Publishers and editors will not
even read, much less publish them. Simplicity, lucidity, strength,
a plunge in medias res, are now the qualities and conditions
chiefly desired, rather than finely turned sentences in which it
is apparent more labor has been expended on the vehicle than on
what it contains. The questions of this eager age are, What has he
to say? Does it interest us? As an author, I have felt that my
only chance of gaining and keeping the attention of men and women
was to know, to understand them, to feel with and for them in what
constituted their life. Failing to do this, why should a line of
my books be read? Who reads a modern novel from sense of duty?
There are classics which all must read and pretend to enjoy
whether capable of doing so or not. No critic has ever been so
daft as to call any of my books a classic. Better books are unread
because the writer is not en rapport with the reader. The time has
passed when either the theologian, the politician, or the critic
can take the American citizen metaphorically by the shoulder and
send him along the path in which they think he should go.
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