Unless he can get some phrase that will explain the characters of
my women, the length of my sentences, and the moral I so carefully
hid in the last chapter, he is helpless. Sometimes I find him
running for a column without finding a gate to my mind, and then
giving it up in mid-paragraph. Sometimes he gets inside, but
dashes for the exit sign and is out before I know what he thinks.
Sometimes he finds an idea to his liking, wraps up in it, and goes
to sleep.
I recognize his usefulness. I take his hard raps meekly and even
remember them when next I begin to write. I do not hate him much
when he tells the public not to read me. There is always the
chance that he is right for _his_ public; not, thank heavens,
for mine. I am furious only when it is clear that he has not read
me himself. But I cannot envy him. It is so much more agreeable to
make points than to find them. It is so much easier, if you have a
little talent, to build some kind of an engine that will run than
to explain what precise fault prevents it from being the best.
When I am writing a book I cannot understand the mania for
criticism that seems to infect the majority of the literary kind.
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