FullReads

It is, perhaps, too much to say that all the American novel needs for its development is an audience, but it is safe to say that an audience would greatly assist it. Evidence is on all sides of a fresh, new, wonderful artistic development in America in drawing, painting, sculpture, in instrumental music and singing, and in literature. The promise of this is not only in the climate, the free republican opportunity, the mixed races blending the traditions and aptitudes of so many civilizations, but it is in a certain temperament which we already recognize as American. It is an artistic tendency. This was first most noticeable in American women, to whom the art of dress seemed to come by nature, and the art of being agreeable to be easily acquired.

Already writers have arisen who illustrate this artistic tendency in novels, and especially in short stories. They have not appeared to owe their origin to any special literary centre; they have come forward in the South, the West, the East. Their writings have to a great degree (considering our pupilage to the literature of Great Britain, which is prolonged by the lack of an international copyright) the stamp of originality, of naturalness, of sincerity, of an attempt to give the facts of life with a sense of their artistic value. Their affiliation is rather with the new literatures of France, of Russia, of Spain, than with the modern fiction of England. They have to compete in the market with the uncopyrighted literature of all other lands, good and bad, especially bad, which is sold for little more than the cost of the paper it is printed on, and badly printed at that. But besides this fact, and owing to a public taste not cultivated or not corrected in the public schools, their books do not sell in anything like the quantity that the inferior, mediocre, other home novels sell. Indeed, but for the intervention of the magazines, few of the best writers of novels and short stories could earn as much as the day laborer earns. In sixty millions of people, all of whom are, or have been, in reach of the common school, it must be confessed that their audience is small.

This relation between the fiction that is, and that which is to be, and the common school is not fanciful. The lack in the general reading public, in the novels read by the greater number of people, and in the common school is the same–the lack of inspiration and ideality. The common school does not cultivate the literary sense, the general public lacks literary discrimination, and the stories and tales either produced by or addressed to those who have little ideality simply respond to the demand of the times.

It is already evident, both in positive and negative results, both in the schools and the general public taste, that literature cannot be set aside in the scheme of education; nay, that it is of the first importance. The teacher must be able to inspire the pupil; not only to awaken eagerness to know, but to kindle the imagination. The value of the Hindoo or the Greek myth, of the Roman story, of the mediaeval legend, of the heroic epic, of the lyric poem, of the classic biography, of any genuine piece of literature, ancient or modern, is not in the knowledge of it as we may know the rules of grammar and arithmetic or the formulas of a science, but in the enlargement of the mind to a conception of the life and development of the race, to a study of the motives of human action, to a comprehension of history; so that the mind is not simply enriched, but becomes discriminating, and able to estimate the value of events and opinions. This office for the mind acquaintance with literature can alone perform. So that, in school, literature is not only, as I have said, the easiest open door to all else desirable, the best literature is not only the best means of awakening the young mind, the stimulus most congenial, but it is the best foundation for broad and generous culture. Indeed, without its co-ordinating influence the education of the common school is a thing of shreds and patches. Besides, the mind aroused to historic consciousness, kindled in itself by the best that has been said and done in all ages, is more apt in the pursuit, intelligently, of any specialty; so that the shortest road to the practical education so much insisted on in these days begins in the awakening of the faculties in the manner described. There is no doubt of the value of manual training as an aid in giving definiteness, directness, exactness to the mind, but mere technical training alone will be barren of those results, in general discriminating culture, which we hope to see in America.

The common school is a machine of incalculable value. It is not, however, automatic. If it is a mere machine, it will do little more to lift the nation than the mere ability to read will lift it. It can easily be made to inculcate a taste for good literature; it can be a powerful influence in teaching the American people what to read; and upon a broadened, elevated, discriminating public taste depends the fate of American art, of American fiction.

It is not an inappropriate corollary to be drawn from this that an elevated public taste will bring about a truer estimate of the value of a genuine literary product. An invention which increases or cheapens the conveniences or comforts of life may be a fortune to its originator. A book which amuses, or consoles, or inspires; which contributes to the highest intellectual enjoyment of hundreds of thousands of people; which furnishes substance for thought or for conversation; which dispels the cares and lightens the burdens of life; which is a friend when friends fail, a companion when other intercourse wearies or is impossible, for a year, for a decade, for a generation perhaps, in a world which has a proper sense of values, will bring a like competence to its author. (1890.)