FORTY MILLION WORDS

In these times of quantitative production and accomplishment "en masse", it is generally supposed that if a man works hard enough he will eventually reach the top--either in material or non-material gain. Consequently it is somewhat surprising to learn that the creator of "Nick Carter", having penned forty million words in his lifetime, died practically penniless,--a suicide. America, the builder of physical colossi, might have been expected to reward such industry, if only on the basis of bulk alone; and certainly "Nick" achieved a popularity in his day. But apparently literature and the material world are still things apart.

Critics of American letters have been harping on this theme for the past four or five decades, and a recent writer in the "North American Review", sees fit to ask "How great are We Americans"? Great, that is, in artistic or literary fame. Evidently forty-million-word efforts, prodigious though they be, are not accounted sufficient of themselves. There must be something more than a deal of ink and the ability to spin a yarn. Who was it that called genius "an infinite capacity for taking pains"?

In this lack of merit in our modern literature it is not alone the writers who are to blame. The public must share fully half, and perhaps a greater part, of the burden. For so long as the makers of machinery, the builders of bridges, or the patrons of the subways are satisfied with slipshod work, "Thrillers", and the sort of books that are cluttering the presses today, so long will that class of writing crowd all the rest out of the market. There must be well-grounded appreciation, and some effort to meet the author half-way, before anything lasting can be accomplished. St. John Ervine's suggested moratorium of the drama is significant. Literature cannot exist as a series of pre-digested mental pellets.

A "forty-million-mad" nation cannot help but create, and then kill, its artists. Until it learns to read and study the great books within its reach as well as discuss "hooch" and the Hell Gate Bridge, "Nick Carter", with their authors dying forgotten, will continue to be its chief representatives in the field of "non-material achievement."