Library Essays; Papers Related to the Work of Public Libraries — Key Ideas to Explore

ly taking into account the condition, the intelligence and the age of those who would be likely to read it, and also the time and the readers for whom, if it is an old book, its author originally wrote it. With increasing civilization there are certain things that become more and more indecent, and others that become less and less so, owing to the shifting of points of view.

Let us now take up more specifically moral badness as a cause for rejection. We occasionally meet people who hold that the mention of anything morally bad in a book condemns it; while, on the other hand, some would admit books whose atmosphere reeks with evil; whose bad characters live bad lives and speak bad thoughts, so long as the writer in his own person does not commend evil or teach that it is good. Both these extremes are to be avoided. Surely we have outlived the idea that innocence and ignorance are the same thing. “You can’t touch pitch,” says the proverb, “and not be defiled.” Granted; yet we may look at pitch, or any other dirt, and locate it, without harm; nay, we must do so if we want to keep out of it. This is not saying that it is well to seek out descriptions of evil, or to dwell on them, in a work of fiction. Things necessary in the study of medicine, folk-lore or law may be abhorrent in a narrative intended for amusement, although the advent of the “problem” novel--the type of fiction in which the narrative form is often merely the sugar coating for the pill--introduces confusion here into any rule that we may lay down. But however foolish it is to insist that the very existence of evil be concealed from readers of fiction, since evil is a normal constituent of the world as we find it, it is certainly fair to object to a dwelling upon evil phases of life to such an extent that the resulting impression is a distortion of the truth. This distortion may be so great as to make it proper to reject the book wholly on the ground of falsity. A filling of the canvas with lurid tints is apt to convey--or at any rate is often so done as to convey--the idea that the existence of the evil that the writer depicts is a matter of indifference. A man need not stop to assert his belief that theft is wrong whenever he tells the story of a robbery, but it is quite possible to tell a tale of theft in such a way as to leave an impression that it is a venial offense and to weaken in the reader the moral inhibition that must be his chief reliance in time of temptation. And for “theft” here we may substitute any form of moral dereliction that you may desire. One of the most potent vehicles of moral downfall of any kind is the impression that “everybody does it”--that some particular form of wrongdoing is well-nigh universal and is looked upon with leniency by society in general. The man who steals from his employer or who elopes with his neighbor’s wife is nine times out of ten a willing convert to this view. A book that conveys such an idea is really more dangerous than one which openly advocates wrong doing. There can be little difference of opinion here. There may be more in regard to the policy of telling the whole truth regarding a state of things that is morally very bad. It may be fatal to a patient to let him know how ill he is. And may it not also be injurious to a young man or a young woman to expose the amount of evil that really lies before them in this world? There is plausibility in this argument, but it is out of date. There is much philosophy in the modern paradoxical slang phrase: “Cheer up! the worst is yet to come!” And indeed if there is any superlative badness ahead of us, it is better that we should know it, rather than cultivate a false cheerfulness, based on misinformation, with the certainty of disillusionment. The Egyptians were right when they set a skeleton at their feasts. It was not to make the feasts gloomy, but to make the skeleton a familiar object by association; to accustom the feasters to think about death, how to avoid it as long as possible and how to meet it when inevitable. We should therefore welcome the truth in any book, unless it is that “half truth,” which the poet tells us is “ever the blackest of lies,” or unless it is so stated as to violate the canons of decency, in which case, as we have already seen, its rejection must be based on different considerations entirely.

It is these canons of decency, after all, that give the librarian his sleepless nights, not only because they are so frequently confounded with canons of morality, but because, as we have already seen, they are arbitrary and variable. Consider the one case of French fiction. Mr. Wister has told librarians that all subjects are “fit for fiction.” This is interesting as an academic thesis, but when the French proceed to act upon it, the Anglo-Saxon catches his breath. Books, like men, when they are in Rome must do as the Romans do, and whatever may be proper in Paris, an American public library is justified in requiring its books to respect American prejudices. This is true, at any rate, of books in the English language, even if they are translations from a tongue whose users have other customs and other prejudices. But how about these books in the original? Can we assume that books in the French language are for Frenchmen and that our censorship of them is to be from the French and not the American point of view? Or shall we hold that they are to be read wholly or in part by persons whose mother-tongue is English and whose ideas of the proprieties are Anglo-Saxon? And shall we bear in mind also that the reading public of a work of French fiction excludes in France the “young person” of whom the American library public is largely made up? This is only one of the perplexing questions that confront the American librarian in this field. Every one must struggle with it for himself, having in mind the force and direction of his own local sentiment; but few public libraries are treating it consistently and systematically. Probably, however, many librarians are placing on open shelves books in foreign languages, whose translations into English they would be inclined to restrict. In some cases, of course, appeal to a wholly foreign group of readers, with their foreign point of view, may be assumed, as in the case of a Russian collection on the East Side of New York; though even here it is a question of whether this is not a good place to prepare these readers for a change in library “folkways”--to use Professor Sumner’s expressive word.

Nor must we forget that our own ideas of propriety are constantly changing. Take the single instance of the use, in literature, of words regarded as profane or vulgar. Most of us can recollect a time when our acquaintances were likely to be shocked by the occurrence in a book of the expletive “damn”--that is, if it were spelled out. It was generally held to be unobjectionable, or at least less objectionable, if the second and third letters were replaced by a dash. Evidently this is the purest convention. This and worse words appear now, not without shocking some persons, to be sure, but certainly without shocking many of those who formerly would not have tolerated them. On the other hand, it would not be difficult to instance words formerly common in good literature whose use would now cause something of a sensation. There are also good people who will read unmoved surprising words and expressions when put into the mouth of a cowboy or a Klondike miner, but whose gorge would rise if the same words were employed by a writer _in propria persona_.

What is true of words is true also of subjects. That which could not be touched upon yesterday is discussed freely to-day, and _vice-versa_. No way of dealing with the situation will fail to offend some one, and the only approximation to satisfaction will be gained by the use of common sense applied to each case as it comes up.

Indecency, of course, is not the only offense against beauty that a book may commit. It may be trashy, that is, its subject matter or the manner in which it is treated may be trivial and worthless. The dust of the street is neither beautiful nor valuable, although it may contain nothing injurious to health or repulsive to the senses. The diction of the book may offend against beauty and order by its incorrectness; its paper, its typography, its binding, its illustrations may all be offensive to the eye. These last are mere matters of outward show, to be sure; it may be necessary to disregard them. They are usually reasons for excluding an edition rather than a book, though sometimes the only obtainable edition offends in so many of these ways as to make it unpurchasable, even if otherwise desirable. So far as they militate against the usefulness of the book rather than its beauty, as in the case of the badly sewed binding or paper that is comely but flimsy, they fall under the head of badness rather than that of ugliness--they are offenses against the Good and not against the Beautiful. Such material grounds for rejection, however, are not peculiar to books, and I do not dwell on them here. Ugliness that consists in mere triviality or in incorrectness of diction has this in common with impropriety--it is arbitrary and conventional. With regard to language, this is obvious. The fact that a certain combination of sounds means one thing in France and another in England and is quite unintelligible perhaps in Spain, is a matter of pure convention, though the convention is sanctioned by long usage. The fact that the double negative is very good Greek and very vulgar English is equally arbitrary. These conventions have become serious things with us; they are of prime importance in the consideration of books, but it is desirable that we should classify them correctly.

With regard to triviality the case is not so clear, yet I feel strongly that it is a relative, not an absolute, quality. The term should be classed with that other misused word--superficiality. No book, of course, and no mind is absolutely thorough, and the lesser grades of knowledge are as important in their place as the higher. What we should condemn is not that a man, or a book, possesses a certain slight degree of knowledge or of ability, but the fact that, possessing it, he believes or represents it to be a higher degree. A man desires, we will say, to memorize the Russian alphabet, so that he may read the proper names on book titles. Is he to be condemned because he knows no more of Russian? Another wishes to wield a hammer dextrously enough to drive a nail without smashing his fingers. Is he “superficial” because he is not an expert cabinet-maker? Still another has learned to play the piano well enough to amuse himself in his idle hours. Does his lack of skill lay him open to the charge of “superficiality?” These people may, it is true, think that they are respectively a Russian scholar, a skilled carpenter, and a good pianist; then and then only are they culpable. The “superficiality,” in other words, consists in mistaking a lesser degree of knowledge for a higher or in thinking that the lesser degree suffices for something that requires the higher--not in the mere limitation of the possessor. A superficial book is that which, skimming the surface of the subject, persuades the reader that he has gone into its depths; as for the skimming itself, that might be quite adequate and sufficient for some purposes. So with “triviality.” Nothing is trivial that has an aim and accomplishes it; as for the gradation of aims from unimportant up to important, I leave that to others. Who shall say whether the passing of an idle hour or the addition of a few facts to one’s store of knowledge is the more important? The idle hour may be the recreation period of a hard-working mind, without which it might break down from over-pressure, leaving to less competent minds the completion of its useful labor. The few facts might be quite unfruitful. This is why we should hesitate to condemn a trivial book that has beauty of form or some other positive virtue to commend it. Triviality is objectionable only when it masquerades as importance. Perhaps it would be better to say: a book that pretends to excellence along any line where it is really valueless is a dangerous book. This brings us back to Truth as a criterion of excellence, for such a book is a hypocritical or false book, as much as if it definitely asserted as a fact that which is untrue.

When a book, therefore, comes up as a candidate for omission from the purchasing list, or perhaps for exclusion after it has actually been placed on the shelves, the librarian’s first duty is to inquire whether it is objectionable because of falsity, of evil morality or of impropriety. The first question may be determinable only by reference to an expert. If the second is alleged, it is well to inquire whether the supposed immorality of the book be not in fact simply impropriety, and if impropriety is the only objection, whether it is of kind and amount likely to be properly offensive. If the charge of immorality is sustained I see no place for the book on the shelves of a public circulating library.

What has been said may seem to need rounding out with specific illustrations and instances, but it is particularly desirable to avoid here anything in the nature of purely personal opinion and prejudice. It might be possible of course to define the content of certain well-known works by their conformity or non-conformity with the canons above laid down, without attempting to settle the question, at the moment, whether the degree of non-conformity, if it exists, is high enough to make exclusion from a public library desirable or necessary. From this point of view Othello, we will say, is a play teaching a moral lesson, in doing which it discusses sin, but never with approval, expressed or implied. The author uses words and expressions not in accordance with modern standards of propriety, although not contrary to those of his own time. In like manner Boccacio’s “Decameron” may be characterized as a collection of short stories connected by thin narrative, often telling of wrongdoing in a manner clearly implying that it is usual and unobjectionable, with use of words and incidents frequently contrary not only to modern ideas of propriety, but also to those of the author’s time, except in the dissolute circles for which the tales were originally written. Some of the stories, however, teach morality, and the literary style and method are beautiful and commendable, while the pictures of society are truthful. The implications of customary vice are simply reflections of life as the author knew it. “Gil Blas,” by Le Sage, continuing in this vein, we may call a tale of adventure in which everything is set down as it happens, good, bad and indifferent; important and trivial, with a hero who is somewhat of a rogue, although the wickedness is incidental and is described in such a way that the reader never mistakes it for virtue even when the writer tells it with a relish. The implication that wrongdoing is common, though undoubtedly conveyed, leaves the impression only that it is common among the people and under the circumstances of the tale, which is undoubtedly correct.

It would greatly aid the library censor if he could have annotations of this sort on all books intended for promiscuous public circulation. For this purpose, in fact, all literature should be evaluated by the light of this one color of the critical spectrum. The two or three books just noted possess at least some of the elements of greatness; yet good people differ regarding the extent to which they should be made freely accessible to the general public. I have tried to set down regarding them data on which all may agree, for the purpose of impressing upon you the fact that disagreement is not so much regarding the data as regarding the application to them of principles which, if they have been stated correctly, are few, simple and readily accepted.

We have been lightly skimming the surface of a subject vital to all who have to do with the production and distribution of books--to authors, editors, publishers, booksellers, and above all to us librarians. The ranks of readers are swelling to-day; it is our boast that we are doing our best to swell them. They are recruited from classes whose literature--if we may so extend the term--has been oral rather than written, whose standards of propriety are sometimes those of an earlier and grosser age, whose ideas of right and wrong are beclouded by ignorance and distorted by prejudice. And at the same time hosts of our people, with little background of hereditary refinement to steady them, have become suddenly rich, “beyond the dreams of avarice.” The shock has upset their ideas and their standards. Riches have come so suddenly and so vastly even to the educated, to those whose culture dates back for generations, that it has overturned their ideals also. Our literature is menaced both from below and from above. Books that distinctly commend what is wrong, that teach how to sin and tell how pleasant sin is, sometimes with and sometimes without the added sauce of impropriety, are increasingly popular, tempting the author to imitate them, the publishers to produce, the booksellers to exploit. Thank heaven they do not tempt the librarian. Here at last is a purveyor of books who has no interest in distributing what is not clean, honest, and true. The librarian may, if he will--and he does--say to this menacing tide, “Thus far shalt thou go and no farther.”

HOW TO RAISE THE STANDARD OF BOOK SELECTION[9]

If a man is to improve himself, he must first realize his own deficiencies; in other words, he must know what he ought to be, and how and in what degree he falls short of it.

First, then, what are the best books; and do we get them?

“Best” here as always is a relative term; what is best for one may not be best for another, or for all. We hear “good books” gravely recommended to people who will not read them, and who could not extract the good from them if they did read them. When the book fits the man, provided he is a good man, it is a good book, _ipso facto_.

You remember the tale of the rural parish priest at dinner with his bishop. The host, desiring to poke a little quiet fun, asked him whether it were lawful to baptize a man in soup. “I should make a distinction,” calmly answered the priest; “if it were good thick soup, I should say not; if it were wishy-washy stuff like this we are eating, it would be quite proper.”

So long as we do not realize that the same literary consistency is not adapted both to nutrition and to immersion we shall not be able to decide on what are the best books.

But is there no general line of division between bad and good books?

I can give but a few, but I venture to lay down one or two simple rules for testing. My tests would be--

(1) The test of language. No book can be good that is not written in correct English. By this I mean, of course, that the author himself must speak correctly; his characters may be ignorant persons and he will naturally make them talk accordingly.

(2) The test of simplicity and clearness. No book can be good whose author expresses himself in words that are too large for his subject or in sentences that are so involved that they cannot be easily understood.

(3) The best of good taste. No book can be good whose author uses words or expressions that would not be used by cultivated people.