A Writer's Notebook (93 page)

They ascribe omnipotence and omniscience to him and I don't know what else; it seems to me so strange that they never credit him with common-sense or allow him tolerance. If he knew as much about human nature as I do he'd know how weak men are and how little control they have over their passions, he'd know how full of fear they are and how pitiful, he'd know how much goodness there is even in the worst and how much wickedness in the best. If he's capable of feeling he must be capable of remorse, and when he considers what a hash he's made in the creation of human kind can he feel anything but that? The wonder is that he does not make use of his omnipotence to annihilate himself. Perhaps that's just what he has done.

What use is knowledge if it doesn't lead to right action? But what is right action?

Anyone can take me in once; I don't mind that, I would rather be deceived than deceive, and it makes me laugh to have
been made a fool of. But I take care not to let the same person take me in twice.

Why it is so wounding to have an ill turn done you by a friend? Naïvety or vanity?

A good rule for writers: do not explain overmuch.

G. K. He knew X. was a crook, but thought, whomever else he cheated, X. wouldn't cheat him. He didn't know that a crook is a crook first and a friend afterwards. And yet I find something horribly fascinating in X.'s crookedness. He ruined G. K. and fled to America to escape prosecution. I met him in New York dining at an expensive restaurant; he was as debonair, as amiable, cheery and sympathetic as he had ever been. He seemed honestly glad to see me. He was very much at his ease and the embarrassment was not on his side but on mine. I'm sure no qualms of conscience disturbed his night's rest.

One would have thought it easy to say thank you when someone has done you a service, and yet most people find it a difficult thing to say. I suppose because subconsciously their pride revolts at the notion that you have put them under an obligation.

I have just been reading again Russell's
Our Knowledge of the External World
. It may be that, as he says, philosophy doesn't offer, or attempt to offer, a solution of the problems of human destiny; it may be that it mustn't hope to find an
answer to the practical problems of life; for philosophers have other fish to fry. But who then will tell us whether there is any sense in living and whether human existence is anything but a tragic—no, tragic is too noble a word—whether human existence is anything but a grotesque mischance?

No one can live long in America without noticing how prevalent is the vice of envy. It has unfortunate consequences, for it leads people to depreciate things that are in themselves good. How strange that it should be a sign of affectation, and even of degeneracy, to be well-mannered and well-dressed, to speak English with correctness and live with a certain elegance I A man who has been to a good boarding-school and to Harvard or Yale must walk very warily if he wants to avoid the antagonism of those who have not enjoyed these advantages. It is pitiful often to see a man of culture assume a heartiness of manner and use a style of language that are foreign to him in the vain hope that he will not be thought a stuffed shirt. None of this would matter very much if the envious wanted to raise themselves to the level of those they envy, but they don't; they want to drag them down to their own. Their ideal of the ‘regular fellow' is a man with a hairy chest who eats pie in his shirtsleeves and belches.

Somewhere in
Trivia
Pearsall Smith remarks, not without complacency, that best sellers cast an envious eye on writers of greater literary distinction. He is in error. They regard them with cool indifference. The author of whom he is thinking belongs to a different class; he is only a best seller in a small way, but he has pretensions to be a man of letters and it is a mortification to him that critical opinion will not give him what he considers his due. Such was Hugh Walpole, and I have little doubt that he would have given all his popularity
to gain the esteem of the intelligentsia. He knocked humbly at their doors and besought them to let him in, and it was a bitterness to him that they only laughed. The real best seller is harassed by no such desires. I knew the late Charles Garvice. He was read by every servant-girl, every shop-girl in England and by a great many people besides. Once at the Garrick I heard him asked how many copies of his books had been sold. At first he would not tell. “Oh, it's not worth talking about,” he said, but at last, pressed, with a little gesture of impatience, he said: “Seven millions.” He was a modest, unassuming, well-mannered man. I am convinced that when he sat down at his desk to turn out another of his innumerable books, he wrote as one inspired, with all his heart and soul.

For this is the point: no one can write a best seller by trying to. He must write with complete sincerity; the clichés that make you laugh, the hackneyed characters, the well-worn situations, the commonplace story that excites your derision, seem neither hackneyed, well worn nor commonplace to him. On the contrary he thinks them fresh and true. He is as intently absorbed in the creatures of his invention as Flaubert ever was in Madame Bovary. Years ago Edward Knoblock and I decided to collaborate on a picture. It was a hair-raising melodrama, and we piled thrilling incident upon thrilling incident, and as one thing after another occurred to us we laughed till our sides ached. It took us a fortnight and we had a grand time. It was a competent piece of work, well constructed and exciting; but we could never get anyone to produce it. The persons to whom we submitted it one and all said the same thing: “It looks as though you had written it with your tongue in your cheek.” And that of course is exactly what we had done. The conclusion is obvious: you cannot write anything that will convince unless you are yourself convinced. The best seller sells because he writes with his heart's blood. He is so framed that he honestly shares the aspirations, the prejudices, the sentiments, the outlook of the great mass of the public. He gives them what they want because that is what he wants
himself. They are quick to discern the least trace of insincerity and will have nothing to do with it.