"Don't write poems about unborn babies.
"Don't—don't write hymns to the great god Pan. He is dead; let him rest in peace!
"Don't write what everybody else is writing."
MAGAZINES CHEAPEN FICTION
GEORGE BARR McCUTCHEON
Why is the modern American novel inferior to the modern English novel? Of course, there are some patriotic critics who believe that it is not inferior. But most readers of fiction speak of H. G. Wells and Compton Mackenzie, for example, with a respect and admiration which they do not extend to living American novelists.
Why is this? Is it because of snobbishness or literary colonialism on the part of the American public? George Barr McCutcheon does not think so. The author of Beverly of Graustark and many another popular romance believes that there is in America a force definitely harmful to the novel. And that force is the magazine.