Read Ebook: How to Fail in Literature: A Lecture by Lang Andrew
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"Well, I dare say it's very clever, but I don't care for this kind of thing myself. Where's your mother? Is Jane better? Now, do tell me, do you get much for writing all that? Do you send it to the printers, or where? How interesting, and that reminds me, you that are a novelist, have you heard how shamefully Miss Baxter was treated by Captain Smith? No, well you might make something out of it."
Here follows the anecdote, at prodigious length, and perfectly incoherent.
And then she begins again, only further back, this time.
It is thus that the aunts of England may and do assist their nieces to fail in literature. Many and many a morning do they waste, many a promising fancy have they blighted, many a temper have they spoiled.
Sisters are rather more sympathetic: the favourite plan of the brother is to say, "Now, Mary, read us your new chapter."
Fathers never take any interest in the business at all: they do not count. The sympathy of a mother may be reckoned on, but not her judgement, for she is either wildly favourable, or, mistrusting her own tendencies, is more diffident than need be. The most that relations can do for the end before us is to worry, interrupt, deride, and tease the literary member of the family. They seldom fail in these duties, and not even success, as a rule, can persuade them that there is anything in it but "luck."
It is not an easy goal to attain, as the crowd of aspirants dream, nor is the reward luxurious when it is attained. A garland, usually fading and not immortal, has to be run for, not without dust and heat.
FOOTNOTES
As the writer has ceased to sift, editorially, the contributions of the age, he does hope that authors will not instantly send him their MSS. But if they do, after this warning, they will take the most direct and certain road to the waste paper basket. No MSS. will be returned, even when accompanied by postage stamps.
I have made a rich selection of examples from the works of living English and American authors. From the inextensive volumes of an eminent and fastidious critic I have culled a dear phrase about an oasis of style in "a desert of literary limpness." But it were hardly courteous, and might be dangerous, to publish these exotic blossoms of art.
It is a teachable public: since this lecture was delivered the author has received many MSS. from people who said they had heard the discourse, "and enjoyed it so much."
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