See also Futurist art.
ASTRONOMY
FINNEGAN—"Oh, yis, Oi can undershtand how thim astronomers can calkilate th' distance av a shtarr, its weight, and dinsity and color and all thot—but th' thing thot gets me is, how th' divvle do they know its name."
I think the stars do nod at me,
But not when people are about;
For they regard me curiously
Whenever I go out.
Brothers, what is it ye mean,
What is it ye try to say.
That so earnestly ye lean
From the spirit to the clay?
I may have been a star one day,
One of the rebel host that fell,
And they are nodding down to say.
Come back to us from hell.
AUTHORS
A clever author is one who never asks what they are saying when he is told that everybody is talking about his latest book.
The wife of a successful young literary man had hired a buxom Dutch girl to do the housework. Several weeks passed and from seeing her master constantly about the house, the girl received an erroneous impression.
"Ogscuse me, Mrs. Blank," she said to her mistress one day, "but I like to say somedings."
"Well, Rena?"
The girl blushed, fumbled with her apron, and then replied, "Veil, you pay me four tollars a veek—"
"Yes, and I really can't pay you any more."
"It's not dot," responded the girl; "but I be villing to take tree tollars till—till your husband gets vork."
Kate Douglas Wiggin's choicest possession, she says, is a letter which she once received from the superintendent of a home for the feeble-minded. He spoke in glowing terms of the pleasure with which the "inmates" had read her little book, "Marm Lisa," and ended thus superbly:
"In fact, madam, I think I may safely say that you are the favorite author of the feeble-minded!"
Harold Jenks, a syndicate editor of Denver, was talking about the low rates paid by the magazines.
"They who write for newspaper syndicates, where their work appears simultaneously in forty or fifty newspapers all over the country," said Mr. Jenks, "make a good deal of money. Of course, the magazine writer, beside such men, isn't one, two, three.
"A seedy magazine writer dropped in on me this morning to borrow a quarter. As he left, he said:
"'Jenks, old man, the difference between a hen and a magazine writer is this—while they both scratch for a living, the hen gets hers.'"
Consolation
"How did your novel come out?"
"Well," replied the self-confident man, "it proved beyond all doubt that it isn't one of these trashy best-sellers."
The late Ambassador Walter Hines Page was formerly editor of The World's Work and, like all editors, was obliged to refuse a great many stories. A lady once wrote him:
"Sir: you sent back last week a story of mine. I know that you did not read the story, for as a test I had pasted together pages 18, 19, and 20, and the story came back with these pages still pasted; and so I know you are a fraud and turn down stories without reading same."
Mr. Page wrote back:
"Madame: At breakfast when I open an egg I don't have to eat the whole egg to discover it is bad."
The great novelist summoned his publisher to his luxurious home.
"Have your salesmen," he asked, "prepared for their semi-annual trip among the down-trodden booksellers?"
"They have."
"Has your publicity man written the usual biographical notices and arranged for a series of dinners in my honor?"
"He has."
"Have your great minds selected a title for my forthcoming work?"
"Indeed, yes."
"Then what do you want me to write about?"
The publisher drew from his pocket a paper.
"Here is a wonderful plot," he replied. "It has every element—maudlin sentiment, mystery, touches of your characteristic humor, profound insight—everything."
The great author was conservative. He had had experience.
"I haven't time to read it just now," he said. "But are you sure? How do you know that it is any good?"
"Good!" exclaimed the publisher. "Of course it is good. Why, my dear sir, it has met with the unqualified approval of every member of our motion-picture department."
THE PUBLISHER—"How are you going to introduce accurate local color in your new story of life in Thibet? You've never been there."
THE EMINENT AUTHOR—"Neither has any of my public."—Judge.
"So you got your poem printed?"
"Yes," replied the author. "I sent the first stanza to the editor of the Correspondence Column with the inquiry, 'Can anyone give me the rest of this poem?' Then I sent in the complete poem over another name!"
"Ye think a fine lot of Shakespeare?"
"I do, sir," was the reply.
"An' ye think he was mair clever than Rabbie Burns?"
"Why, there's no comparison between them."
"Maybe, no; but ye tell us it was Shakespeare who wrote 'Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.' Now, Rabbie would never hae sic nonsense as that."
"Nonsense, sir!" thundered the other.
"Ay, just nonsense. Rabbie would hae kent fine that a king or queen either disna ganga to bed wi' a croon on their head. He'd hae kent they hang it over the back o' a chair."
HOSTESS—"I sometimes wonder, Mr. Highbrow, if there is anything vainer than you authors about the things you write."
HIGHBROW—"There is, madam; our efforts to sell them."
"No," said the honest man, "I was never strong at literature. To save my life I could not tell you who wrote 'Gray's Elegy.'"
HENLEY—"How are you getting on with your writing for the magazines?"
PENLEY—"Just holding my own. They send me back as much as I send them."
Wouldn't it be pleasant if so many authors didn't:
Let their characters converse for hours without any identification tags, so that you have to turn back three pages and number off odd speeches in order to find out who's talking.
Overwork the "smart" atmosphere, the suspension points and the seasonal epidemics of such words as "gripping," "virile," "intrigue," "gesture," etc.
Stick up a periscope every now and then, like, "Little did he think how dearly this trifling error was to cost him," or "She was to meet this man again, under strange circumstances."
Apply a large hunk of propaganda, like an ice bag, just where the plot ought to rush ahead.