Critics, Loafers, and the Useless Trades

What Are Our Reviewers and Critics Going to Do Now?

L. L. JONES

IT seems reasonable at this time to prevent, if you can, an able-bodied man, between the ages of eighteen and fifty, from loafing and to shift him from a less useful to a more useful occupation between the ages of twenty-one and thirty-one.

Indeed, I can see no reason why the state and federal governments should falter at those particular age barriers, or why they should not go straight on and prick him into useful activity all the way from ten to seventy. No doubt that will come in time. Already, I understand, they have decided in the state of West Virginia, that there shall be no fooling around even at sixteen and sixty. The only troublesome point to me is the government's standard of usefulness. Take, for example, that list of comparatively useless occupations issued by the War Department:

Bartenders, waiters, passenger elevator operators, attendants, door-men, footmen, etc., in clubs, hotels, shops, office buildings, apartment houses, bath-houses, theatres; games and sports; domestic servants and clerks in shops. It may be well enough as far as it goes, but the omissions seem to me to betray an apalling inexperience of uselessness.

I SHOULD suppose almost any one would A think, at once, of far more pronounced types of uselessness, and I believe there are dozens of conscientious men among my acquaintances who would admit, without a moment's hesitation, that their own occupations belonged more rightfully on that list than several that tire there included. I myself am by no means sure that at this moment I am not more uselessly engaged than if, for example, I were a passenger elevator operator. It is true that a girl, or a cripple, or an aged man might run the elevator just as well. But how do I know that a girl, or a cripple, or an aged man could not write this article?

And that brings up rather an important question, for while this article is, no doubt, useless as compared with something that would make beans grow or multiply tomatoes, it really is not any more useless than thousands of other articles, written by male critics between the ages of eighteen and fifty, who are just as able-bodied as myself. I say critics, because the utility of that profession in this country had been doubted or denied long before the war, and quite apart from their possible value as able-bodied men in some other occupation.

NOT only has a very large and sensible T ' portion of the population had no use whatever for American critics of books, plays, painting, or music, but the American critics themselves have never had the slightest use for one another. I have known many American critics and I have never known one to admit that the existence of more than two or three others beside himself was in any way desirable.

There is no such body of evidence against the utility of passenger elevator operators or bath-house attendants or several other occupations on that list. No one raised the question about the usefulness of American elevator men before the war, but a great many did raise it about the usefulness of American critics, and they did so without any thought of finding something more useful for the critics to do.

In fact, they seemed not to care at all what became of them.

HENCE critics should be regarded, presumptively, as more useless than doormen, bath-men, waiters, elevator men and others against whom hitherto no such accusation has been brought, and, if the comparison be carried out concretely, the presumption will, I believe, be strengthened. The social service rendered by a doorman, for example, is unquestionable. A doorman of a club understands the nature of that club, knows who belong to it, who are in it, and who should be allowed to enter. He helps people in reaching their destination.

He does not, like the dramatic critic, help people in reaching the wrong destination; reaching the places to which they are sorry they came. He never lures members into the club by glowing pictures of the joyful scenes within. He never warns members away of an evening on account of the low moral tone of the conversation. He does not tell members that the approaching club night will mark an era in the history of the American clubhouse, and that for sustained interest, brilliancy of dialogue, seriousness of the contemporary problems presented, excellent rendering of the principal roles, and perfection of the mise en scene it has never been equalled by an American club night and is the peer of the best modern European club nights—and so on, as dramatic critics do—with the result that members pour down from Brooklyn, Yonkers, Hackensack, in tubes, tunnels, trolley cars, ferry-boats and taxis, only to find the same old club night they have known for thirty years.

IF the club fills up with members who have come long, uncomfortable distances under the impression that the club that night would be transformed, exalted, turned of a sudden into something quite unusual and intelligent, it is never the doorman's fault. That cannot be said of dramatic critics. By the aid of the doorman you can find the member you want to see at a club. There are ten chances to one against your finding anybody in anything you want to see at the theatre, by the mere aid of a dramatic critic.

On what ground is it pretended that a massage is less essential in war time than a review, or that a good average rubber in a Turkish bath is more useless than a good average reviewer? Or compare a reviewer with an elevator man in point of actual service rendered. An elevator man docs not land you at any story he happens to fancy without regard to the story of your preference. He never exaggerates the height of a story above street level, or insists that something really quite low down is away up at the top of the building. Nor does he ever behave like those so-called impressionistic reviewers, of whom there are some hundreds. If he did, you would pass half a day with him alone merely going up and down in the elevator and never getting to any story at all.

Of course, if he were an interesting man personally, that might be just as satisfactory, but reviewers who will make you do this are not, as a rule, interesting personally. They keep you reading the review because you hope it will land you somewhere. Then they leave you just where you got in. That is one of the chief differences. No elevator man ever detains you in his elevator. Reviewers as a rule will, if they can, detain you in their reviews. No elevator man becomes so blase in running the elevator that he cannot tell one floor from another, and he never, by any chance, gets the bottom of the building mixed up in his mind with the top. But reviewers generally lose all sense of literary altitude arid not a day passes without their mistaking the basement for the roof.

I DO not agree with those thoughtful but, as they seem to me, rather harsh discussions on the subject of American criticism, which appear from time to time in our serious magazines. From their too lofty point of view, it would follow logically, that almost every American critic, regardless of age, sex or physical condition, should be swept clean off the streets. I do not argue as Mr. Richard Garnett and others would, if they were consistent, that the anti-loafing laws of several states do really apply to critics. I would not have a dramatic critic treated as a "lounge lizard" or a hotel rounder in New York State or an idle rich man in the state of West Virginia, no matter how seriously he took the acting of Miss Billie Burke, aside from her charms of person, no matter how cheerful he professed to feel at the ten last musical comedies.

BUT, in war time, the question whether the AT critic is able-bodied, becomes significant. If he is capable of loading vessels with steel rails, why should he continue writing criticisms, when there are people incapable of loading steel rails who, by the law of probabilities, could write his criticisms just as well?

In asking why play-reviewers, book-reviewers and perhaps other classes of critics are not included on the lists of comparative uselessness, I would imply no reproach to these professions. I would simply suggest that physically disabled substitutes would probably do as well. I advocate no measure that I believe would drag down these callings. I should be as loth as any one to lower the standard of the Times Saturday Review of Books, or to degrade those columns in the Sunday papers called "In and About the Theatre."

I simply ask if, in order to keep them at their present altitude, it is really necessary that there should be among the writers of them a single able-bodied male between the ages of sixteen and sixty? I ask if the achievements of able-bodied American critics, provided there are any left, are actually so valuable that there would be the risk of an appreciable loss in replacing them by bright lads under sixteen, infirm persons, septuagenarians, and women? This still leaves a reasonably large range of choice. And I point to a large body of learned commentary on the condition of American critics, which clearly implies that, no matter by whom you replaced them, it could not be for the worse.