I have your letter of April 2nd in which you are good enough to ask me to write a few lines on the topic: "Should the public library exercise censorship over the books it circulates?"
I suppose there is no question that the good public library should have somewhere in its shelves all books of serious intent, and should circulate in a restricted and properly guarded way any book no matter what its subject matter. So the question comes down to the propriety of circulating generally without restriction all sorts of books. I should hesitate to say that a public library should exercise no supervision over its circulation, although I myself have suffered from what I consider unjust and unmerited notoriety—due to the prescient sensibilities of certain librarians, as you know. But when you will admit the principle of censorship, the matter is a delicate one, of course. It would seem to me, for example, unwise to circulate freely books of medicine. As to fiction—or what publishers call "the general list" of books, I think an intelligent librarian should hesitate a long time before putting on his or her index expurgatorius any publications vouched for by the imprint of a reputable publishing firm. For such books have actually passed a severe censorship before being put out. I realize it is all a personal matter, for what to me is good red meat may be poison to my brother. I think, for instance, that such a novel as The Rosary is infinitely more pernicious than the Kreutzer Sonata, La Terre, or Germinal, but the average librarian wouldn't. So I am afraid the matter will have to stand just where it is today—a book will be censored as unfit or unclean according to the whim of the individual librarian. Presumably the public librarian is at least abreast of, if not superior in culture and idealism to his community, and as our communities improve our librarians will become persons of wider intelligence and culture than they are now in some cases and exercise their censorial powers with more real discrimination.
Apropos of this matter you may be interested to know that a few months ago the New York Post in an editorial protest against certain young American realists and their treatment of sex—instanced Mr. Howells and myself as examples of "clean American reticent realism!" This, after all the roar over "Together" is an amusing illustration of growth in critical opinion. Mr. Howells sent me the editorial but I haven't it with me.
Truthfully,
ROBERT HERRICK.
P. S. My own views on the proper treatment of sex in fiction will be briefly touched upon in an article on American fiction to be printed in the Yale Review before long.
Chicago, May 17, 1913.
You ask me "is the fiction circulated by our public libraries helping to enlighten the people on social and economic problems?" That is a question which a librarian can answer better than any author. In general, it seems to me, magazine fiction is doing more in that line than book fiction. Some of the greatest circulations ever attained by periodicals have been built upon a shrewd knowledge of the American materialism. One editor voices it:—"Americans are interested about two-thirds in business, and one-third in love." That editorial policy has won in this country.
As to social and economic problems, more properly considered, I don't think fiction is doing much for the people. This really is the fault of the people, or of human nature, or rather of American human nature. I think we are one of the most neurotic and hysterical people in the world, which means that presently we shall be one of the most swiftly decadent people in the world. For this reason, we have sudden fashions in fiction. Just now we like to read about "action" of heroic sort—precisely as we pay to see baseball games instead of playing baseball ourselves. Also, we are for the time given over to a wave of erotic fiction, just this side of indecent. At one time we were crazy over historical fiction, before that, over dialect fiction, before that over analytical fiction. Therefore, I should say that our book fiction does not and cannot do much in the way of handling social and economic problems at the present day. Once in a while, we have a political novel, machine-made, and like all other political novels. Sometimes, we get a business novel, in turn like all other business novels. We don't have really very many thoughtful novels good enough to be called big. I fancy it would not pay authors to write them, or public libraries to buy them. We are having a period of business and political sack cloth and ashes, but, drunk or sober, broke or prosperous, the American character seems to me annually to grow more hectic and hysterical, and less inclined to care for big things and good stuff. Part of this is the fault of our newspapers, but most of it is our own fault. We care for making money and for little else, and we spend money whether we have it or not. The public libraries would be the natural agency for correcting some of these things, but frankly I don't know how they could do it.