said I would be a fine egg to give you a joke for nothing.

I wish that Spaniard Ibanez, that wrote the 4 Horsemen was over here, I know him well, I had read 5 or 6 of his Books and I was to a big reception given to him in Los Angeles, and during our conversations through an Interpreter he learned I had read so many of his Books. No one else he met there even among the Literary ones had ever read any but the 4 Horsemen, So when he went home he sent me an Autographed Copy which read “To an American Cowboy, the only person in America I found who had read all my Books.” The funny thing about it is that he is the only Author I ever read. Now if he was here he would write me an Introduction, But of course it would be in Spanish and nobody could read it, so I would be just as bad off as I am now.

I also know Elinor Glyn, I met her when she was out in California looking around for some one to cast as Paul in “Three Weeks.” She sent for me but I had just started on another new Picture. She could have cooked me up a hot Introduction. She would have draped the first few paragraphs with Tiger skins, and described me in such a way that I would have really looked like something. So I just says to myself, why monkey with these writers, why not write my own Introduction? So here goes.

I have known Mr. Rogers for years and have long been familiar with his Literary masterpieces, both in Novels, and in Books of technical knowledge. I think there are few writers of Poetry or prose today who equal him, and I am certain he is surpassed by none.

I say this because I have lived and known the life he has pictured so well in this Book; I spent my late youth in these shaded oak lands where so many of his scenes are so pictorially laid, and he has made me live over again the scenes of my freshman manhood. No writer since the days of Remington can give you such a word picture of the west. That’s because he is a westerner himself, and has only an eye for the beautiful things as he and nature alone can describe them. He alone of all our modern writers knows the people of which they write. When he describes a Corset you can feel it pinch. If it’s a Sunrise he describes, you reach for an Umbrella. His jugglery of correct words and perfect English sentences is magical, and his spelling is almost uncanny.

The words, Illiterate Digest, which appear upon the title page of this book, has been generally compared to Don Quixote and to the Pickwick Papers, while E. M. Vogue places its author somewhere between Cervantes and LeSage. However, considerable the influence of Cervantes and Dickens may have been, the first in the matter of structure, the other in background, humor, and detail of characterization, the predominating and distinguishing quality of this Author’s work is undeniably foreign to both and quite peculiar to itself. Something that for want of a better term might be called the quality of American Soul, any reader familiar as I know you all to be with the works of Dostoieffsky, Turgenev, or even Tolstoi, will grasp the deeper meaning of a work like this. Some consider the Author a realist, who has drawn with meticulous detail a picture of contemporary life, others more observing see in him a great symbolist.

He always remembers that it is dangerous to jest with laughter. This man in writing this has done a service to all thinking mankind. It is a revelation, as an omen of a freer future. Belinsky, the great Russian Critic to whom Mr. Rogers had read the manuscript, said “it looked like another Ben Hur to him.”

So now Mr. Cobb, and Mr. Lardner, and all you introduction writers, what do I want with you? There is not a one of you could have said the things of me that I have said, because you Guys dont know what books to look in to get all that big league stuff out of,

Yours for Arts sake,
William Penn Adair Rogers

(boy that is my real name, let some Literary Guy
top that)

P. S. I got enough Introduction left over to write another Introduction if I had anything to write another book about.