On the Decline of the Pleasantbook

THE other day I met the Old Gentleman Opposite as he came out of the nearest circulating library. We stood a minute before continuing our walk in the direction of home, looking together at the display of current fiction in the window.

The Old Gentleman groaned. My first thought was that he objected to the modernist designs which decorated the paper jackets — perspectives suggesting an earthquake and violences of color suggesting the end of the world. But his displeasure had a deeper root.

‘Have you reflected,’ said he, ‘on the amount of human misery, reproduced by writers and induced in sympathetic readers, which is represented in this window? I give you my word that I have just spent three quarters of an hour in this place, endeavoring to find on the shelves a pleasant new novel for my sister Narcissa. And the conclusion is forced upon me that we are threatened with a famine of agreeable fiction.'

As we proceeded on our homeward way, I mentally called up the image of Miss Narcissa, whose hair is not, like his, red-roan, but pure snow-white, and whose profile suggests a cameo. Should all novels be written for such a reader ?

He seemed to divine my thought. ‘Of course I don’t demand that all novels shall be pleasant,’ said he, ‘but we are now having an overproduction of the loathsome.’

‘What do you call a Pleasant Book?’ I asked. ‘ Pollyanna, perhaps?’

‘No. No. Certainly not,’ he answered firmly. ‘You would hardly offer that to such a one as my sister. It is not easy to describe the exact flavor I feel to be desirable; but it is n’t the flavor of foolishness. Neither do I mean the hard work of the professional humorist, who has “found a formula for drawing Comic Rabbits”; that has its uses, but it is n’t what I am looking for. A Pleasant Book has some pleasant people in it, as there are in this varied world — ourselves, for example! It has, preferably, a background of some beauty; it has an agreeable atmosphere, warmed with humor; it has, if the gods be favorable, wit; and it does not contain catastrophe or crime. My contention is that the seeker for this sort of thing should not be accidentally precipitated, with the assistance of the publishers’ advertisements, into some ghastly abyss.’

‘Do you propose a censorship?’ said I.

‘Oh, by no means,’ he answered. ‘What I should suggest is a system of insurance. When I go into the Grand Central or the Pennsylvania Station, I see in the ticket offices a little sign offering Accident Insurance. But not far away is a counter piled with printed potentialities of horrible suffering; and against such evils the uninformed purchaser has no protection at all. He is looking for eligible companions on his journey, and he presently finds himself accompanied by the Furies and the Seven Deadly Sins.

‘Now, I project a simple form which will insure the principal characters of a novel — at the expense of the purchaser, of course — against battle, murder, and sudden death, the habits of brutal speech and blasphemy, which are, it seems, becoming ingrained in the dialogue of fiction, all hideous diseases described in detail, adultery, and the abnormal. Then one could settle comfortably down to his book, assured against unlooked-for shocks. You see that what I propose is merely the protection of a harmless minority. I know that most people would n’t care to be protected; they would be like the disappointed little girl in the Punch picture, whimpering because she wanted the lions to eat Daniel.’

‘Why not organize another Book Club,’ said I, ‘with a group of judges warranted to be tender-minded? I can see the newspaper illustration of their benevolent faces now, all in a beaming row, like sunflowers over a fence.’

A ripple of self-mockery ran over his countenance, and the fan wrinkles appeared at the corners of his eyes.

‘I am afraid,’ said he, ‘it would never do. We should be obliged to have at least five judges, and that would seriously deplete our public.’

‘I think your list of exclusions,’ said I, ‘is rather strict; what would you do with the Great Detective Story?’

‘Oh, that,’ said he, ‘is altogether another matter. Narcissa would n’t be disturbed by the detective stories; but she does n’t read them. She finds them dull.’

‘What? The Red Murder, and the Orange Murder, and the Yellow Murder, and the Green, Blue, Indigo, and Violet Murders! She finds this startling spectrum dull?’

‘Precisely,’ he insisted. ‘When you have supped full with conventional horrors, they cannot once start you; they are merely counters in a game. They don’t affect the imagination. The Detective Novel fills the same need as the cross-word puzzle. It’s non-poisonous, but I should n’t place it with the Pleasant Books. It belongs in another group.'

‘What would you do with the fashionable fantastic romance? ’ I asked, with a grateful memory of Lolly Willowes.

‘All dreams, of course,’ said the Old Gentleman. ‘There are pleasant dreams and nightmares; no nightmares for Narcissa!’

‘But even with your exclusions,’ I objected, ‘ is there really such a paucity of Pleasant Books? I can name you a dozen out of hand, beginning with The Enchanted April and Thunderstorm.’ And I did so, though I had to grant that several of them grazed slightly against one or other of his interdictions. ‘Particularly,’ I told him, ‘I should regret the barring of Expiation, which seems to my sinful soul one of the pleasantest of all!’

He waived the last point. ‘I admit there are difficulties,’ said he. ‘The percentage of impropriety needs to be fixed. But consider the small proportion of the general output represented by the handful you have named — a few drops of sweetness, or subacidity, in the bitter bucket.’

A question had been hovering in my mind. ‘Do you confine your own reading of fiction,’ I asked, ‘entirely to the Pleasant Book?’

He laughed. ‘Not exactly,’ said he. ‘My imagination is not so sensitive as my sister’s; it does n’t keep me awake at night. No, I have always read freely. But now that my stay on this planet, I am aware, must needs be short, I am a little particular about the persons with whom I spend the few hours left. I don’t elect to spend them with crooks and gunmen, for instance, though such may at present constitute the fashionable society of fiction. As to those grim books which are now ruthlessly plucking the plumes of war, I do read those — though I don’t leave them about, on account of Narcissa. But I won’t read the stories, short or long, that are wantonly depluming Life itself. The Great Sad Books, however, — the books of noble tragedy, — do we not always need them and always read them?’

He drooped his eyelids, as retiring into a private chamber of thought, and dropped unconsciously into a certain muted utterance which always indicates that he is quoting Wordsworth: —

‘But,’ he went on, coming back to the tone of every day, ‘I think there is no doubt as to the decline of the Pleasant Book. I suppose, as Corporal Nym says, things must be as they may; we cannot gather sweet grapes of a thorny time. However, I shall still go on looking for a new novel for Narcissa.’

As he has the rhyming habit, and frequently crystallizes the results of a conversation in verse, I was not surprised to find in next morning’s mail the following

BRIEF EPISTLE

To the Doleful Guild of Minor Novelists