Second Mencken Chrestomathy (49 page)

Spingarn himself appeared to harbor some sense of this limitation on his doctrine. He gave warning that “the poet’s intention must be judged at the moment of the creative act”—which opened the door wide enough for many an ancient to creep in. But limited or not, he at least cleared off a lot of moldy rubbish, and got further toward the truth than any of his former colleagues of the birch. They wasted themselves upon theories that only concealed the poet’s achievement the more, the more diligently they were applied; he, at all events, grounded himself upon the sound notion that there should be free speech in art, and no protective tariffs, and no
a priori
assumptions, and no testing of ideas by mere words. The safe ground probably lies between the two camps, but nearer Spingarn. The critic who really illuminates starts off much as he started off, but with a more careful regard for the prejudices and imbecilities of the world. I think the best feasible practise is to be found in certain chapters of Huneker, a critic of vastly more solid influence and of infinitely more value to the arts than any prating pedagogue has ever been disposed to grant. In his case, as in that of Poe, a sensitive and intelligent artist recreated the work of other artists, but there also came to the ceremony a man of the world, and the things he had to say were apposite and instructive too. To denounce moralizing out of hand is to pronounce a moral judgment. To dispute the categories is to set up a new anti-categorical category. And to admire the work of Shakespeare is to be interested in his social aspirations, his shot-gun marriage and his frequent concessions to the bombastic frenzy of his actors, and to have some curiosity about Mr. W.H. The really competent critic must be an empiricist. He must conduct his exploration with whatever means lie within the bounds of his personal limitation. He must produce his effects with whatever tools will work. If pills fail, he gets out his saw. If the saw won’t cut, he seizes a club.…

Perhaps, after all, the chief burden that lies upon Spingarn’s theory is to be found in its label. He called it “creative,” which suggested, unhappily, the “constructive” of the Rotarians. It said what
he wanted to say, but it said a good deal more. In this emergency, I propose getting rid of his misleading label by pasting another over it. That is, I propose the substitution of “catalytic” for “creative,” despite the fact that “catalytic” is an unfamiliar word, and suggests the dog-Latin of the seminaries. I borrow it from chemistry, and its meaning is really quite simple. A catalyzer, in chemistry, is a substance that helps two other substances to react. For example, consider the case of ordinary cane sugar and water. Dissolve the sugar in the water and nothing happens. But add a few drops of acid and the sugar changes into glucose and fructose. Meanwhile, the acid itself is unchanged. All it does is to stir up the reaction between the water and the sugar. The process is called catalysis. The acid is a catalyzer.

Well, this is almost exactly the function of a genuine critic of the arts. It is his business to provoke the reaction between the work of art and the spectator. The spectator, untutored, stands unmoved; he sees the work of art, but it fails to make any intelligible impression on him; if he were spontaneously sensitive to it, there would be no need for criticism. But now comes the critic with his catalysis. He makes the work of art live for the spectator; he makes the spectator live for the work of art. Out of the process comes understanding, appreciation, intelligent enjoyment—in brief, a close approximation to the effect that the artist tried to produce. That is the intent of criticism and that is also its function.

From the
Smart Set
, Sept., 1912, pp. 151–52. Fredric Weldin Splint, then the editor of the
Smart Set
, offered me the job of literary reviewer in 1908. Splint’s proposal was that I should fill eight pages of his space every month, and should have $50 for my pains, with the review books thrown in as my perquisite. I did not look this gift horse in the mouth, but fell to gratefully and with great energy, and so began a connection with that magazine which ran on until the end of 1923

For four years I have averaged a novel a day. On many a rainy Sunday I have read two or three, and in one week, incommunicado
and on my back, I actually got through twenty-four. But that, of course, was extraordinary, unparalleled, a unique collocation of bravura and bravado. I do not say I’ll ever do it again. With one such exploit in a lifetime the average man must rest content. It is not given to mortals to work incessantly upon such high gears, to rise so stupendously above the common level of achievement. I look back upon the deed with undisguised pride, and even with a touch of wonder. It ranks me with astounding and inordinate fellows—Hobson the osculator, Holmes the homicide, Home-run Kelly, Butcher Weyler and Brigham Young the matrimoniac.

—that I once read twenty-four novels in a week—not, perhaps, from cover to cover, skipping not a word, cutting every page—but still diligently and even thoroughly, and to the end that the ensuing reviews, composed on my discharge from hospital, were pretty fair and comprehensive, as reviews go in this vale of crime, and so pleased half of the publishers and almost one of the novelists.

But what I started out to do was not to boast about my Gargantuan appetite for prose fiction—an appetite so insatiable that in the intervals between best-sellers it sends me back to “Huckleberry Finn” and “Germinal” and “Kim” and “Vanity Fair”—but to apologize to the dear publishers for occasionally overlooking a single novel, or even a whole flock of novels. I try to have a glance at every one they send me, and to go through at least thirty every thirty days, but after all I have only two hands, and thus it sometimes happens, when nine or ten come bouncing in together, that I muff three or four of them. And again it sometimes happens that I am utterly unable, with the best intentions in the world, to read far enough into a given volume to find out what it is about. And yet again it sometimes happens that, having found out, I am unable to describe the contents without violating the laws against the use of profane and indecent language. And finally it sometimes happens—more often, indeed, than merely sometimes—that my toilsome surmounting of all these difficulties is rendered null and
vain by assassins in the
Smart Set
office, who reduce me from eight pages to six without warning, or pi a couple of galleys of my arduous type, or send their devil to me with orders to let novels alone for a month and give them something sapient and racy about the latest published dramas or the new treatises on psychotherapy. All this by way of explanation and apology, not only to the Barabbases who publish, but also to those kind readers who protest in courteous terms when I happen to neglect their favorites among the Indiana genii. The whole thing, I must admit, is rather a muddle. I do not review upon any systematic, symmetrical plan, with its roots in logic and the
jus gentium
, but haphazard and without a conscience, and so it may occur that a fourth-rate novel gets a page, or even two pages, while a work of high merit goes inequitably to my ash-barrel and is hauled away in the night, unwept, unhonored and unsung, along with my archaic lingerie and my vacant beer bottles.

From the Baltimore Evening Sun, Dec. 12, 1927

After long years of active and sometimes gaudy controversy, literary, political, ethical, legal and theological, I find myself, at the brim of senility, cherishing the following thoughts: (
a
) that I can’t recall ever attacking an adversary who was not free to make a reply, and in tones as blistering as he liked, and (
b
) that I can’t recall ever calling for quarter, or indulging in any maneuvers to get it. Such are the banal satisfactions that must content a rat-catcher in his declining years. Like all other satisfactions, they are probably largely delusory—in fine, Freudian phenomena. That is to say, I suspect that an impartial inquiry would show that I have hit below the belt more than once, and ducked more than once. Do I forget it grandly, and flap my wings? Then it is for the same reason that a Sunday-school superintendent forgets stealing 15 cents from his blind grandmother back in 1895.

But if I thus have to lie a little, if only unconsciously, to make my record clear, I can at least say with complete honesty that the
uproars I have been engaged in from time to time have been very agreeable, and left me without any rancor. Speaking generally, I am of a sombre disposition and get very little happiness out of life, though I am often merry; but what little I have got has come mainly out of some form of combat. Why this should be so I don’t know. Maybe it indicates that I am only half civilized. But if so, then Huxley was also only half civilized, and Voltaire before him, and St. Paul before Voltaire. Is controversy of any use? Obviously, it is the only device so far invented that actually spreads the enlightenment. Exposition, persuasion, homiletics, exegesis—these devices are all plainly inferior, for you must first get your crowd. How difficult that is every preacher knows. But a combat brings the crowd instanter, and if that combat is furious enough and over an issue of any importance at all, the crowd will stay to the end.

True enough, what it gets out of the immediate uproar is often only folly. It is, save in extreme circumstances, in favor of whoever takes and holds the offensive. The chief desideratum in practical controversy, indeed, is to do that, and the second is to make your opponent angry: the moment he begins to fume he is lost. But though the immediate victory may thus go simply to the better gladiator, I believe it is safe to say that he often ruins his cause, if it is intrinsically a bad one, by winning. The Prohibitionists scored a glorious triumph in 1920. They not only got their law; they also converted at least four-fifths of all the morons in America. But they began to go downhill from that moment. The history of controversy, in truth, is a long history of winners losing and losers winning. There is more to the thing than the concrete battle. Ideas are shot into the air, and some of them keep on flying. The first ecclesiastical rush in the ’60s apparently overwhelmed Huxley—but it also gave him his chance. Voltaire had to flee from France in 1726, but he scattered seeds as he fled, and they are still sprouting and making fruit.

From the
Smart Set
, Nov., 1911, pp. 153–55. A review of J
ENNIE
G
ERHARDT
, by Theodore Dreiser; New York, 1911. Ever since I began to find myself as a literary critic, I had been on the lookout for an author who would serve me as a sort of tank in my war upon the frauds and dolts who still reigned in American letters. What I needed was an author who was completely American in his themes and his point of view, who dealt with people and situations of wide and durable interest, who had something to say about his characters that was not too obvious, who was nevertheless simple enough to be understood by the vulgar, and who knew how to concoct and tell an engrossing story. When the gorgeous phenomenon of Jennie Gerhardt burst upon me, I was frankly enchanted. This flaming review was the first long one to be printed, and its positive tone undoubtedly influenced a good many of those that followed. Thereafter, for five or six years, Dreiser was the stick with which I principally flogged the dullards of my country, at least in the field of beautiful letters