The Dial (Third Series)/Volume 75/Comment (August 1923)

COMMENT

HIMSELF the winner, one had almost said victim, of one prize and judge in another, M Paul Morand refers with mocking tenderness in his first Paris Letter to the vogue of prize-giving and prize-winning which has come over France. At the same time, as M Morand mentions, the question of wholesale marketing of works of literature is being carefully scrutinized there. The two things are close; and they are both based on a misconception which we, in connexion with The Dial's award, have been compelled often to meet. It is, simply, a misconception of the relation between money and any work of art.

Our insistence that The Dial's award is not a prize is frequently taken to be a characteristic pedantry on our part, almost as reprehensible as the use of the preferred spelling in our pages. We can only reply that the dictionary and good usage are the pedants, not ourselves; we are using words in their accurate and accepted sense when we say that a prize is something contested for and that an award is something given. In France books and manuscripts of books are specifically entered for prizes; in America, as in the case of the Pulitzer prize, publications of various sorts come automatically within the scope of the prize and are considered by the judges. But nothing, of any nature, is ever, in any circumstance, submitted to The Dial for its award. The Dial's award "crowns" no book, nor does it imply any moral or even aesthetic judgement of superiority. It indicates only that the recipient has done a service to letters and that, since money is required even by those who serve letters, since the payment in money is generally so inadequate when good work is concerned, The Dial is in a way adding to the earnings of a writer, diminishing, by a little, the discrepancy between his minimum requirements as a citizen in a commercial society and his earnings as an artist. We have never believed that the recipient has, or will have, done exactly two thousand dollars' worth of service to letters. We haven't the standard of measurement for such delicacy of judgement.

We dissociate ourselves utterly from the business of giving prizes, and at the same time we call the attention of our publishers to the situation in France because the prize is an excellent method of temporary publicity, and it is possible that publishers in America will be tempted to use it freely. There are so many prizes in France, the considerations are so varied, and political and literary intrigue so constant, that among intelligent people a prize has already lost all significance. Even more. It was openly asserted in a recent case that the part-recipient of one of the newly established prizes was himself the donor of the money. Were that so, were it even a friend who "put up," the conclusions are obvious. Rich men are notoriously given to writing; and if one secretly supplies fifteen thousand dollars and is awarded five, the rest going to two shielding authors, one not only does a good deed for literature, but one gets back thirty-three and one-third per cent—and there have been financial investments in which that represents something more than cutting one's losses.

The amount of publicity which a publisher can gain in a prize of this sort would justify him annually in giving several thousand dollars to an author on his list. It would justify all publishers together in creating prizes, in furthering them when others are so kind as to supply the funds; it is suspected that the rewards are so great that subornation and intimidation have been used—as last resorts. Every publisher in France, at this moment, must have a prize-winner on his lists; and the awards fall so rapidly that one doesn't know whether a newspaper headline refers to literature or horse-racing. To be sure, the thing is killing itself; the wonder is how many things it will drag down with it.

The nuisance about prizes is that they imply a contest and that they are supposedly concerned with literary values. Publicity is another matter entirely. It weakly uses critical words; but the best publicity is sales. Advertise that a book is sold out and you will sell it out; advertise that the sales have reached half a million and unless the saturation point is reached, you will sell another half-million. All of this has nothing to do with literature. We suspect that the circulation of The Dial per month is twenty times as great as the circulation, if you can call it that, of Plato's Republic in all the years of its author's life. But fond as we are of The Dial we do not offer that fact as evidence of superiority to Plato. We are deliberately (and with some success) building up a circulation which will enable us to pay our way and to raise our rates for contributions; we are using the methods of publicity common at this moment. It is only a question of taste whether publishers shall have "stunt" advertising or no—there are books, wares as they are called, to which the method is eminently suitable.

The danger, already envisaged in France, is in the effect upon independent criticism. A common item in foreign reviews, for example, is the "publisher's section" in which appear signed, critical reviews of books—with which the editors of the journal have nothing to do; they do, in fact, print on the last page preceding that section some note indicating that here editorial responsibility ends. These arranged-for, or bought, reviews, are not fatal; the same thing occurs all too often in the body of publications. And we ourselves have seen the results of adverse criticism in the case of books where "millions" are being spent on advertising. It is agreeable to attack a book which is becoming popular through advertising; but few critics are in such a position that they can give themselves the bad name of independence; few editors can remain permanently in command of their papers if publishers can use advertising as a weapon. As far as we know, no publisher has withdrawn advertising from The Dial on account of adverse reviews; but we know of cases elsewhere. We know that some publishers are so intent upon the immediate good that they do not understand the cumulative value of adverse criticism—if it is intelligent and honest—as a basis for confidence when favourable criticism appears. One of the most influential organs of criticism in America has praised countless thousands of books—and sold them so. We are aware of that power. But the number of individuals who are growing sceptical, and who are caring for independent intelligence, is growing. Prizes and publicity will increase that number. Perhaps that is their only function.