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force a publisher to pay more than he really wants to pay. And no
diabolic agent, having once bitten a publisher, can persuade that
publisher to hold out his generous hand to be bitten again. These are

truisms. Lastly, I am quite sure that, out of books, a great deal more
money has been made by publishers than by authors, and that this will
always be so. The threatened crisis in publishing has nothing to do with
the prices paid to authors, which on the whole are now fairly just (very
different from what they were twenty years ago, when authors had to
accept whatever was condescendingly offered to them). And if a crisis
does come, the people to suffer will happily be those who can best
afford to suffer.

THE NOVEL OF THE SEASON
[_11 July '08_]
The publishing season--the bad publishing season--is now practically
over, and publishers may go away for their holidays comforted by the
fact that they will not begin to lose money again till the autumn. It only
remains to be decided which is the novel of the season. Those
interested in the question may expect it to be decided at any moment,
either in the British Weekly or the Sphere. I take up these journals with
a thrill of anticipation. For my part, I am determined only to decide
which is not the novel of the season. There are several novels which are
not the novel of the season. Perhaps the chief of them is Mr. E.C.
Booth's "The Cliff End," which counts among sundry successes to the
score of Mr. Grant Richards. Everything has been done for it that
reviewing can do, and it has sold, and it is an ingenious and giggling
work, but not the novel of the season.
The reviews of "The Cliff End," almost unanimously laudatory, show
in a bright light our national indifference to composition in art. Some
reviewers, while stating that the story itself was a poor one, insisted
that Mr. Booth is a born and accomplished story-teller. Story-tellers
born and accomplished do not tell poor stories. A poor story is the work
of a poor story-teller. And the story of "The Cliff End" is merely absurd.
It is worse, if possible, than the story of Mr. Maxwell's "Vivien," which
reviewers accepted. It would appear that with certain novels the story
doesn't matter! I really believe that composition, the foundation of all
arts, including the art of fiction, is utterly unconsidered in England. Or
if it is considered, it is painfully misunderstood. I remember how the
panjandrums condescendingly pointed out the bad construction of Mr.
Joseph Conrad's "Lord Jim," one of the most noble examples of fine

composition in modern literature, and but slightly disfigured by a detail
of clumsy machinery. In "The Cliff End" there is simply no
composition that is not clumsy and conventional. All that can be said of
it is that you can't read a page, up to about page 200, without grinning.
(Unhappily Mr. Booth overestimated his stock of grins, which ran out
untimely.) The true art of fiction, however, is not chiefly connected
with grinning, or with weeping. It consists, first and mainly, in a
beautiful general composition. But in Anglo-Saxon countries any writer
who can induce both a grin and a tear on the same page, no matter how
insolent his contempt for composition, is sure of that immortality which
contemporaries can award.
* * * * *
Another novel that is not the novel of the season is Mr. John
Ayscough's "Marotz," about which much has been said. I do not wish
to labour this point. "Marotz" is not the novel of the season. I trust that
I make myself plain. I shall not pronounce upon Mr. Masefield's
"Captain Margaret," because, though it has been splashed all over by
trowelfuls of slabby and mortarish praise, it has real merits. Indeed, it
has a chance of being the novel of the season. Mr. Masefield is not yet
grown up. He is always trying to write "literature," and that is a great
mistake. He should study the wisdom of Paul Verlaine:
_Prends l'éloquence et tords-lui son cou._
Take literature and wring its neck. I suppose that Mr. H. de Vere
Stacpoole's "The Blue Lagoon" is not likely to be selected as the novel
of the season. And yet, possibly, it will be the novel of the season after
all, though unchosen. I will not labour this point, either. Any one read
"The Blue Lagoon" yet? Some folk have read it, for it is in its sixth
edition. But when I say any one, I mean some one, not mere folk. It
might be worth looking into, "The Blue Lagoon." _Verbum sap._, often,
to Messrs. Robertson Nicoll and Shorter. In choosing "Confessio
Medici"