Art vs. Eats

Art vs. Eats

It was midnight in the Village—or maybe three or four. The long-haired exponent of the moderns stabbed a slab of ham and somehow navigated the torturous course through uncombed shoals and to his mouth. He pointed his fork at me.

“But it’s tripe! You know it’s tripe. You aren’t creating anything. You are taking a predetermined plot and garnishing it to suit the puerile taste of fatuous editors. You are shoveling out words as though they were so many beans. Ugh!” And he speared some scrambled eggs.

“My wares are read anyway,” said I with wicked malice.

“Read! By whom, pray tell? Taxi drivers and whitewings and vapid stenogs! By garbage collectors and housemaids…”

“And doctors and lawyers and merchants and thieves,” I snapped.

“Why not? But what of it?” He emptied his fork into his bottomless cavern and again waved it before my nose. “What of it, I say? You’ll end up your days by never writing anything truly great. All you’ll have to show for it is a stack of dog-eared magazines, each one forgotten the instant it is replaced on the stands by the next number.”

“Is there anything wrong with that?” I said. “Is it so different to lay away magazines than to stow unpublished manuscripts? When it comes to that, my pro-nothing friend, I think it far better to have been read and forgotten than never to have been read at all.”

“You dissemble. At least I am earnest. At least I am striving to write something truly great. At least my wares are not beneath my dignity and if those few I have published went unpaid, they at least added their small bit to the true literature of the day. You fictioneers make my hair crawl. You prostitute a God-given gift for the sake of your stomachs. Mark my words,” he said, ominously striving to put out my eyes with his useful fork, “you will live to regret it.”

At the time I was quite amused, for it was I who paid for that ration of ham and eggs he had so manfully mauled. For a long time afterwards I related the story to my brethren amid much applause. It was so funny, you see, for this shaggy half-bake to berate the source of the money which had paid for his much-needed meal. But through the din of laughter, there still hovered a small doubt. What he had said was perfectly true. In fact it was so true that I was made very uneasy. To write millions and millions of words for the magazines was wonderful from a financial standpoint. But money isn’t everything—or is it?

Now it so happens that this argument started long before two of the Pharaoh’s chief poets fanned it into the raging flame which has carried it so far down the ages. On one hand, there is the fellow who consoles himself with the thought that his work, unread, is too great; and on the other, the man who says that though his work is not great, it is widely read.

In such a way do we all maunder. If we write “trash,” we apologize for it. If we write “art,” we bellicosely defend our right to starve. In such a way do all writers put themselves on the tilt field with their resulting wounds. Few indeed are the fellows who feel neither one way or the other about it.

This argument of art vs. eats is without foundation. It is a chimera. According to Voltaire, if one must argue, one must define his terms and, certainly, it is impossible to draw a line between art and trash—for where one ends and the other begins is wholly dependent upon the taste of the man who makes the distinction.

Unless, then, it is possible to discover some generality whereby these matters can be reconciled, we will continue to stumble and stagger and apologize.

Quite accidentally I discovered what appears to be such a generality. Occasionally, in this business of writing, a fellow is called upon to stand up before aspirants to the profession and utter magic words. Rarely are the words very magic; usually the writer states that it is a fine business, that editors read manuscripts and that one has to produce to sell. Beyond that the wise speaker never ventures—for he would find himself as lonely as an eagle in the blue so far as understanding is concerned. Unless one has experienced editorial reactions, he cannot understand them. Unless one has been confronted with  the woes of technique in their most Inquisitorial form, he cannot discourse upon relative merits. Unless one has a rather mysterious gift in the first place, he cannot write at all. And so it goes.

But on this one particular occasion I was confronted with the epitome of impossibility. In so many words, it was requested that I “talk for forty-five minutes and tell all about the writing and marketing of short stories.” And as one could talk for forty-five years without getting deeper than the surface of the subject, the cue was for laughter. Anytime men find themselves confronted with impossibles, they laugh.

Still, the thing was a challenge. To tell all about the writing and selling of short stories in forty-five minutes would be an alp to climb. And that I refused to climb it irked me. I dislike the acknowledgment of impossibilities. It couldn’t be done and it never had been done and it never would be done … unless I could figure out some generality which would cover the whole subject in one grand sweep.