Part 25

It was not so devoid of genius as would appear; the first cause was the difficulty in getting the best work "through." This again was not because the public was not ready for the good, but because the public taste was brutalised by men who stood between the public and the producers. These middlemen insisted, by the right of more direct contact, that the public should have what they fancied the public desire to be.

I sat in Union Square recently with a beggar who studied me, because it appeared to be my whim to help him with a coin. Back of his temples was a great story--sumptuous drama and throbbing with the first importance of life. He did not tell me that story, and I could not draw it from him. Rather he told me the story that he fancied I would want. There was a whine in it. He chose to act, and he was not a good actor. His offering hurt, not because he was filthy and a failure, but because he lied to himself and to me, because he did not dare to be himself, though the facts were upon him, eye and brow and mouth. So I did not get his story, but I got a thrilling picture of the recent generation in American letters--I, being the public; the truth of his story representing the producer, and the miserable thing he fancied I was ready for, being the middleman's part.

All workmen of the last generation--all who would listen--were taught to bring forth their products with an intervening lie between the truth and their expression--the age of advertising heavy in all production.

I recall from those days what was to me a significant talk with an American novelist who wanted sales, who was willing to sacrifice all but the core of his character to get sales, and who found himself at that time in a challenging situation. As he expressed it:

"Along about page two hundred in the copy of the novel I am on, the woman's soul wakes up."

"A woman's novel?" I asked.

"Meant to be," said he. "Study of a woman all through. Begins as a little girl--different, you know--sensitive, does a whole lot of thinking that her family doesn't follow. Tries to tell 'em at first, but finds herself in bad. Then keeps quiet for years--putting on power and beauty in the good old way of bumps and misunderstanding. She's pure white fire presently--body and brain and something else asleep. She wants to be a mother, but the ghastly sordidness of the love stories of her sisters to this enactment, frightens her from men and marriage as the world conducts it----"

"I follow you," said I.

"Well, I'm not going to do the novel here for you," he added. "You wouldn't think there was a ray of light in it from this kind of telling. A man who spends five months of his best hours of life in telling a story, can't do it over in ten minutes and drive a machine at the same time----"

"We're getting out of the crowd. What did the girl do?" I asked.

"Well, she wanted a little baby--was ready to die for it, but had her own ideas of what the Father should be. A million women--mostly having been married and failed, have thought the same thing here in America--pricked the unclean sham of the whole business. Moreover, they're the best women we've got. There are----"

He purposely shook the hat from his head--back into the seat--at this point.

"There are some young women coming up into maturity here in America--God bless 'em--who are almost brave enough to set out on the quest for the Father of the baby that haunts them to be born.... That's what she did. He was a young man doing his own kind of work--doctoring among the poor, let us say, mainly for nothing--killing himself among men and women and babies; living on next to nothing, but having a half-divine kind of madness to lift the world.... She saw him. You can picture that. They were two to make one--and a third. She knew. There was a gold light about his head which she saw--and some of the poverty-folk saw--but which he didn't know the meaning of, and the world missed altogether.

"She went to him. It's cruel to put it in this way.... I'm not saying anything about the writing or about what happened, but the scene as it came to me was the finest thing I ever tried to put down. We always fall down in the handling, you know.... I did it the best I could.... No, I'm not going to tell you what happened. Only this: a little afterward--along about page two hundred of the copy--the woman's soul woke up."

"Why not, in God's name?" I asked.

He glanced quickly at me as a man does from ahead when his car is pressing the limit.

"Ever have a book fail?" he asked.

"Seven," said I.

He cleared his throat and the kindest smile came into his eyes:

"They tell me at my publishers' that I slowed up my last book badly--by taking a woman's soul out for an airing--just a little invalid kind of a soul, too. Souls don't wake up in American novels any more. You can't do much more in print nowadays than you can do on canvas--I mean movie canvas. You can paint soul but you can't photograph it--that's the point. The movies have put imagination to death. We have to compete. You can't see a soul without imagination--or some sort of madness--and the good people who want imagination in their novels don't buy 'em. They rent or borrow. It's the crowds that go to the movies that have bright-coloured strings of American novels as the product runs--on their shelves--little shiny varnished shelves--red carpets--painted birds on the lamp-shades and callers in the evenings."

There was a good silence.

"Do you know," he added presently, "I've about come to the conclusion that a novel must play altogether on sensuous tissue to catch the crowd. Look at the big movie pictures--the actors make love like painted animals.... I'm not humorous or ironical. It's a big problem to me----"

"Why, you can't touch the hem of the garment of a real love story until you are off the sensuous," I offered. "The quest only begins there. I'm not averse to that. It belongs in part. We are sensuous beings--in part. But I am averse to letting it contain all. Why, the real glow comes to a romance when a woman's soul wakes up. There's a hotter fire than that which burns blood-red----"

"I know," he said quickly. "I know. That blood-red stuff is the cheapest thing in the world.... I'm sure of this story until her soul wakes up. She stirs in her sleep, and I see a giantess ahead--the kind of a woman who could whistle to me or to you--and we'd follow her out--dazed by the draw of her. They are in the world. I reckon souls do wake up--but I can feel the public dropping off every page after two hundred--like chilled bees--dropping off page by page--and the old familiar battle ahead for me. I can feel that tight look of poverty about the eyes again----"

* * * * *

"Are you going to put her soul back to sleep?" I asked, as we turned again into the crowd.

I wasn't the least lordly in this question. I knew his struggle, and something of the market, too. I was thinking of tradesmen--how easy it is to be a tradesman; in fact, how difficult it is to be otherwise--when the very passion of the racial soul moves in the midst of trade.

"She's beautiful--even asleep," he said. "I'm afraid I'll have to give her something. I'm building a house. She's in the comprehension of the little varnished shelves--asleep."