THE FLOOD OF BOOKS.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1563, 5 October 1912, Page 9

THE FLOOD OF BOOKS.

Who is to blame for this terrible and growing superfluity of books—author, publisher, or public? Or are all alike helpless' in tho clutches of a business system speeding up by some dire law of evolution towards an ever-increasing over-pro-duction? The present pace is killing. In 1901 tho output of new books was five, thousand, enough, one might suppose, to satisfy the legitimate needs of our not wholly intellectual natipn. Ten years later, however, the number had swollen to oight thousand' fivo hundred, an increase of 70 per cent. Nor docs this percentage measure the full dimensions of the enhanced supply of books. For it has been coincident with a prodigious output of cheap reprints, and.a general cheapening of large quantities of the new fiction and educational books. It would be safe to say that the number of printed books put out last year was more than double that of IHOt. 'Nor can tho increase be put down merely or mainly to a morbid craving for novel-reading. For though we still continue to produco now novels at the rate of six or seven per working day, the last year or two has shown a. decided slackening in this lino of production. Biography, travel, belles-lettres, and science are advancing far more rapidly. To some this may appear a satisfactory testimony to the genuine spread of culture. Nor'cau it he denied that the largo sale of cheap editions of great icaslerpicces of literature and science evinces an opening of the popular mind to ideas, which in its self is most commendable.

But it is precisely because of these wider signs of a desire for culture. that we regret so deeply this flooding of the book market. For culture is a matter of discrimination and of quality, and this flood imijoses quantify ami inhibits discrimination. To catch the public, eye, to tickle the superficial "curiosity, to tempt the buyer, not to satisfy, improve, or stimulate the mind, is the »vowed object of these responsible for lire supply of books. Tn no branch of consumption is the buyer so much at the mercy of the seller. In other branches he has valid perianal experience to help him. He has bought the same article niany lii""s before, or something vevv like il. "With a book it is different. He only buys it because he h.ij ii"ver bought it before, and ho cannot tell what it is worth to him till after he has paid for it. Nor is there anyone to tell him. A man of trained intelligence and reading, no doubt, is able, within lir>its. to discriminate, appraise, and prophesy; he is-nnt the dune of ." specious title or a faked reputation. But the great mass of our expanding reading public have no defence against the artful pressure of the trader interested to induce I hem to buy the largest quantity' of books, irrespective of ell considerations of inherent worth.. Popular education is not real enough to furnish any adequate safeguard*: it has lifted the minds of great numbers of ueople to a level which leaves- I hem a helpless prev to vapid sctitimentnlisni in literature, art, and politics, and l-i char.letiinism in screw. So the book-trade sinks to I he condilion of th" drug-trade, mainly engaged in p'-.lming off largaquantities of well-labelled goods upon n credulous sheen-public by specious advortise•ment. This could not well b" done when reading ami the intellectual life were for the wonlthv few. A publisher then regarded it as his mission to search out writer? nf merit whose boo'is he felt himself entitled- to recommend personally lo his educated patrons who would detect and curse him if he dnccived them into naving a guinea, for a bad IkioI;. A very few such publishers still remain, enjoying in some qualified way this distinctively professional character of literary •raarantnr. But the general tendency has Ix-en to convert, (he publisher into a tradesman, whose business is to sell the largest' nuanlilv of boohs he can induce the public to think they want io buy. Thus larger and larger numbers of books pour from I bo press, ivilli l"-s and less uff.-clive chocks upon I heir quality, while the life ovn of a fairly good book f|-"ws shorter and shorter. ' Nor is tin- guidance which I lie piibli-h<r has dropped taken up by the book-.dler.

\On the central'}-, tho bookseller has become more and more a merely automatic channel for the retail marketing of inferior books. The history of the retail trade is one of prolonged degradation. There is a striking passage in the "Life of Alexander Macmillan," showing how far that process had gone nearly half a century ago. In a letter written to Mr. Gladstone in 18C8 he says, "Whereas in former years there used to bo many booksellers who kept good stocks of solid standard books—one or more in every important town in England—and these booksellers lived by selling books, the case is now that in country towns few live by selling books; the trade has beeomo so profitless that it is generally the ajipendago to a toy-shop or a Berlin-wool warehouse, and a few trashy novels, selling for a shilling, with tiaring colours, suiting the flashy contents; and the bookseller who studies what books are good and worth recommending to his customers has ceased to exist." 'Though a recent turn in.tho tide has brought back a largo num« her of small retailer*, concerned wholly or chiefly with selling books, tho point of the final criticism remains unimpaired. In the drug trade it is proposed to restrain noxious superfluity by imposing a legal obligation to give a truo description of tho materials upon each p'ackot or bot'tle. Quito recently a practice has grown up of printing on tho cover of many books a tempting- contents bill. Wo fear, however, that no legal compulsion could convert this into a truo description of tho contents. Indeed, it appears quito hopeless to check or regulate the output of.superfluous books by intervening at tho distributing stage. Nor is it easy to suppose that anything can be achieved by appealing to the self-restraint of authors. For mi author is the victim of a perpetual illusion to tho effect that his book is wanted, and as long as he can get a publisher to back him up in this belief, ho will'go on Writing books. There is, moreover, no reliable economic check upon his creative output. The producer of ordinary wares demands some tolerable certainty of remuneration for hfs efl'ort: he is not in business "for his health," nor to bo fobbed off by payment in the shape of some possibility of fame. Whereas every publisher is aware that nothing is easier than to tempt on innocent author into putting out prolonged ajid arduous mental cll'ort into a work which has not the remotest chance of earning.him a living wage. This perhaps, requires one qualification, which goes to the root of the mutter. To the. publisher, even aS to the author, there always shines out in the darkness of the night in which he lives some brilliant star of fortune. Ono of his books (how can he possibly tell which?) is going to turn out an immense success, and some share of tho vast profits which accrue will reach the author. An interesting correspondence in tho "Daily Hews" seems to designate this sudden unforeseen event as (ho chief cause of the superfluity of books. Every publisher must continually keep baiting his hook in hopes of catching the great fish. He must go on accepting, evoking,, and publishing us many books as he can get hold of, on the blind chance that among them may be tho prize-book which will bring him in the JCtO.OOO which an anonymous novel is said recently to havo secured for its dazzled publisher. As tho number of new books swells, tho proportion which the prize-book bears to the aggregate naturally diminishes.

Is there no limit to the process in this .dwindling chance? A well-informed writer in.the "Daily News" says "No" Each publisher, ho thinks, must continue at uii accelerating pace this quest for tho golden.book, so long as other publishers keep racing. An • effective agreement among rival publishers to _ regulate tho output appears, as impracticable as tho agreement of nations on a reduction of armaments. On this point, however, the correspondent does not quite convince us. If, as he contends, with every increase, of his output, beyond a reasonable limit, tho actual net returns show a considerable falling off, it ought to be possible for some new publisher to build up a profitable trade by limiting his output to the production of good books alone, supposing him to have the intelligence to know what are the books which tho more discriminate public- will to recognise as good, lu n word, it might bo good business to taki* up publishing once more as a skilled craftsman instead of a gambler or a grocer. "Until and unless this is feasible, it seems that author and reader alike are crushed in (he'cylinders of tho printing press. For what clianco has a work of genius, or even of high talent, by a new writer in tho present tidal rush? Tins literary tasters, the critics and reviewers, are utterly unable to cope with the flood of "new books which flow-in rapid succession before their eyes. They cannot pretend to apply satisfactory tests. An inept title, a dull preface, an unattractive table of contents, sends to immediate and eternal oblivion every week scores of roallv. meritorious books. hor sheer mental weariness the critic is led to avail himself of every specious opportunity, not for. discovering but for ignoring a new book. Thus the weight of the burden breaks down the only testing apparatus between publisher and public. _ . . In default of authentic guardians, tho large reading public is fain to place itself more and more at tho disposal of tho library clerk, who exerts a tyranny, alike ' humorous and dangerous, over tho ever-growing number of those who like to handle books. It is his interest to keep books circulating, to repress eccentric demands, and to persuade readers to take away the books it is most profitable to the trade that they should think they want to read. In tho last' resort, then, the flood of books must be attributed to the indiscriminate voracity of the half-literature public, and is only to be checked by an advance of selective intelligence in readers. The first stago in proper literary, education naturally evokes a superstitious desire to amass quantities' of low-grade intellectual and emotional experience, using books for this purpose, as the nouveuu riche uses material forms of property for self-display and self-realisation. Taste, discrimination, nice selection and rejection of books, may come later. Whether they will come, is one of the most urgent open questions of our time. For the comparative insusceptibility to culture of the classes who have enjoyed largo intellectual opportunities for several generations must be taken as presumptive, though not final, evidence, of some inherent difficulty in the eseepe of the British mind from the economy of quantity, which we call materialism, into that of quality, which is another name for culture. Until this open question is answered by tho course of events, we caiuiot say whether there is any remedy for the flood of books.—London "Nation."