This theory has the important virtue of explaining convincingly all the worst novels, as well as all the best. For a telephone transmitter is not responsible for what is spoken into it or for what it transmits. It is not to blame for some very silly conversations. It has no merit because it forwards some very wise words. Similarly, if the novelist is merely a transmitter, a peculiarly delicate and sensitive medium for conveying what is said and done somewhere else, perhaps on some other plane by some other variety of mortals, the novelist is in no wise to blame for the performances or utterances of his characters, or clients as they ought, in this view, to be called; the same novelist might, and probably would, be the means of transmitting the news of splendid deeds and the superb utterances of glorious people, composing one story, and the inanities, verbal or otherwise, of a lot of fourth dimensional Greenwich Villagers, constituting another and infinitely inferior story.... To be sure this explanation, which relieves the novelist of almost all responsibility for his novels, ought also to take from him all the credit for good work. If he is a painfully conscientious mortal he may grieve for years over this; but if his first or his second or his third book sells 100,000 copies he will probably be willing, in the words of the poet, to take the cash and let the credit go. Very greedy men invariably insist on not merely taking the cash but claiming the credit as well; saintly men clutch at the credit and instruct their publishers that all author’s royalties are to be made over to the Fund for Heating the Igloos of Aged and Helpless Eskimos. But the funny thing about the whole business is that the world, which habitually withholds credit where credit is due, at other times insists on bestowing credit anyway. There have been whole human philosophies based upon the principle of Renunciation and even whole novels, such as those of Henry James. But it doesn’t work. Renounce, if you like, all credit for the books which bear your name on the title-page. The world will weave its laurel wreath and crown you with bays just the same. Men have become baldheaded in a single night in the effort to avoid unmerited honor and by noon the next day have looked as if they were bacchantes or at least hardy perennials, so thick have been the vine leaves in their hair, or rather on the site of it.... Which takes us away from our subject. Where were we? Oh, yes, about writing your novel....