How to Fail in Literature | Page 5

the struggle. He is either incompetent, or he has the
makings of a Browning. He is a genius born too soon. He may readily
calculate the chances in favour of either alternative.
So much by way of not damping all neophytes equally: so much we
may say about success before talking of the easy ways that lead to
failure. And by success here is meant no glorious triumph; the laurels
are not in our thoughts, nor the enormous opulence (about a fourth of a
fortunate barrister's gains) which falls in the lap of a Dickens or a
Trollope. Faint and fleeting praise, a crown with as many prickles as
roses, a modest hardly-gained competence, a good deal of envy, a great

deal of gossip--these are the rewards of genius which constitute a
modern literary success. Not to reach the moderate competence in
literature is, for a professional man of letters of all work, something
like failure. But in poetry to-day a man may succeed, as far as his art
goes, and yet may be unread, and may publish at his own expense, or
not publish at all. He pleases himself, and a very tiny audience: I do not
call that failure. I regard failure as the goal of ignorance, incompetence,
lack of common sense, conceited dulness, and certain practical blunders
now to be explained and defined.
The most ambitious may accept, without distrust, the following advice
as to How to fail in Literature. The advice is offered by a mere critic,
and it is an axiom of the Arts that the critics "are the fellows who have
failed," or have not succeeded. The persons who really can paint, or
play, or compose seldom tell us how it is done, still less do they review
the performances of their contemporaries. That invidious task they
leave to the unsuccessful novelists. The instruction, the advice are
offered by the persons who cannot achieve performance. It is thus that
all things work together in favour of failure, which, indeed, may well
appear so easy that special instruction, however competent, is a luxury
rather than a necessary. But when we look round on the vast multitude
of writers who, to all seeming, deliberately aim at failure, who take
every precaution in favour of failure that untutored inexperience can
suggest, it becomes plain that education in ill-success, is really a
popular want. In the following remarks some broad general principles,
making disaster almost inevitable, will first be offered, and then special
methods of failing in all special departments of letters will be
ungrudgingly communicated. It is not enough to attain failure, we
should deserve it. The writer, by way of insuring complete confidence,
would modestly mention that he has had ample opportunities of study
in this branch of knowledge. While sifting for five or six years the
volunteered contributions to a popular periodical, he has received and
considered some hundredweights of manuscript. In all these myriad
contributions he has not found thirty pieces which rose even to the
ordinary dead level of magazine work. He has thus enjoyed unrivalled
chances of examining such modes of missing success as spontaneously
occur to the human intellect, to the unaided ingenuity of men, women,

and children. {1}
He who would fail in literature cannot begin too early to neglect his
education, and to adopt every opportunity of not observing life and
character. None of us is so young but that he may make himself perfect
in writing an illegible hand. This method, I am bound to say, is too
frequently overlooked. Most manuscripts by ardent literary volunteers
are fairly legible. On the other hand there are novelists, especially
ladies, who not only write a hand wholly declining to let itself be
deciphered, but who fill up the margins with interpolations, who write
between the lines, and who cover the page with scratches running this
way and that, intended to direct the attention to after-thoughts inserted
here and there in corners and on the backs of sheets. To pin in scraps of
closely written paper and backs of envelopes adds to the security for
failure, and produces a rich anger in the publisher's reader or the editor.
The cultivation of a bad handwriting is an elementary precaution, often
overlooked. Few need to be warned against having their MSS.
typewritten, this gives them a chance of being read with ease and
interest, and this must be neglected by all who have really set their
hearts on failure. In the higher matters of education it is well to be as
ignorant as possible. No knowledge comes amiss to the true man of
letters, so they who court disaster should know as little as may be.
Mr. Stevenson has told the attentive world how, in boyhood, he
practised himself in studying and imitating the styles