WRITERS AND READERS

Evening Star, Issue 19666, 20 September 1927, Page 5

WRITERS AND READERS

WHY RUBBISH IS PUBLISHED “ People whose business it is to pass judgment on the new books are generally agreed that this spring season, which is now, as is the wont of publishers’ spring seasons, dragging into the summer, has been the worst wo have had for a long time,” writes “ Mark Over,” in the London weekly paper, the ‘Outlook.’ “ There has been a plethora of books, but very lew worth reading and fewer still worth remembering. Abut. 117 per cent, of them, I should say, have been of the ‘ just another book ’ kind —feeble and undistinguished novels, dull biographies of people who didn’t matter much when they were alive and matter less now they arc dead; rehashed history and tedious accounts of travel by travellers who might as well have stayed at home. It is nothing new, this complaint of over-production of poor books, but it was never better justified; and the amount of rubbish, of books for which, you would think, there could never bo a sufficiently paying public, makes mo marvel anew at the optimism of publishers. “ As someone asked the other day, looking over rows and rows of new books, none of them of a quality to demand more in the way of review than a mere mention among books received —and some hardly worth that: Don t they (the publishers) know what rubbish they are putting into print. And, indeed, looking at some of their productions, at those long, long iS t® of novels by nonentities, one is forced, to the conclusion that they don’t know. They gamble. They live in hopes that if they only put out enough novels they will somehow find one of them miraculously become a best seller. Now, it is true enough that one would be puzzled to account lor the sudden success or some best sellers—from a literary point of view; to explain just why tins book or that has become a craze, so that libraries must go on repeating their orders to keep up with the Jemimas or impatient patrons while the c; aze lasts. But it is not difficult to explain why 999 of the sort of novels 1 am tmnkmg of have not the ghost of a chance of ever getting within sight of the bestseller class. THE NOVEL STAKES.

“People without the slightest qualification enter hopefully for the novel slakes,” continues “Mark Over. ■ “Their feeble productions, written obviously as a job of work, with about as much enthusiasm as a grocer shows in grinding coffee, arc put into print by optimistic publishers, who apparently; will publish anything above Hio standard of rank illiteracy, and live ju hopes that one of their hundreds ot lumps ol cardboaixl and print v ill by some mysterious means become popular and a money-maker. How many, lag from being money-makers, sell enough, copies to make anything over the cost of production and advertising? It would ho interesting to know; and disappointed a naurs might tell some salutary talcs of profit and loss. But their, warnings, i cm al’"'id, would he lost c® the people who think that novel writing is an easy and general occupation, aunt perhaps have been led astray by that dangerous dictum that; every life JmC material for a novel in it somewhere. It may have, hut few of the people whe have lived a story, even the most romantic sort of life story, have the skill to toll it. Yet. I suppose, as long as publishing c.nn; inis arc willing to g>> on gambling jm lit-; hope ol (iiMovcnng n best seller, so long shall v.c- sec this appalling annual milunt ot mhliish. Possibly, though their productions may seem of a pretty dead level ot badness, thev can rely oil making on the swings what they lose on tlie roundabouts;'on making enough on filly lo pay lor tho losses of the other fifty, always with tho hope of Unit bestseller. And thus arc tho book shop shelves laden with an cioirenewed burden of feeble hooks. But ibis year, 1 think, the output must have caught up with the authois industry, and the quest lor new talent lias resulted in some ol ' the worst, feeblest, clumsiest pieces of hookmaking—ol all sorts, not novels only—that 1 have seen in a good many ycais• experience. That anybody should buy them seems almost unthinkable. But presumably the publishers feel that they must publish something.”