Literature in the Making, by Some of Its Makers

by Unknown

"It seems to have become the fashion," he said, "to apply the term Realist to every writer who is obsessed with sex. I think I know the reason for this. Our Anglo-Saxon prudery kept all mention of sex relations out of our fiction for many years. Among comparatively modern novelists the realists were the first to break the shackles of this convention, and write frankly of sex. And from this it has come, most unfortunately, that realism and pornography are often confused by novelists and critics as well as by the public.

"This confusion of ideas was apparent in some of the criticisms of my novel Together. In an early chapter of the book there was an incident which was intended to show that the man and woman who were the chief figures in the book were spiritually incompatible, that their relations as husband and wife would be wrong. This was, in fact, the theme of the book, and this incident in the first chapter was intended to foreshadow the later events of their married life. Well, the critics who disliked this chapter said that what they objected to was its 'gross realism.'

"Now, as a matter of fact, that part of the book was not realistic at all. I was describing something unusual, abnormal, while realism has to do with the normal. The critic had, of course, a perfect right to believe that the subject ought not to be treated at all, but 'gross realism' was the most inappropriate description possible.

"Undoubtedly there are many writers who believe that they are realists because they write about nothing but sex. Undoubtedly, too, there are many writers who are conscious of the commercial value of sex in literature. Of course a writer ought to be conscious of the sex impulse in life, but he ought not to display it constantly. I wish our writers would pay less attention to the direct manifestations of sex and more to its indirect influence, to the ways in which it affects all phases of activity."

"Who are some of the writers who seem to you to be especially ready to avail themselves of the commercial value of sex?" I asked.

Mr. Herrick smiled. "I think you know the writers I mean without my mentioning their names," he said. "They write for widely circulated magazines, and make a great deal of money, and their success is due almost entirely to their industrious celebration of sexual affairs. You know the sort of magazine for which they write—it always has on the cover a highly colored picture of a pretty woman, never anything else. That, too, is an example, and a rather wearying example, of the commercializing of the sex appeal.

"I think that Zola, although he was a great artist, was often conscious of the business value of the sex theme. He knew that that sort of thing had a tremendous appeal, and, for me, much of his best work is marred by his deliberate introduction of sex, with the purpose—which, of course, he realized—of making a sensation and selling large editions of his books. This sort of commercialism was not found in the great Russian realists, the true realist—Dostoievski, for example. But it is found in the work of some of the modern Russian writers who are incorrectly termed realists."

"Mr. Herrick," I asked, "just what is a realist?"

Mr. Herrick's youthful face, which contrasts strangely with his white hair, took on a thoughtful expression.

"The distinction between realism and romanticism," he said, "is one of spirit rather than of method. The realist has before him an aim which is entirely different from that of the romanticist.