WHY AUTHORS GO WRONG AND OTHER EXPLANATIONS WHY AUTHORS GO WRONG AND OTHER EXPLANATIONS BY GRANT M. OVERTON AUTHOR OF “THE WOMEN WHO MAKE OUR NOVELS” [Illustration] NEW YORK MOFFAT, YARD & COMPANY 1919 COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY MOFFAT, YARD & COMPANY CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. WHY AUTHORS GO WRONG 1 II. A BARBARIC YAWP 25 III. IN THE CRITICAL COURT 39 IV. BOOK “REVIEWING” 51 V. LITERARY EDITORS, BY ONE OF THEM 103 VI. WHAT EVERY PUBLISHER KNOWS 119 VII. THE SECRET OF THE BEST SELLER 145 VIII. WRITING A NOVEL 173 WHY AUTHORS GO WRONG AND OTHER EXPLANATIONS WHY AUTHORS GO WRONG AND OTHER EXPLANATIONS I WHY AUTHORS GO WRONG The subject of _Why Authors Go Wrong_ is one to answering which a book might adequately be devoted and perhaps we shall write a book about it one of these days, but not now. When, as and if written the book dealing with the question will necessarily show the misleading nature of Mr. Arnold Bennett’s title, _The Truth About an Author_--a readable little volume which does not tell the truth about an author in general, but only what we are politely requested to accept as the truth about Arnold Bennett. Mr. Bennett may or may not be telling the truth about himself in that book; his regard for the truth in respect of the characters of his fiction has been variable. Perhaps he is more scrupulous when it comes to himself, but we are at liberty to doubt it. For a man who will occasionally paint other persons--even fictionary persons--as worse than they really are may not unnaturally be expected to depict himself as somewhat better than he is. We must not stay with Mr. Bennett any longer just now. It is enough that he has not been content to wait for the curtain to rise and has insisted on thrusting himself into our prologue. Exit; and let us get back where we were. We were indicating that _Why Authors Go Wrong_ is an extensive subject. It is so extensive because there are many authors and many, many more readers. It is extensive because it is a moral and not a literary question, a human and not an artistic problem. It is extensive because it is really unanswerable and anything that is essentially unanswerable necessitates prolonged efforts to answer it, this on the well-known theory that it is better that many be bored than that a few remain dissatisfied. 2 Let us take up these considerations one by one. It seems unlikely that any one will misunderstand the precise subject itself. What, exactly, is meant by an author “going wrong”? The familiar euphemism, as perhaps most frequently used, is anything but ambiguous. Ambiguous-sounding words are generally fraught with a deadly and specific meaning--another illustration of the eternal paradox of sound and sense.