Delphi complete works of.., p.836
Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 836
Fortunately his high spirits could not be subdued to that that it worked in, and now that his fame as a jester has obscured his authority as an educationist, he need feel no regrets. The world has many sober-minded citizens who can deal with history and political economy, and altogether too few who have the genius to make life more endurable with humor and laughter.
But there is one point that gives me some disquietude. Mr. Leacock has poked fun at everything and everybody — except the modern enterprising publisher. And yet the publisher has deserved his satire more than anyone else. If any one has done Mr. Leacock harm it is the publishers, syndicate managers and directors of lecture bureaus. It is true that he gives them a love tap in his essay on O. Henry. This shows that he is aware of the danger of listening to their blandishments, and that is a hopeful sign. But they have already tried to direct the current of his literary output, as is shown in the following announcement which ushered “Winsome Winnie and other Nonsense Novels” to the public:
“It is in response to repeated requests that these new novels have been written.”
Quite so. Because “Nonsense Novels” were a wonderful success the publisher wanted more of them. I can imagine him beside Leacock’s desk, “squat like a toad,” and urging the certain profits to be made from a new book of burlesques. Or perhaps he took him to the top of a high mountain and showed him the world full of people laughing at “Nonsense Novels” — and the rich royalties pouring into the bank account of the author. If so, it is a pity that Leacock did not push him over a cliff and watch him land in a squashy mess among the fossils and geological specimens in the talus at its base.
The curse of modern literature is the enterprising publisher. If one book succeeds, every publisher tries to lure or bulldoze the author, and every other author over whom he has influence, to write another book like it that will be a sure winner. And if the harried author cannot do it the enterprising publisher takes whatever book he writes and puts a jacket on it that will fool the public into thinking that it is like the prosperous best seller of the hour.
Some day an enterprising publisher will undertake to publish the Bible along up-to-date lines. When a society novel makes a hit and sets the fashion, he will issue the Bible with a jacket by Montgomery Flagg, showing Vashti or the Shulamite. When “he man” stories are the rage, he will issue it with a Lyendecker jacket, showing Samson leaning on the jaw-bone after doing his day’s work. A rage for “Back-to-Nature” novels will inspire a new edition with a jacket by Livingstone Bull, showing Nebuchadnezzar out to pasture.
Up to the present the publisher has not done Mr. Leacock as much harm as he has to most modern authors who have had a measure of success, but I shall not feel satisfied until he turns and rends him. Only then can we be sure that he has realized the danger and that his genius is free to develop along its own lines.
Not that the later burlesques are without merit. The trouble is that they are following an indicated line of success — and that way badness lies. Although Mr. Leacock’s later books have been hailed with delight and an unvarying chorus of laughter, there are many sketches that have as much pathos as humor. Take the “Hohenzollerns in America,” for instance. The study of the deposed Kaiser is essentially pathetic, and, although it may seem to many a broadly comic touch to marry off the faithful princess to the iceman, one cannot help hoping and believing that she lived happily ever after.
If the publishers and the public could get over their hysterical demand for comedy and read Stephen Leacock’s writings with discernment, they would soon realize that his power of pathos is never less artistically sure than his command of laughter. His great danger is that he may be misled by an insistent and profitable demand into the modern evil of specialization — an evil with which he has dealt in his literary essays — and will give too free a rein to his genius for fun. As matters stand he is one of the truest interpreters of American and Canadian life that we have had; but by giving free play to all his powers he may finally win recognition as a broad and sympathetic interpreter of life as a whole.
In the classical masterpieces of the past great scenes and speeches and characterizations were shown against a background prepared by the poet or literary artist. In the lapse of time the great passages tend to become separated from their matrix and are enjoyed by themselves without the cumbersome machinery by which they were introduced. The conditions of modern literary expression — through magazines and serial publications — are such that a writer elaborates his fine scenes without other background than the evanescent interests of his own time, that may or may not have served as their inspiration. To the casual student this gives to much contemporary writing a fragmentary aspect. It may even give a sense of discouragement to the artist himself. Mr. Leacock somewhere expresses a sense of the trivial character of his sketches, as compared with the broad canvases of the great masters of the past. This dissatisfaction is unwarranted, for against the background of his own time the mass of his productions has a scope and richness that will enable it to bear comparison with the work of master artists working in other times and in other circumstances. As time passes, his finest work will tend to enter into comparison with the great passages that embody the literature of the past. How it will bear this comparison no critic can determine, but Mr. Leacock need not fear for the future of his work on the ground that it lacks breadth and volume. He has produced under the conditions and limitations of his own time, just as the acknowledged masters produced under the conditions and limitations of their times, and in the final verdict of mankind his work will be judged with the same impartiality as that of the established master writers, whose power he admires and applauds.
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