Literature and the Sky-Sign

A FRIEND of mine produces literature under the inspiration of nightly electric-light advertisements on Broadway, which emblazon, in letters twenty-feet high, his name and acccomplishments. How he can possibly get those signs out of his mind, when he sits down to write, is more than I can understand. I am sure that I could never write up to that sign. Yet his case is not so very different from that of the common run of magazine and book writers of the present day, whose names, qualities, and portraits are proclaimed over the whole land in the announcement leaves of the magazines; and that has to be, of course, under present circumstances. The public wants to know just who is writing for it, and why — and how. The strong light of public curiosity beats even on the garret in Grub Street. If you do not like it, you must not write books or stories that are in the smallest danger of becoming popular. It is still possible to get along without doing that; but if you will write, you must write in the glare. To be advertised, it is not even necessary to exist. Certainly biographies, and, I believe, portraits, of Fiona Macleod had to be published, though there wa’n’t no sich a person.

It was not always so. We find it difficult to imagine Thoreau taking secret satisfaction in reading the words, ‘DO YOU KNOW THAT HENRY DAVID THOREAU WRITES FOR THE BLAZER?’ on an electric sign twenty feet high on Broadway, or deriving a subtle pleasure from seeing his distressingly plain features pictured gloriously on the advertising leaves of a magazine. He was not working, in his day, to put Concord on the map. When Thoreau was contemplating the lecture platform he wrote in his journal, ‘How I have thriven on solitude and poverty! I cannot overstate this advantage. I do not see how I could have enjoyed it if the public had been expecting as much of me as there is danger now that they will.’

Happy Thoreau! he failed as a lecturer, and his obscurity was not broken into. He would have withered away into silence under that artificially aroused expectation of something perennially smart — that bellows-blown curiosity which is never allowed to die down, which is the ordinary accompaniment of literary production nowadays.

However, not all authors yearn for solitude and poverty and neglect as Thoreau did. Some of them, if I remember right, have shown a certain kindliness of mind and feeling toward the limelight. I could mention the name of at least one who subscribes to all the clippings bureaus, and whose face, when the packages of press extracts referring to him come in and are opened, resembles, in its expression of refined satisfaction, the face of Narcissus as he contemplates his image in the fountain. I have heard of one author who spends almost as much time in getting his name into print, in one way and another, outside of his signed productions, as he spends in literary composition.

Literary vanity is nothing new, either. Dr. Johnson’s was insufferable. Byron had a pleasant habit of carving or scribbling his name in conspicuous places; he carved it in Tasso’s cell, and it is there yet, seeming to say, ‘When you think of Tasso, do not forget the well-known English poet called Byron.’ Carlyle dingdonged his manly vanity all over Britain.

If an author is obscure, does he not always resent it? I do not think, really, that the sky-sign would irk the usual author so deeply as public neglect. Under the glittering pressure of the twenty-foot letters, most of us would probably be heard murmuring to ourselves, with Emerson, ‘Don’t be so troublesome modest, you vain fellow!’

After all, one’s repugnance to publicity, if one has it at all, must be to this positive kind of advertising, not to the negative sort. I mean to say that if one does not wish to see one’s name on a sky-sign, or one’s portrait emblazoned day after day at the head of a newspaper column, one nevertheless does very much prefer that one’s honest merit shall be recognized. Spare us the laudatory blare of the trump of fame, but vouchsafe, O Pierides! a decent attention to the immortal offspring of our brains. It is not notoriety for ourselves that we want, it is merely a proper meed of praise for the clever things we say and do!