The American authors are mainly collected in New York, where the great publishing houses are located, and are a fine representative class of men and women, of whom I have met a number, such as Howells, the author and editor, and Mark Twain, the latter the most brilliant litterateur in the United States. This will be discovered when he dies and is safe beyond receiving all possible benefits from such recognition. Many men in America make reputations as humorists, and find it impossible to divest their more serious writings from this "taint," if so it may be called. They are not taken seriously when they seriously desire it; a fact I fully appreciate, as I am taken as a joke, my "pigtail," my "shoes," my "clothes," my way of speaking, all being objects of joking.
The literary men have several clubs in New York, where they can be found, and many have marked peculiarities, which are interesting to a foreigner. Several artists affect a peculiar style of dress to advertise their wares. One, it is said, lived in a tree at Washington. It is not so much with the authors as with the methods of making books that I think you will be interested. I met a rising young author at a dinner in Washington who confided to me that the "book business" was really ruined in America by reason of the mad craze of nearly all Americans to become writers. He said that he as an editor had been offered money to publish a novel by a society woman who desired to pose as an authoress. This author said that there were in America a dozen or more of the finest and most honorable publishing houses in the world, but there were many more in the various cities which virtually preyed upon this "literary disease" of the people. No country in the world, said my acquaintance, produces so many books every year as America; so many, in fact, that the shops groan with them and the forests of America threaten to give out, and the supply virtually clogs and ruins the market. So crazy are the people to be authors and see themselves in print that they will go to any length to accomplish authorship.
He cited a case of a carpenter, a man of no education, who was seized with the desire to write a book, which he did. It was sent to all the leading publishers, and promptly returned; then he began the rounds of the second-class houses, of which there are legion. One of the latter wrote him that they published on the "cooperative" plan, and would pay half the expenses of publishing if he would pay the other half. Of course his share paid for the entire edition and gave the clever "cooperative" publisher a profit, whether the edition sold or not. And my informant said that at least twenty firms were publishing books for such authors, and encouraging people to produce manuscripts that were so much "dead wood" in the real literary field. He later sent me the prospectus of several such houses which would take any manuscript, if the author would pay for the publishing, revise it and send it forth. I was assured that thousands of books are produced yearly by these houses, who are really "printers," who advertise in various ways and encourage would-be authors, the idea being to get their money, a species of literary "graft," according to my literary informant, who assured me I must not confuse such parasites with the large publishers of America, who will not produce a book unless their skilled readers consider it a credit to them and to the country, a high standard which I believe is maintained.
Perhaps the most interesting phase of literature in America is found in the weekly and monthly magazines, of which there is no end. Every sport has its "organ," every great trade, every society, every religion; even the missionaries sent to China have their organs, in which is reported their success in saving us and divorcing us from our ancient beliefs. The great literary magazines number perhaps a dozen, with a few in the front rank, such as the Century, Harper's, Scribner's, The Atlantic, Cosmopolitan, McClure's, Dial, North American Review, Popular Science Monthly, Bookman, Critic, and Nation. Such magazines I conceive to be the universities of the people, the great educators in art, literature, science, etc. Nothing escapes them. They are timely, beautiful, exact, thorough, scientific, the reflex of the best and most artistic minds in America; and many are so cheap as to be within the reach of the poor. It is interesting to know that most of these magazines are sources of wealth, the money coming from the advertisements, published as a feature in the front and back. These notices are in bulk often more than the literary portion, and the rate charged, I was told, from $100 to $1,000 per page for a single printing.
The skill with which appeals are made to the weaknesses of readers is well shown in some of the minor publications not exactly within the same class as the literary magazines. One that is devoted to women is a most clever appeal to the idiosyncrasies of the sex: There are articles on cooking, dinners, luncheons, how to set tables, table manners, etiquette (one would think they had read Confucius), how to dress for these functions; and, in fact, every occupation in life possible to a woman is dealt with by an extraordinary editor who is a man. Whenever I was joked with about our men acting on the stage as women, I retorted by quoting Mr. ——, the male editor of the female ——, who is either a consummate actor or a remarkably composite creature, to so thoroughly anticipate his audience. The mother, the widow, the orphan, the young maiden, the "old maid," are all taken into the confidence of this editor, who in his editorials has what are termed "heart to heart" talks.
I send you a copy of this paper, which is very clever and very successful, and a good illustration of the American magazine that, while claiming to be literature, is a mechanical production, "machine made" in every sense. One can imagine the introspective editor entering all the foibles and weaknesses of women in a book and in cold blood forming a department to appeal to each. I was informed that the editors of such publications were "not in business for their health," but for money; and their energies are all expended on projects to hold present readers and obtain others. The more readers the more they can charge the "advertiser" in the back or side pages, who here illustrate their deadly corsets, their new dye for the hair, their beauty doctors, freckle eradicators, powders for the toilet, bustles, and the thousand and one things which shrewd dealers are anxious to have women take up.
The children also have their journals or "magazines." One in New York deals with fairies and genii, on the ground that it is good for the imagination. Another, published in Boston, denounces the fairy-story idea, and gives the children stories by great generals, princes of the blood, captains of industry, admirals, etc.; briefly, the name of the writer, not the literary quality of the tale, is the important feature. There are papers for babes, boys, girls, the sick and the well.
The most conspicuous literary names before the people are Howells, Twain, and Harte, though one hears of scores of novelists, who, I believe, will be forgotten in a decade or so. As I have said previously, I am always joked with about the "Heathen Chinee." I have really learned to play "poker," but I seldom if ever sit down to a game that some one does not joke with me about "Ah Sin." Such is the American idea of the proprieties and their sense of humor; yet I finally have come to be so good an American that I can laugh also, for I am confident the jokers mean it all in the best of feeling.
There are in America a class of litterateurs who are rarely heard of by the masses, but to my mind they are among the greatest and most advanced Americans. They are the astronomers, geologists, zoologists, ornithologists, and others, authors of papers and articles in the Government Reports of priceless value. These writers appear to me, an outsider, to be the real safety-valves, the real backbone of the literary productions of the day. With them science is but a synonym of truth; they fling all superstition and ignorance to the winds, and should be better known. Such names as Edison, Cope, Marsh, Hall, Young, Field, Baird, Agassiz, and fifty more might be mentioned, all authors whose books will give them undying fame, men who have devoted a lifetime to research and the accumulation of knowledge; yet the author of the last novel, "My Mule from New Jersey," will, for the day, have more vogue among the people than any of these. But such is fame, at least in America, where erudition is not appreciated as it is in "pagan" China.