The Novel and the Common School | Page 3

of this surrender of one's judgment of what shall be
his intellectual life is alarming.
But the modern newspaper is no doubt a natural evolution in our social
life. As everything has a cause, it would be worth while to inquire
whether the encyclopaedic newspaper is in response to a demand, to a
taste created by our common schools. Or, to put the question in another
form, does the system of education in our common schools give the
pupils a taste for good literature or much power of discrimination? Do
they come out of school with the habit of continuous reading, of
reading books, or only of picking up scraps in the newspapers, as they
might snatch a hasty meal at a lunch-counter? What, in short, do the
schools contribute to the creation of a taste for good literature?
Great anxiety is felt in many quarters about the modern novel. It is
feared that it will not be realistic enough, that it will be too realistic,

that it will be insincere as to the common aspects of life, that it will not
sufficiently idealize life to keep itself within the limits of true art. But
while the critics are busy saying what the novel should be, and
attacking or defending the fiction of the previous age, the novel obeys
pretty well the laws of its era, and in many ways, especially in the
variety of its development, represents the time. Regarded simply as a
work of art, it may be said that the novel should be an expression of the
genius of its writer conscientiously applied to a study of the facts of life
and of human nature, with little reference to the audience. Perhaps the
great works of art that have endured have been so composed. We may
say, for example, that "Don Quixote" had to create its sympathetic
audience. But, on the other hand, works of art worthy the name are
sometimes produced to suit a demand and to please a taste already
created. A great deal of what passes for literature in these days is in this
category of supply to suit the demand, and perhaps it can be said of this
generation more fitly than of any other that the novel seeks to hit the
popular taste; having become a means of livelihood, it must sell in
order to be profitable to the producer, and in order to sell it must be
what the reading public want. The demand and sale are widely taken as
the criterion of excellence, or they are at least sufficient encouragement
of further work on the line of the success. This criterion is accepted by
the publisher, whose business it is to supply a demand. The
conscientious publisher asks two questions: Is the book good? and Will
it sell? The publisher without a conscience asks only one question: Will
the book sell? The reflex influence of this upon authors is immediately
felt.
The novel, mediocre, banal, merely sensational, and worthless for any
purpose of intellectual stimulus or elevation of the ideal, is thus
encouraged in this age as it never was before. The making of novels has
become a process of manufacture. Usually, after the fashion of the
silk-weavers of Lyons, they are made for the central establishment on
individual looms at home; but if demand for the sort of goods furnished
at present continues, there is no reason why they should not be
produced, even more cheaply than they are now, in great factories,
where there can be division of labor and economy of talent. The shoal
of English novels conscientiously reviewed every seventh day in the

London weeklies would preserve their present character and gain in
firmness of texture if they were made by machinery. One has only to
mark what sort of novels reach the largest sale and are most called for
in the circulating libraries, to gauge pretty accurately the public taste,
and to measure the influence of this taste upon modern production.
With the exception of the novel now and then which touches some
religious problem or some socialistic speculation or uneasiness, or is a
special freak of sensationalism, the novels which suit the greatest
number of readers are those which move in a plane of absolute
mediocrity, and have the slightest claim to be considered works of art.
They represent the chromo stage of development.
They must be cheap. The almost universal habit of reading is a mark of
this age--nowhere else so conspicuous as in America; and considering
the training of this comparatively new reading public, it is natural that
it should insist upon cheapness of material, and that it should require
quality less than quantity. It is a note of our general intellectual
development that cheapness in literature is almost as much insisted on
by