W. C. Tuttle: At the risk of being called a "low-brow" I must admit that I do not enjoy the classics. I have only read a few, which is another "low" admission. I feel toward them as I do toward the old masters in art—admit that they are wonderful—and change the subject.
Lucille Van Slyke: I ar'n't larned me my craft and never expect to. I don't want to be either a deliberate or unconscious copy cat. But I'll tell you this—it sounds funny but it isn't—Mother Goose is actually the biggest help I have as a writer. Almost any situation in life or books or plays will sum itself up in a Mother Goose rhyme, plot and all. And if any writer knows a better 'ole—let him go to it!
Atreus von Schrader: With rare exceptions I find that I very much prefer the classics, using that term in its broader sense, to current writers. This is true only of the longer forms of fiction. The short story, in its present state, has been developed within the last decade or two. Jack London, for example, is of another period; tremendously colorful, but too often lacking in plot. Upon rereading your question, I find I have only half answered it. I believe the modern American short story is in a class by itself for neatness and finish of plot. But for color and substance, for care and matured thought, the older writers are our masters.
T. Von Ziekursch: Do not believe I have learned anything much from reading current authors. Do not know about the classics. Like the Greeks, the Latins, the French and Russians. Thoreau, Anatole France, etc. Am at a loss to answer this. John T. McIntyre, who to me is a master of technique, has probably done more than anything else for me by pointing out faulty tendencies to be guarded against.
Henry Kitchell Webster: I don't know.
G. A. Wells: What I have was gained both from moderns and the classics in about equal proportions. I would say that the classics taught me style, the moderns structure. The two writers most responsible for what style I may show are Macaulay and Emerson, though I would feel guilty did I fail to mention Lowell, Stevenson, Addison, Carlisle, Fenimore Cooper. There are others I can't call at the moment. To me, Macaulay is the peer of all writers, whether modern or classic, and I attribute my style to him.
For structure I would earnestly recommend Post, O. Henry, Kipling, Mrs. Rinehart in the novel, and De Maupassant; and more intimately, Gordon Young, Mundy, Solomons and Pendexter, to mention a few. A student should not study the classics for structure, provided he wishes to write modern fiction. And to even matters, he should not study the moderns for style. Moderns have style, but it is not the quality of the classics.
William Wells: Don't know; have read very widely, some translations of the classics, am familiar with nearly all that is best in both American and English literature.
Ben Ames Williams: I'm unable to recall having learned anything about writing from reading modern authors. What I have learned from them has been acquired unconsciously. I've read comparatively little written by living writers, except that for four years I read all the magazines, every issue, all the way through. I had never read Conrad at all till some fatuous reviewer compared one of my stories to his work; the same is true of Hardy. I am entirely at odds with the play-in-the-dirt school of modern writers. They may be right; but the things that seem to them ugly and depressing seem to me beautiful and even glorious. They, I think, look at them from the outside. But as the fellow said, many an honest heart beats under a ragged jacket. I'm not talking about sex stories. I've no quarrel with them. I'm talking about the Main Street school. If a man tries to take care of his family and help them forward, I don't care whether he appreciates Dunsany or not; and if a woman loves her husband and her children, she doesn't lose caste in my eyes by failing to appreciate Amy Lowell. There are other tests of manhood and womanhood besides a razor-edge taste in literature; and one of the most valorous and admirable men I know, a guide in the Maine woods, who loves his neighbors, speaks not uncharitably, helps when he can and tells the truth, can not even read his own name. There is a splendor in the commonplace life which most of us live, even though the only novel in the house may have been written by Harold Bell Wright, and the only poetic works may be the Book of Job and the Song of Songs. The assumption that when fine men die they must pass an examination on art before entering the pleasant ways that wait for them seems to me utterly unsound.
But this is beside the point; a digression. To the second head of the question: