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The Man of Letters as a Man of Business-Part1_William Dean Howells(1837-1920)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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transcend them, shall have the income, say, of a rising young

physician, known to a few people in a subordinate city.



In view of this fact, so humiliating to an author in the presence

of a nation of business men like ours, I do not know that I can



establish the man of letters in the popular esteem as very much

of a business man after all. He must still have a low rank among



practical people; and he will be regarded by the great mass of

Americans as perhaps a little off, a little funny, a little soft!



Perhaps not; and yet I would rather not have a consensus of

public opinion on the question; I think I am more comfortable



without it.

IV.



There is this to be said in defence of men of letters on the

business side, that literature is still an infant industry with



us, and so far from having been protected by our laws it was

exposed for ninety years after the foundation of the republic to



the viciouscompetition of stolen goods. It is true that we now

have the internationalcopyright law at last, and we can at least



begin to forget our shame; but literary property has only

forty-two years of life under our unjust statutes, and if it is



attacked by robbers the law does not seek out the aggressors and

punish them, as it would seek out and punish the trespassers upon



any other kind of property; but it leaves the aggrieved owner to

bring suit against them, and recover damages, if he can. This



may be right enough in itself; but I think, then, that all

property should be defended by civil suit, and should become



public after forty-two years of private tenure. The Constitution

guarantees us all equality before the law, but the law-makers



seem to have forgotten this in the case of our infantliterary

industry. So long as this remains the case, we cannot expect the



best business talent to go into literature, and the man of

letters must keep his present low grade among business men.



As I have hinted, it is but a little while that he has had any

standing at all. I may say that it is only since the was that



literature has become a business with us. Before that time we

had authors, and very good ones; it is astonishing how good they



were; but I do not remember any of them who lived by literature

except Edgar A. Poe, perhaps; and we all know how he lived; it



was largely upon loans. They were either men of fortune, or they

were editors, or professors, with salaries or incomes apart from



the small gains of their pens; or they were helped out with

public offices; one need not go over their names, or classify



them. Some of them must have made money by their books, but I

question whether any one could have lived, even very simply, upon



the money his books brought him. No one could do that now,

unless he wrote a book that we could not recognize as a work of



literature. But many authors live now, and live prettily enough,

by the sale of the serial publication of their writings to the



magazines. They do not live so nicely as successful

tradespeople, of course, or as men in the other professions when



they begin to make themselves names; the high state of brokers,

bankers, railroad operators, and the like is, in the nature of



the case, beyond their fondest dreams of pecuniary affluence and

social splendor. Perhaps they do not want the chief seats in the



synagogue; it is certain they do not get them. Still, they do

very fairly well, as things go; and several have incomes that



would seem riches to the great mass of worthy Americans who work

with their hands for a living--when they can get the work. Their



incomes are mainly from serial publication in the different

magazines; and the prosperity of the magazines has given a whole



class existence which, as a class, was wholly unknown among us

before the war. It is not only the famous or fully recognized



authors who live in this way, but the much larger number of

clever people who are as yet known chiefly to the editors, and






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