supported those magazines as it buys good books. That public cannot be artificially incubated.

Like the First Edition Society, Inc., the Literary Guild is a frankly commercial organization -or perhaps "frankly" is not the word, for it is masquerading as a "guild," which it certainly is not. However, all is fair in advertising, and that honorable word is as good or as bad as most of the terms used by publicity experts to catch the eye. So far as we readers and writers are concerned, we are offered a new channel through which books may be purchased. Let the booksellers and publishers scotch this intruder if they can. The public has survived before now while commercial rivals fought

their duels. The reader who takes advantage of this innovation in bookselling will be adding to the process of standardization which has invaded every department of American life. Soon a committee or a policeman will do everything for us short of drawing our breath. But that is hardly a matter that concerns the intelligent minority, which will have to continue as heretofore to do its own thinking and its own reading.

Whether we agree with all Mr. Boyd's conclusions or not, we must admit that the writer is not a much interested party in the battle of the book clubs.

"But I have a theory of my own about what this art of the novel is, and how it came into being. To begin with, it does not simply consist in the author's telling a story about the adventures of some other person. On the contrary it happens because the story-teller's own experience of men and things, whether for good or ill not only what he has passed through himself, but even events which he has only witnessed or been told of has moved him to an emotion so passionate that he can no longer keep it shut up in his heart. Again and again something in his own life or in that around him will seem to the writer so important that he cannot bear to let it pass into oblivion. There must never come a time, he feels, when men do not know about it. That is my view of how this art arose.

teller's craft to describe only what is good or beautiful. Sometimes, of course, virtue will be his theme, and he may then make such play with it as he will. But he is just as likely to have been struck by numerous examples of vice and folly in the world around him, and about them he has exactly the same feelings as about the pre-eminently good deeds which he encounters: they are important and must all be garnered in. Thus anything whatsoever may become the subject of a novel, provided only that it happens in this mundane life and not in some fairyland beyond our human ken."

Extract from A WREATH OF CLOUD (Part III. "The Tale of Genji") written by Lady Murasaki, about the year 1000. (Houghton

FTEN, as we take a backward glance over the history of literature and art, we are amazed at the public's failure to recognize outstanding craftsmen in their own day, and at the lack of contemporary curiosity about great movements which profoundly affect later days and ages. Are the critics of today neglecting, in the motion pictures, a force of the first magnitude in the development of reading tastes and literary technique? Few know what principles of photodramatic technique are now being developed in the small professional staffs which are engaged in preparing dramas for the screen, staffs composed of producers, directors, scenario, continuity, and sub-title-writers. We have sufficient demonstration of the fact that a new and special technique is in the making in the failure of many successful

authors to produce what is wanted. A partial explanation of this failure is that the unit of measure is the foot of picture film rather than the sentence or paragraph. The author, in the habit of thinking and creating in terms of sentences, is helpless when he tries to think in terms of pictures. Yet this is far from a complete explanation.

Will this new technique make any contribution to general literature? We don't know. These staff workers are so busy at their special jobs that they have no time to prove the application of what they have learned to other forms of writing. Nor can we measure them against general literary standards. There are a few exceptions. Anita Loos, successful continuity writer, produces "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes." It is something new. It becomes a best seller. England, the home of

conservative literary tradition, becomes more excited about it than America. Some critics there proclaim it the great novel of the day. This must be very curious and disturbing to the literati who refuse to think of the motion picture as anything more than an industry. Apparently few of the colleges are even curious about what is being done in the development of photo-dramatic technique, and a study of Milton's correspondence with his wash-lady is still the best bet for a Doctor's thesis. Will somebody twenty years from now be given a degree for tracing the influence of "The Covered Wagon" in photo-dramatic technique?

A certain academic gentleman thus reflects the prejudices of many of his fellows: "The trouble with the movies is that they are onesided. They appeal to only one of the senses. The novelist can make us see, smell, taste, touch, hear; a photoplay can only make us see. The movie world is the world as it must appear to a paralyzed, deaf man with a bad cold." This clever half-truth neglects the fact that the motion picture audience has not been paralyzed or deaf since birth, that there is such a thing as association of ideas. Pictures through association of ideas can be made almost as powerful media for appeals to the various senses as printed words. Let us grant, however, that the photo-drama has certain limitations but every great art has these. And, curiously enough, such limitations seem to be a source of strength rather than weakness. In avoiding pitfalls on either side, the practitioners are forced to pursue straight courses that carry them into new fields of discovery which open up numerous possibilities to fellow craftsmen in other arts.

The poet, forced to recognize limitations imposed by rhyme and rhythm, develops a beauty and compression of diction which is borrowed by the novelist and the dramatist. The dramatist, unable to shift his scenes as often or as quickly as the fiction-writer, crams his play with action and dialogue that teaches the short-story writer what he never could

have learned from his own experiments. And no keen analyst who studies a good continuity in connection with the short-story or novel which inspired it can fail to see new artistic forces gradually gaining strength.

Technically, the photoplay resembles the drama more closely than any other form. It has one basic limitation which the drama does not suffer the voices of the actors cannot now be used to carry the plot and suggest emotion. On the other hand, it has two advantages: sub-titles and quick shifting of scenes. There are over six hundred different scenes in "The Covered Wagon." Properly used, these advantages should more than compensate for the voice-limitation, especially since the sub-title can be very effectively employed to forward the plot. Moreover, the motion picture can utilize music as a supplementary emotional appeal as can only one type of the stage drama, the opera. Incidental music can be used with a picture to heighten the dramatic values of the photoplay if the audience is sufficiently attuned to it-and the spread of musical education is more and more sharpening the perception of the public to music.

It appears that the emotional effect of the actors' voice can be replaced, perhaps bettered, by the emotional effect of incidental orchestral music. There is much work to be done along this line and eventually it will be done. Perfections in the phonograph, for instance, may make it possible to integrate special music exactly to the running of a picture. This seems to be a more promising line of experimentation than any attempt to develop "speaking movies" which would make incidental music impossible.

The process of turning a plot into a picture is a complicated one. This very complication has prevented thus far any scholarly study of photo-dramatic technique. For instance, there is a special technique of the subtitle. The length of time a sentence remains before the audience is determined by the average period required for a normal person to

read it. This is said to figure roughly about one foot of picture for each word. Naturally, this imposes a heavy burden on the writerhe must make every word count. A rough index of the importance of good sub-titles is to be found in the salaries paid to the specialists who write them. Some are reported to earn over a hundred thousand dollars a year. Producers have discovered that they are worth more than their salt, because a picture may stand or fall on its sub-titles.

It has been authoritatively stated in the columns of THE WRITER and elsewhere that there are now few opportunities for inexperienced people to write for the screen. Original scenarios are a glut on the market. Writers whose scripts are returned unread by the pro

ducers sometimes feel that the movies are undemocratic, that like certain magazines they only want the work of writers whose names have "feature value." That is untrue. The producers have found that only the

names of three or four authors are worth a dollar at the box office.

What the scenario editors want is not original scripts, but published stories which are adaptable to the screen. They are reading almost all the magazines and books published in an attempt to find what they want. But what kind of a story makes a good photoplay? And why? No one has yet answered that question in an intelligible and scholarly way. Whoever first does this must take his reader through the whole complicated process of turning the story into a picture, must give numerous examples of the application of a new technique. And whoever does it, if he does it well, may confound the supercilious and render yeoman service to the workers in critics of the photoplay as an artistic form literature and the drama by throwing new light on their problems. Here, apparently, is a work of vital and broad significance waiting to be done, and one that will richly reward the doing.

Editor, THE WRITER:

Pittsburgh's industrial supremacy so overshadows its claims to literary distinction that your readers may be surprised to learn that it has been the home of many successful authors for at least a few years of their lives. Of these one might mention O. Henry, Stephen A. Foster, Margaret Deland, Willa Cather, Mary Roberts Rinehart, and others.

Our Poetry Society is one of the most active and thriving among the many writers' associations that have been organized in this city. A brief account of aims, requirements, and methods of work may be of interest to your readers.

The Society was organized about a year ago by Marie Tello Phillips, an author who has been writing only since 1918, but whose work, poetry, essays and short stories, is now published by many magazines and other periodicals. Her poetry is also included in a Book of Verse, in Braithwaite's, and in about twenty other anthologies. As our President, Mrs. Phillips, is Chairman of the Department of Literature of the Congress of Clubs, our Poetry Group is given the privilege of taking part in the writers' programs presented by the Literature Department to the public. Members thus have an opportunity to read their work before large audiences and also to become acquainted with other writers, who have similar interests and ambitions. A literary background is produced with its atmosphere of helpfulness. Latent talent is frequently discovered and given its opportunity for development. The Poetry group consists of about twenty-five members, many of whom have reached the professional stage and are marketing their creative work, which includes scenario writing, feature articles, essays, and short stories, in addition to verse. This makes our group a most interesting one and provides material for the interchange of helpful ideas.

We hold monthly luncheons at the Club House of the Congress of Clubs, of Western Pennsylvania, G. F. W., with which we are affiliated. Members

take turns in arranging programs. Other occasions for meeting are bi-monthly, when the President, Mrs. Phillips, is "at home" to the Poetry Society. At these gatherings all but literary topics are, by common consent, "taboo."

Prize poetry contests are a feature of all the meetings. Members submit selections to be read anonymously, voted upon, and later discussed. At our opening meeting of the season, Dr. Andrew N. Cleven and Dr. H. H. Hudson, both of the University of Pittsburgh, and Arthur R. Jordan, President of the Scribblers' Club, assisted in judging the poetry selections, but our own members are usually the judges. Our custom of inviting each voter to give reasons justifying his choice has proved particularly helpful, not only in emphasizing qualities to be desired, but also in familiarizing the newer members with the modern standards of criticism studied by the organization. The contests bring out the advantage of having a number of judges because of the great divergence of individual opinions as to the merits of the selections. We find, however, as our study of poetry continues, that our members are acquiring criterions of judgment which render us less and less dependent upon the uncertainties of personal taste. Perhaps the most important feature of our contests is that they stimulate production, our rule being that every member contribute a selection for each occasion.

Our membership is composed of both men and women, and we frequently have an honor guest as speaker, usually a local or visiting celebrity. We find our organization is achieving remarkable success in its threefold aims of providing the members with incentives to write, standards of criticism, and sales information. Many of our writers, who had published nothing before joining the Poetry Society, are now selling to Boston, New York and other metropolitan papers and magazines. Pittsburgh, Pa.

Lillie Jordan.