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There have been, this past year or so, a number of articles appearing in various literary journals, and even of late in the more popular magazines, the burden of which seems to be something between a call for a new estimate of literature and a prediction that such an estimate is in the making. Certainly the recent years, during which more books were read by more people than at any time in history, have given practicing writers the wider audience they had, for centuries dreamed about. The writers for small cliques have had every opportunity to expand their cliques. The writers for the masses had such a market as even the most popular of them had never imagined. The Big Names ran to bigger printings than even a publisher had dreamed of. That we were in the midst of an almost world wide paper shortage seemed at least the most obvious result of this promiscuous reading and writing. But what have been its literary effects?
Have the realists gained in favor as they predicted, and had been predicting for years, that they would? Have the proletarian novelists grown in stature now that, at long last, the proletariat were not only reading but buying books? Have the multitudinous novels about the Common Man, the Little Man, the Man in the Street, been widely accepted by the Common Man, the Little Man, the Man in the Street? In this, the Century of the Common Man, such a conclusion would seem to have been foregone. The writers for the Common Man, spurred on by the foregone-ness of their conclusions, became commoner and commoner—but the Common Man began to show that he had developed a few rather uncommon tastes indeed. Aside from the comic books, which he consumed by the shipload (and they can scarcely be called realistic), he has done all sorts of queer things. He has granted the greatest gift in his power, sales running to a million or more, to a book about a lady and an egg, and to a group of the most outrageously escapists novels that have ever cluttered up a publisher’s list. Historical novels which were neither good history nor good novels, became the new opium of the masses. Lusty rogues and busty wenches went through their amorous routine with a dream of empire in their roving eyes. The Common Man went in heavily for mediaeval glamour and colonial swashbuckling. This may be explained on the always convenient grounds that the popular taste is lamentably lacking in it.
What about the intellectuals? They have shown a remarkable predilection for mystery novels with overtones of Kraft-Ebing and undertones of Freud. The “psychological” novel has enjoyed a vogue on a grand scale, and most popular novelists have had a shot at it themselves. Several novelists of a generation or two ago have been revived. Henry James has been the subject of half a dozen serious studies and most of his novels, the less boring ones, have been republished, re-reviewed and hailed as masterpieces by the Sunday reviewers. Trollope, too, has undergone the full treatment. The 1920’s have been rediscovered once again, this time complete with cartoons and photographs. We may anticipate that Charles Dickens will shortly become the subject of an intense and enthusiastic revival.
The Saturday Review has called for new gods. Life magazine demands to know whether or not fiction has a future, thinks not. The ladies’ fashion magazines, progressing rapidly in the opposite direction, present a gallery of “Significant writers” with photographs only slightly less rococo than their elegantly gowned caryatids, including one precious young fellow in a checkered weskit and the most engaging bangs.
In short, the Little Man, having digested an overdose of reading matter, seems about to form certain dietary preferences, and they are not going to be along the anticipated lines. Now this is not to be greatly wondered at. In any period of intense literary activity (and we must use the term very loosely), when, in short, “publishers will put covers on almost anything,” two things are bound to happen. The more popular novels set new records for sales and for bad writing. New writers are rushed into print before they’ve bothered to become good, and old established writers are tempted and inevitably, invariably and immediately succumb to the lure of mass sales. They are tricked into competing on the commonest possible grounds with the homesteaders. The more intellectual writers from their peaks in Darien gaze down upon ever widening horizons and find it difficult to focus upon anything of significance. They, too, are tricked into deserting their small, comfortable cliques and finally, after preliminary castings about, fall back upon the reliable old revival, or they hail with delirious delight some new master. Then, when this stage has been reached, a reaction sets in.
The awesome sight of so very many bad novels shocks even those who had succeeded in shocking themselves into insensibility. The critics are appalled by the flood they have helped to loose and, while waiting for the waters to abate, they keep themselves dry and in fairly good spirits by chanting a litany composed of the names of Tolstoy, Zola, Dostoievski, Gorki, Swift, Proust, Stendahl and a number of traditional but largely unreadable masters. Now and again they discover a sort of Cardiff Giant and exhibit it reverently to the masses. Books are written, critical studies composed, translations arranged for, editions planned. Critics, scholars, publishers and others solemnly take part in the usual ceremonies attendant upon the presentation of a new writer named, let us say, Smerv.
Alois Smerv is, or was, a Montenegran mystic. Comparatively little is known about his work, most of it has never been published, none of it can be readily understood. Nevertheless his name finds its way into practically every review devoted to anything but juveniles. Smerv seems to have been obsessed by most of the commoner manifestations made famous by various Viennese psycho-analysts. It is said that his books, had they ever been published, would have attracted the unfavorable attention of the fascist authorities and would undoubtedly have resulted in his expulsion from his homeland or his installation in a concentration camp. This, of course, is pure supposition, all that we know for certain is that Smerv died of acute myopia in 1942 in an obscure town in the Balkans. His note books, scrap books, ration books and a mess of mss. found their way into the sympathetic hands of an international litterateur—with the inevitable result. This, then, is one of our latest literary idols.