The Young Contributor | Page 6

William Dean Howells
I am never
sure which.
Of course one must have one's hour, or day, or week, of disabling the
editor's judgment, of calling him to one's self fool, and rogue, and
wretch; but after that, if one is worth while at all, one puts the rejected
thing by, or sends it off to some other magazine, and sets about the
capture of the erring editor with something better, or at least something
else.

III.
I think it a great pity that editors ever deal other than frankly with
young contributors, or put them off with smooth generalities of excuse,

instead of saying they do not like this thing or that offered them. It is
impossible to make a criticism of all rejected manuscripts, but in the
case of those which show promise I think it is quite possible; and if I
were to sin my sins over again, I think I should sin a little more on the
side of candid severity. I am sure I should do more good in that way,
and I am sure that when I used to dissemble my real mind I did harm to
those whose feelings I wished to spare. There ought not, in fact, to be
question of feeling in the editor's mind.
I know from much suffering of my own that it is terrible to get back a
manuscript, but it is not fatal, or I should have been dead a great many
times before I was thirty, when the thing mostly ceased for me. One
survives it again and again, and one ought to make the reflection that it
is not the first business of a periodical to print contributions of this one
or of that, but that its first business is to amuse and instruct its readers.
To do this it is necessary to print contributions, but whose they are, or
how the writer will feel if they are not printed, cannot be considered.
The editor can consider only what they are, and the young contributor
will do well to consider that, although the editor may not be an
infallible judge, or quite a good judge, it is his business to judge, and to
judge without mercy. Mercy ought no more to qualify judgment in an
artistic result than in a mathematical result.

IV.
I suppose, since I used to have it myself, that there is a superstition with
most young contributors concerning their geographical position. I used
to think that it was a disadvantage to send a thing from a small or
unknown place, and that it doubled my insignificance to do so. I
believed that if my envelope had borne the postmark of New York, or
Boston, or some other city of literary distinction, it would have arrived
on the editor's table with a great deal more authority. But I am sure this
was a mistake from the first, and when I came to be an editor myself I
constantly verified the fact from my own dealings with contributors. A
contribution from a remote and obscure place at once piqued my

curiosity, and I soon learned that the fresh things, the original things,
were apt to come from such places, and not from the literary centres.
One of the most interesting facts concerning the arts of all kinds is that
those who wish to give their lives to them do not appear where the
appliances for instruction in them exist. An artistic atmosphere does not
create artists a literary atmosphere does not create literators; poets and
painters spring up where there was never a verse made or a picture
seen.
This suggests that God is no more idle now than He was at the
beginning, but that He is still and forever shaping the human chaos into
the instruments and means of beauty. It may also suggest to that
scholar- pride, that vanity of technique, which is so apt to vaunt itself in
the teacher, that the best he can do, after all, is to let the pupil teach
himself. If he comes with divine authority to the thing he attempts, he
will know how to use the appliances, of which the teacher is only the
first.
The editor, if he does not consciously perceive the truth, will
instinctively feel it, and will expect the acceptable young contributor
from the country, the village, the small town, and he will look eagerly
at anything that promises literature from Montana or Texas, for he will
know that it also promises novelty.
If he is a wise editor, he will wish to hold his hand as much as possible;
he will think twice before he asks the contributor to change this or
correct that; he will leave him as much to himself as he can. The young
contributor; on his
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