H.L. Mencken

Buffalo News/June 11, 1931

Plenty of Shabby Writing and Some Workmanlike Stuff, But No Outstanding Genius Is Developed, He Says.

At the moment there is a sort of hiatus in American letters. A great deal of workmanlike and interesting stuff is being written, but there is a dearth of new and arresting authors. Certainly no careful critic would allege that any of the novices of the last few years is as important as Dreiser and Norris were in 1900, or Miss Cather and Lindsay in 1913, or Frost and Hergesheimer in 1914, or Masters and Cabell in 1915, or Sandburg in 1915, or Sherwood Anderson in 1916.

The years at the end of the century were very fruitful ones, and so were those which straddled the war. There was a stimulating and even thrilling air of experiment and innovation. Novelties of great interest were popping up on all sides, and new authors of extraordinary originality were numerous.

But today we have only a general competence.

No Real Genius in Ten Years

Why there should be such rises and falls in literary productivity, I don’t know, and neither does anyone else. There are, of course, plenty of theories. One is to the effect that the best writing is always done during times of peace and plenty; another is that it is done when blood is on the moon. I could cite many other such doublets, each member extinguishing the other.

All that can be said with any surety is that progress in letters, like all other kind of evolution, tends to go in waves. For ten years past no literary debutante of any real importance has appeared in the United States, but I know plenty of youngsters of large promise, and next month or next year one of them may turn out to be a new Dreiser.

My suspicion is that the chances of such a prodigy appearing tomorrow will be much better than they were last year.

Too Easy On Past

That is because we have just passed out of an era of wild over-production in the publishing business. From the end of the depression of 1921 to the beginning of the present one the publishers of the country were so eager to print books that they took almost everything that fell into their hands. As a result, it was fatally easy for newcomers to get into print, and many of them did so before they were ripe. Perhaps some potentially good ones were thus ruined; I don’t know, but it is surely possible.

Today it is very much harder for a beginner to market his wares. I like to believe (or, at all events, to hope) that the fact will discourage half-baked work, and encourage many youngsters to really learn their business. Hergesheimer wrote and rewrote for seven years before he published his first book. If it had been snapped up by a publisher in its first form there would have been no Hergesheimer.

Shabby Writing Encouraged

The multiplicity of magazines, and especially of bad ones, has also told against good work. The wood-pulp fiction magazines need so much copy that they snap up almost anything that is literate, and in consequence they encourage shabby writing. Similarly, the cheap magazines of huge circulation, with their lavish honoraria, incite all the young authors to write what is safe and lovely—and trashy. The market for really serious stuff is curiously limited. Save from the so-called quality magazines, of which there are only four, and one or two of the more ambitious women’s magazines, there is no demand for it. If a new Henry James appeared suddenly tomorrow he would have trouble placing his manuscripts.

But the present depression is punishing the pulp magazines severely and not a few are dying. Nor is it dealing gently with cheap magazines of large circulation. The more ambitious monthlies seem to be weathering the storm rather better. One, Atlantic Monthly, though its circulation has never gone beyond 150,000, has outlasted a thousand “true affidavits” and “stupendous stories.”