How to Fail in Literature | Page 8

of this medium, its laws or tricks of refraction: nothing is to be left there which might give conveyance to any matter save that." Clearly the author who has to write so that the man may read who runs will fail if he wrests this manner from its proper place, and uses it for casual articles: he will fail to hold the vagrom attention!
Thus a great deal may be done by studying inappropriateness of style, by adopting a style alien to our matter and to our audience. If we "haver" discursively about serious, and difficult, and intricate topics, we fail; and we fail if we write on happy, pleasant, and popular topics in an abstruse and intent, and analytic style. We fail, too, if in style we go outside our natural selves. "The style is the man," and the man will be nothing, and nobody, if he tries for an incongruous manner, not naturally his own, for example if Miss Yonge were suddenly to emulate the manner of Lever, or if Mr. John Morley were to strive to shine in the fashion of Uncle Remus, or if Mr. Rider Haggard were to be allured into imitation by the example, so admirable in itself, of the Master of Balliol. It is ourselves we must try to improve, our attentiveness, our interest in life, our seriousness of purpose, and then the style will improve with the self. Or perhaps, to be perfectly frank, we shall thus convert ourselves into prigs, throw ourselves out of our stride, lapse into self- consciousness, lose all that is natural, naif, and instinctive within us. Verily there are many dangers, and the paths to failure are infinite.
So much for style, of which it may generally be said that you cannot be too obscure, unnatural, involved, vulgar, slipshod, and metaphorical. See to it that your metaphors are mixed, though, perhaps, this attention is hardly needed. The free use of parentheses, in which a reader gets lost, and of unintelligible allusions, and of references to unread authors--the Kalevala and Lycophron, and the Scholiast on Apollonius Rhodius, is invaluable to this end. So much for manner, and now for matter.
The young author generally writes because he wants to write, either for money, from vanity, or in mere weariness of empty hours and anxiety to astonish his relations. This is well, he who would fail cannot begin better than by having nothing to say. The less you observe, the less you reflect, the less you put yourself in the paths of adventure and experience, the less you will have to say, and the more impossible will it be to read your work. Never notice people's manner, conduct, nor even dress, in real life. Walk through the world with your eyes and ears closed, and embody the negative results in a story or a poem. As to Poetry, with a fine instinct we generally begin by writing verse, because verse is the last thing that the public want to read. The young writer has usually read a great deal of verse, however, and most of it bad. His favourite authors are the bright lyrists who sing of broken hearts, wasted lives, early deaths, disappointment, gloom. Without having even had an unlucky flirtation, or without knowing what it is to lose a favourite cat, the early author pours forth laments, just like the laments he has been reading. He has too a favourite manner, the old consumptive manner, about the hectic flush, the fatal rose on the pallid cheek, about the ruined roof tree, the empty chair, the rest in the village churchyard. This is now a little rococo and forlorn, but failure may be assured by travelling in this direction. If you are ambitious to disgust an editor at once, begin your poem with "Only." In fact you may as well head the lyric "Only." {4}
ONLY.
Only a spark of an ember, Only a leaf on the tree, Only the days we remember, Only the days without thee. Only the flower that thou worest, Only the book that we read, Only that night in the forest, Only a dream of the dead, Only the troth that was broken, Only the heart that is lonely, Only the sigh and the token That sob in the saying of Only!
In literature this is a certain way of failing, but I believe a person might make a livelihood by writing verses like these--for music. Another good way is to be very economical in your rhymes, only two to the four lines, and regretfully vague. Thus:
SHADOWS.
In the slumber of the winter, In the secret of the snow, What is the voice that is crying Out of the long ago?
When the accents of the children Are silent on the stairs, When the poor forgets his troubles, And the rich