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The Man of Letters as a Man of Business-Part4_William Dean Howells(1837-1920)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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have their horses and yachts and country seats, while immodest

merit is left to get about on foot and look up summer board at



the cheaper hotels. That is probably right, or it would not

happen; it seems to be in the general scheme, like millionairism



and pauperism; but it becomes a question, then, whether the

newspapers, with all their friendship for literature, and their



actual generosity to literary men, can really help one much to

fortune, however much they help one to fame. Such a question is



almost too dreadful, and though I have asked it, I will not

attempt to answer it. I would much rather consider the question



whether if the newspapers can make an author they can also unmake

him, and I feel pretty safe in saying that I do not think they



can. The Afreet once out of the bottle can never be coaxed back

or cudgelled back; and the author whom the newspapers have made



cannot be unmade by the newspapers. They consign him to oblivion

with a rumor that fills the land, and they keep visiting him



there with an uproar which attracts more and more notice to him.

An author who has long enjoyed their favor, suddenly and rather



mysteriously loses it, through his opinions on certain matters of

literary taste, say. For the space of five or six years he is



denounced with a unanimity and an incisive vigor that ought to

convince him there is something wrong. If he thinks it is his



censors, he clings to his opinions with an abiding constance,

while ridicule, obloquy, caricature, burlesque, critical



refutation and personal detraction follow unsparingly upon every

expression, for instance, of his belief that romanticfiction is



the highest form of fiction, and that the base, sordid,

photographic, commonplace school of Tolstoy, Tourguenief, Zola,



Hardy, and James, are unworthy a moment's comparison with the

school of Rider Haggard. All this ought certainly to unmake the



author in question, and strew his disjecta membra wide over the

realm of oblivion. But this is not really the effect. Slowly



but surely the clamor dies away, and the author, without

relinquishing one of his wicked opinions, or in anywise showing



himself repentant, remains apparently whole; and he even returns

in a measure to the old kindness: not indeed to the earlier day



of perfectly smooth things, but certainly to as much of it as he

merits.



I would not have the young author, from this imaginary case,

believe that it is well either to court or to defy the good



opinion of the press. In fact, it will not only be better taste,

but it will be better business for him to keep it altogether out



of his mind. There is only one whom he can safely try to please,

and that is himself. If he does this he will very probably



please other people; but if he does not please himself he may be

sure that he will not please them; the book which he has not



enjoyed writing, no one will enjoy reading. Still, I would not

have him attach too little consequence to the influence of the



press. I should say, let him take the celebrity it gives him

gratefully but not too seriously; let him reflect that he is



often the necessity rather than the ideal of the paragrapher, and

that the notoriety the journalists bestow upon him is not the



measure of their acquaintance with his work, far less his

meaning. They are good fellows, those poor, hard-pushed fellows



of the press, but the very conditions of their censure, friendly

or unfriendly, forbid it thoroughness, and it must often have



more zeal than knowledge in it.

X.



Whether the newspapers will become the rivals of the magazines as

the vehicle of literature is a matter that still remains in doubt



with the careful observer, after a decade of the newspaper

syndicate. Our daily papers never had the habit of the



feuilleton as those of the European continent have it; they

followed the English tradition in this, though they departed from



it in so many other things; and it was not till the Sunday

editions of the great dailies arose that there was any real hope



for the serial in the papers. I suspect that it was the vast




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