“The Truth About The Novel”

I came across a wonderful little book recently, The Kenneth Roberts Reader, a collection of essays and short selections from his novels. For anyone unfamiliar with Kenneth Roberts (1885-1957), you should be ashamed of yourself. Seriously, he is something of a recent discovery for me and I’m ashamed I didn’t get to know him long ago. Roberts was the consummate Mainer, or Maine-iac as they are known in these parts. A novelist, essayist and general curmudgeon who defined the downeast toughness, humor and practicality that downeasters take pride in.

Roberts wrote some wonderful and very popular novels including Northwest Passage and Arundel. His wry humor and dry wit fills every page along with the kinds of observation for detail that is the mark of a great lover and a great writer. His section in Northwest Passage about the benefits of hot buttered rum instigated a fad across the country that was a benefit to the butter and rum makers of various regions, if not the general populace.

It has been a pleasure to spend time with this lovely little book. There is a perfectly delicious essay on his grandmother’s kitchen and all the delights that came from it. His loving descriptions of a well made corned-beef hash and the proper way to make a pot of genuine beanpot beans had me thinking about breakfast and all its shortcomings when there is no grandma at the woodburner. His recipe for grandma’s homemade ketchup seemed worth a try and he surprised me by advocating a heaping teaspoon of curry powder added to fish chowder.

However after reading grandma’s recipe for coot soup I think I’ll stick to fish, thanks.

Then I came across an essay titled “The Truth About The Novel”. What a jewel. Roberts starts out with the observation that from his observation of the situation roughly 97% of American university students want to “break into literature”. I’m quite sure he is correct about that and it has probably gone up considerably since then. Roberts then goes on to recount, step by step, his own trials and tribulations in getting a novel written and printed. From the first pitch to an editor who “successfully managed to conceal his enthusiasm” for the project, through a meeting with Mr. Russell Doubleday who gave him a check for $1000 in an act of “reckless trustfulness” so he could go to Italy to write, through his four months stay in an Italian cottage engaged in the “romantic and stimulating occupation of sitting at a desk staring at the wall”.

The book Arundel was a success selling over 9,000 copies in 2 years and netting the author a sum of $2,420.95 — minus the $1000 advance. Now, in 1928 $1,420.95 went a lot farther than it does today but, even at that, it was far from a princely sum and, as Roberts points out in the essay, selling a little more than 9,000 books in a nation of 125,000,000 people is pitiful. I’d venture the statistics today are even more pathetic.

Much to his amazement he was not overwhelmed by ladies seeking to win his favor and publishers begging for his next book — and that, despite the claims by popular authors that they were overwhelmed with grateful letters from fans, he received eleven of them.

Roberts is a terrific essayist and, all these years later, reading about the tribulations of such a gifted novelist is healing to the soul. It reinforces, at least to me, the old axiom that anyone can write but a real writer can’t NOT write. We can only dream of doing it as well as Kenneth Roberts.

Thanks for reading.