A new addition to the blogroll here, one “Cuff” of the Countersignature blog, recently made what I think is a stupendous find: a 1914 book, by one MacGregor Jenkins, entitled The Reading Public, available via Google Books.
Here’s how Cuff introduces the book’s content:
Jenkins divides the “reading public” into book readers and magazine readers. He further subdivides the book readers into three categories from least to greatest numbers: the sponge reader, the sieve reader, and the duck-back reader. The sponge reader reads “fewer and better books than his fellows” — resulting, according to Mr. Jenkins, in his being ignored by authors and publishers. The sieve reader reads quite a bit and is full of surface facts and plots and literary gossip, but doesn’t have the critical acumen of the sponge reader. Meanwhile, the lowly duck-back reader, while great in number, absorbs absolutely nothing and is entirely unchanged by reading because reading is for the duck-back simply a way to kill time (Jenkins believes the swelling of this number to be caused by the increasing phenomenon of commuting).
I wonder what kind of reader I am? Sad to say, it feels more sieve-like (although I’d love to be a sponge). The Missus would say this has something to do with my being a Gemini, and/or being born in a Chinese Year of the Rabbit. Grasshopper, not an ant. All that.
Interestingly, Jenkins’s book — despite the title — also has quite a bit to say to authors. (He was apparently a magazine editor.) Remember again that this is from, well, a century ago, to all intents and purposes. Bear in mind all that Maxwell Perkins, golden-age-of-authors-editors stuff. And, of course, make some allowances for the pre-World War I syntax:
Authors object to printed rejection slips. The printer will tell you they are ordered by the thousands. Enough clerks could not be hired or housed to do the work they do. “Well,” the rejected say, “give us printed ones, but let them tell the truth.” Now the fact of the case, is that an editor often does not dare tell the truth. His lot is hard enough as it is; he does not court assassination. Now let us be reasonable for a moment. Are all the people you know agreeable, wise and cultured, witty, engaging, and prepossessing? Not unless you live in the islands of the blessed. By the same token do all the people who send manuscripts to an editor betray the same agreeable characteristic? Far from it.
Writing is a serious business. Would that the budding author realized it! It is, after all, self-revelation. Let two men describe an incident, a chance meeting on the street, or what not. One will tell you a dull tale; the other will leave you chuckling for an hour. Both stories would be competent testimony mony in a court of law. Both stories might well meet the bare technical requirements of narrative, but one is a good yarn and the other is not. Both would be regarded as available by the authors and their families, but one reveals an agreeable personality and the other does not. This in varying degrees solves the mystery of editorial “availability”; at least it seems to me to do so from the standpoint of the man in the street.
What would the author prefer? The agreeable evasiveness of a printed slip, or a letter saying, “Sir, — Looking through your manuscript I see in the person behind it an insufferable bore.” Or, Madam, — Your manuscript, entirely acceptable as far as technical requirements are concerned, reveals so vapid a personality behind it that we cannot believe our readers will care to make your acquaintance.”
Ha ha — if I were an editor, I think I might wish I’d said that!
As an aside, if you like equine matters (and don’t mind wading through some more of this prose style) you might enjoy reading Jenkins’s piece called “Alcantara*,” from February, 1929, in The Atlantic, on the perils of buying your own racehorse.
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* The name is spelled variously Alcantara and Alcantra in the article, possibly some fluke of scanning the original. Jenkins says of the name only that “it had for me certain romantic literary associations.” A Google search on the former spelling coughed up a lot of varied hits (such as this one on the “military order of Alcantara,” founded in the 12th century); on the latter, mostly genealogical results. I’m simply guessing at the preferred one.
I got two rejections in the mail a couple days ago. They were form letters. The shorter form letter was better. Neither said no reader would want to make my acquaintance but maybe I didn’t read either one closely enough.
@marta – No — reading too hard between the lines of rejection letters probably just puts you on the path to misery.
Have to admit that the line about the hypothetical editor also made me laugh: “does not dare tell the truth/does not court assassination.” I’m not given to violence but I can see how some letters might trigger the impulse.
Thanks for the citation! I was pretty pleased when I stumbled onto that book. I wonder if Fitzgerald may have read this book and modified Jenkins’ story about the glued-shut pages in his friend’s library (11-13) to his own use in The Great Gatsby.
@cuff – Great catch — I never would have made that connection between the two libraries!