How a Book Was Born
Chrisman, Arthur Bowie
12 THE COMMONWEAL November 10, 1926 HOW A BOOK WAS BORN By ARTHUR BOWIE CHRISMAN (Mr. Chrisman, the author of Shen of the Sea, which is reviewed elsewhere in this issue, was awarded the John...
...No one takes their side quicker...
...Chrisman relates just how and why Shen came into being.—The Editors...
...After the customary deep thought, I came by a scheme...
...Still, there are holidays...
...Nevertheless, the shopman's little outlines did lead me on...
...These stories have lived, some of them, a thousand years...
...And the atmosphere (use the first word again) just bunk...
...And, of course, my anticipations will go to wreck...
...So the writing languished...
...Money was playing its well-known vanishing act...
...Is it Cloak and Sword, or The Great Open Spaces...
...For long I had known that my only possible chance to win any recognition lay in a book...
...But the wise man, Hai Pong, had a slave whose sole duty was to snatch away the master's ink slab when a hundred words had been written...
...Scholars are like that...
...Chinese biography is much like our own...
...And at last I wrote another Chinese story—and sold it...
...Nearly all of my not large dealings were done at the place of "How Doo...
...I always do...
...I was solitary because my steed was too exaggeratedly slow to keep up with hi» fellows...
...The unexpected will strike me at every turn, and I'll have the craziest possible adventures...
...Another fear is that the Chinese themselves may be displeased...
...A sword-hung brigand, I, and my face was mtde up, and my mind was made up—I was to be a worshiped "movie-star...
...But the day came when my money was gone...
...How Doo, of course, wasn't the man's name, but it's what he often said, so I promptly fastened it upon him...
...Not once did I receive a leaden quar-teT from How Doo...
...Though in sorrow I admit, his statement will be, not because he really likes Shen, but for reason of the first learned one's condemnation...
...Chrisman, the author of Shen of the Sea, which is reviewed elsewhere in this issue, was awarded the John Newbery Medal for the most distinguished contribution to American children's literature during IQ25 at the conference of the American Library Association held in Atlantic City in October of this year...
...Walk slowly...
...In fact, just at present, I'd rather be than see one...
...An excellent idea...
...The quaintest shop I knew was kept by a rory-poly man from China, a person of unexpected laughter, and boy-like, sage-like face...
...It was only now and then, and a scarcity of both, that I could find a day's work in the studios...
...I was that horseman...
...I took great liberties with historical persons, but have an excuse on tongue...
...True it is, I was the one with the peacock's self in those olden days...
...Proprietor and shop alike intrigued (no article is complete without that word) me...
...But not for worlds would I say definitely whether Enormous Name accepted the story, or sent me a "we regret" slip...
...Only the whites are pure...
...Surely you can easily believe that I sent my little masterpiece to Enormous Name Magazine...
...Bunk...
...Therefore, I cast out the flesh-pots, and pot my trust in fruits...
...This humble person wishes you the five happinesses...
...Make a half-and-half book...
...I wrote half-a-dozen—and then my power of invention fell flat...
...I shall know exactly what to look for—confusion and strange beauty, poverty and drabness, cotton garb and broidered fine stuffs—perchance, if I'm lucky, a lusty yarn...
...November 10, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 13 And then, one day I picked up Enormous Name Magazine and read a perfectly gorgeous story of the man-a-day killings indulged in by a suave gentleman from Shanghai...
...Even today they persist in their darkness...
...I made many changes, some that displease even me...
...I approve it...
...I couldn't work by day and scribble at night...
...A hundred victims, and never the same weapon used twice...
...He would squint quizzically and answer, "Chinese book...
...And I, with no excuse whatever, times in number, neglected to take notes...
...The trip—as well as General Motors—should be profitable...
...California fruit was cheap, even in California...
...I had read a few books...
...But don't gamble...
...Evidently there's something to them...
...And if any scholar does honor me with a cudgeling (sweet is publicity...
...Every Chinese in the picture is a rascal...
...Should a scholar give Shen a glance, he'd rave, and probably come for my head...
...Let there be an election of villains, and the man from Shanghai gets my vote...
...And, after a great while, another...
...Very old...
...In a little while I shall visit my dreamland, China —when, as, and if General Motors takes another climb...
...Occasionally he would give me a limping sketch of the thing that pleased him...
...So that is Shen of the Sea—half mine, and half thine—O Wang and Woo, and Wing Sam Wen—if you ever were...
...But, even though the story aroused my interest, it also drew harsh comment...
...I'll not expect the Yellow River purple, nor hope to see flesh and alive dragons, nor cats that bark, nor dogs that mewyll...
...Even so, I admire them, and if I had the head, would be one...
...Though how often, oh, how often, from others I) Not once did I receive a sprouted, juice-dried orange, or an apple far better thrown away...
...This is good...
...It really would grieve me to have them read unkindness in my nonsense makings...
...But I had heard a few, had read many, of the ancient Chinese stories, and liked them...
...I have a great respect for the Chinese people...
...That would hurt...
...From my Chinese yarn I turned to writing epigrams —bitter things (I was young)—some so searing that they actually landed in print...
...I invented what I called a plot, inserted a few peaceful, jolly, law-fearing characters, and in the course of time imagined I had written a story...
...It's merely a little trick of mine...
...I removed to the East and settled down to honest labor...
...Sometimes it's Singapore...
...Pleasant fruits I bought there—even the encumbers had their good points...
...But, alas, the casting directors, dull fellows, did not know this thing...
...For a long while I had been clicking turnstiles in the library...
...Our business relations were highly satisfactory— to me, at least...
...And the book was still unwritten, and imagination had divorced me...
...Rule—always keep the reader in suspense...
...The joke that was told of Garfield is now accounted to Taft...
...THY servant writes:— On a chill November evening in the year it-doesn't-matter, a solitary horseman might have been seen, slowly wending his way along a barren, blasted pitch of the Coast Range...
...if one does say, "This book is awful," I'll likely be able to produce another authority who will say, "No such thing...
...As we grew more sociably acquainted, I would say to my friend, "What latest blurb-carrier are you reading...
...At widely spaced intervals I sold a tiny verse, or a joke, or a now less scathing epigram...
...Why, / could do better than that...
...Why not use them to help put my own stories across...
...Naturally, I reduced expenses to the lowest common denominator...
...I now set about reading travel books, and translations from the Chinese...
...How Doo had books, and the books—but I have already used intrigued...
...The graduate up a tree, the priest shorn of his dignity—those are the tales that bring coins to the bowl...
...I knew a few Chinese words...
...I've never had a sovereign body...
...True, I have drawn their mighty ones doing some extremely foolish things—but their own story-tellers are never happier than when doing precisely that...
...In the present article Mr...
Vol. 5 • November 1926 • No. 1
