ABOUT SILLY-SEASONERS.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XV, Issue XVI, 19 October 1895, Page 473

ABOUT SILLY-SEASONERS.

THERE are many excellent people who stoutly maintain that the papers only become readable when, as shallow people say, there ‘is nothing in them.’ For when Parliament is up, and ‘politics and all that ’ are cleared out of the way, there is room at last for something to read. It is a serious opinion, and one of which editors in general take too little account. In the close time of politics they humour it as a kind of diver-

sion from the proper business of life, which will be banished at once when serious things begin to happen. Yet the ‘ silly-seasoner ’ is for some of them the one breath of real life, as life is for most men and women, that reaches their columns, and the silly season is,if they knew it, the happiest hunting period for new readers and fresh ideas. The modern form of ‘ sillyseasoner ’ came in when the giant gooseberry and the sea-serpent became exhausted. These ancient stand bys do, indeed, occasionally turn up, but they are felt to be the crude expedients of a dead past. At the best, they filled a paragraph, and their monotonously American origin, while it saved them from verification, rather spoilt them for the British reader. The modern silly-seasoner starts from the great assumption that hundreds of thousands of men and women nourish a secret ambition to appear in print. It takes this great fact and utilises it for the benefit of readers, editors, and proprietors. Every editor worthy of the name is daily and hourly conscious that he is dealing with a vast number of people who have something worth saying which they would like to say, if he could only set them going. But to the best of editors they are mostly an unexplored and inarticulate country, from which he gets mysterious intimations thiough letter and rumour and the vagaries of circulation, but of whose dispositions, characters, and likings he is mostly in the dark. They surprise him every day by their likings for this and their coldness toward that ; the article or the phrase which was specially intended to catch them touches them not at all, while a chance word, to which the writer never gave a second thought, or an obscure paragraph thrown in by the foreman printer to fill a space goes the round of the world, and returns after many days from some distant colony. It is said that the most expert of theatrical managers cannot tell with certainty whether a play will take with the public or not. There may be everything in it wh’ch experience and commonsense may suggest as likely to be popular, and yet for some inscrutable reason it will drop dead flat. The editor who was quite frank would admit that he was in much the same position ris

(i vis the reading public. He risks less on one throw, he can provide an alternative bill of fare, strike an average. But he knows perfectly well that there is nothing so uncertain in the world as the most sanguine anticipation of a ‘ boom.’ We reveal no secrets when we say that ‘ the boom ’ not uncommonly takes the editor completely by surprise. Now, from the editor’s point of view, the silly season is the great opportunity for signalling to this dim, mysterious public of his, He can now set himself deliber-

ately to discover what really does interest them, or will rouse them to the point of emotion which is implied in * writing to the paper.’ It is really a most interesting experiment in human nature, and a mightily difficult one. The first thing required is an entirely opeu mind on the part of the experimenter. It is perfectly useless for a literary man to sit down and consider what interests him, and what, if he were a reader, would induce him to write a letter. We have heard a distinguished editor say that he thinks very poorly of

his paper unless at least a half of it entirely fails to interest him personally. This need not be taken too literally, but it is perfectly certain that the kind of symposium which would catch the man of letters would not survive a week in the silly season. It is a common belief among suspicious persons who ‘ know all about it ’ that the thing is kept going by prodigious industry on the part of the newspaper’s staff, and that ’ Scrutator,’ ‘ \ index,’ ‘ Father of a Family,’ * One who has Suffered, ’ and all the rest, are so many aliases for these clever gentlemen. That is for the most part an entire delusion. A judicious start or a discreet fillip may no doubt be given occasionally from within. When the stream has begun to flow it \ may be guided in this direc- ’ tion or that, diverted into curious side channels, or led back, when it grows irrelevant, into the main current. But the stream must flow, and cannot be pumped. It 7 is the vainest of vain labours / to go on manufacturing/ letters about a subject whicl/ brings no increment to tl/-

morning or evening mail. For there lies plain proof that it does not interest, and to pursue it is as futile as to go on playing to an empty house, without the excuse or compulsion which drives the theatrical manager to that melancholy course. The judicious editor, then, changes his bill quickly when there is no draw and tries another piece. If he is a wise man, he will also discriminate between one kind of draw ami another, for his instinct should tell him at once whether he has got hold of the genuine silly-seasoner or is merely drawing the professional letter - writer. There are certain subjects the mere whisper of which will flood his columns with apparently spontaneous communications from all quarters, without evoking a spark of interest in the person known vaguely as ' the general reader.’ The most glaring instances of these are, of course, anti-vaccina-tion, vivisection, bi-metal-lism, and railway rates, but there are numerous others more subtle and difficult to recognise which have precisely the same effect. Such are the skirmishes between literary persons about the profits of authors and publishers, the new criticism, the new art, and the modern drama. There are times and places for these, but they are not silly-

seasoners. The only true and genuine silly-seasoner is that which catches the general reader. For that end it must be of simple and universal interest—one of those plain problems which may be debated a hundred times and yet started with an air of novelty on the hundred and first.