"Well, a literary hero," he said, "is one who puts it over big on his first novel. The country goes crazy about his book, the girls go crazy over him, publishers go panting after him waving wads; editors flag him with fluttering cheques. That's one sort of hero, Cleland. But he's a myth. The real thing is a Charlie Chaplin. All the same, you'd better let your hero make a hit with his novel. If you don't, good night!"
Cleland's features became troubled:
"I suppose his book ought to make a hit to make my book popular," he said. "But as a matter of fact it doesn't. I'm afraid the character I've drawn is no hero. He's like us all, Spink; he writes a book; friends flatter; critics slam; the public buys a number of copies, and it's all over in a few weeks. A punk hero—what?"
"Very. He won't get over with the young person," said Spink. "In these days of the movie and the tango nobody becomes very much excited over novels anyway; and if you don't startle the country with your hero's first novel—make it the sort that publishers advertise as 'compelling' and 'a new force in literature'—well, you'll get the hook, I'm afraid. Listen to me: work in the 'urge'; make it plain that there's not a trace of 'sex' in your hero's book or in yours—or any 'problem' either. Cheeriness does it! That intellectual eunuch, the 'Plain Peepul,' is squatting astride of the winged broncho. His range reaches from the Western plains to the New England kitchen. The odours of the hired man and of domestic dishwater are his favourite perfume; his heroines smirk when Fate jumps upon them with hobnailed boots; his heroes are shaven as blue as any metropolitan waiter and they all are bursting out of their blue flannel shirts with muscular development and abdominal prosperity. That's the sort, Cleland, if you want to make money!" He shrugged his shoulders. "But of course if you don't, well, then, go on and transmute leaden truth with your imagination into the truer metal wrought by art. If there's a story in it, people will excuse the technical excellence; if there isn't, they won't read it. And there you are."
They remained silent for a while, and Spink regarded him shrewdly from moment to moment out of his bright, bold eyes. And he came pretty close to the conclusion that he was wasting time.
"Did you ever make any success with your stuff!" he inquired abruptly.
Cleland shook his head.
"Never heard anything from anything you've done?"
"Once," said Cleland, "a woman wrote me from a hospital that she had read a novel I published in England, when I was living in France.... She said it had made her forget pain.... It's pleasant to get a letter like that."
"Very," said Spink drily, "unless she meant your book was an anodyne." He laughed his abrupt, harsh laugh and took himself off.