Page:Weird Tales Volume 3 Number 3 (1923-03).djvu/85

84 style. It is called "Haunted Houses," and here it is:

While we're at it, we shall do a thorough job by offering you another. This second poem comes from Edna Bell Seward of Highland Park, Ill. Miss Seward submits

HAT will be all for the poets today. Now for the short prose pieces—to wit, those vox pop letters so dear to the heart of ye faithful ed. Walter F. McCanless of Reidsville, N. C., has a number of things to say about us, not all of them particularly flattering, and for this reason we offer his letter first, exactly as he wrote it:

"Dear Mr. Baird: I realize that this letter is going to be longer than a strictly business letter should be, for I wish to say a number of things. Before I take up the different points that I wish to make, however, I wish to say that I continue to read with great pleasure and thrills the stories that appear from time to time in . In fact, I usually read this magazine from cover to cover, including most of the advertisements. I have been particularly interested in the Eyrie department, in that it affords a sort of key to the likes and dislikes of the reading public. I find myself agreeing in large measure with the majority.

"Particularly do I agree with those who have denominated 'The Autobiography of a Blue Ghost' a 'miserable failure,' from the standpoint of humor, and 'silly.' If I understand literature, the imagination should not go beyond the bounds of verisimilitude, or likeness to truth. Where truth is an unknown quantity, as is the case with ghosts, the conventional notions should not be transcended. In this respect the author sinned against the conventions in his very title, for who ever heard of a blue ghost? I happen to live in the south where the conventions in this particular line have been inbred by the old-fashioned colored southern 'Mammy'. They all agree that the ghosts are white, misty, or wraithlike. And this brings me to the first point of my letter.

"If you are really in earnest about the publication of 'The Transparent Ghost', my vote is DON'T. Aside from the other qualities which the story, if it is in keeping with the letter, must have, the title is against it. If a writer must not transcend the conventions, in his imagination, he must also not be guilty of the 'self-evident'. Most ghosts, according to the standardized notion, are transparent. The title, therefore, falls flat. But this is not the only consideration.

"The other qualities, apparent in the letter, would make a farce of your magazine. Writers could never be sure whether their contributions were accepted by you for the artistic merit such contributions contained, or for the laugh or amusement that you wished to afford your readers. Those having the desire to develop into good writers of fiction are usually serious, take their work in a serious manner, and hate to be laughed at. You would find that the 'Unique Magazine' was deteriorating, for lack of material, into a travesty of the type of story it started with.

"We, of the South, believe in Edgar Allan Poe. To have it said of one that 'He writes like Poe' is, to our minds, the highest compliment that can be paid one. (By the way, 'The Crawling Death' by P. A. Connelly is, in my opinion, equal, for thrills, to anything Poe ever wrote.) We, therefore, should hate to see a publication parody his best known style of writing. Poe, however, attempted humor of a sort (example, 'Why the Frenchman Wears His Arm in a Sling'), but with no very great degree of success, since he is best known for horror and mystery stories. To see these parodied by a publication would result in making such a publication taboo in the South. We turn to joke books that do not hurt our pride. I have felt honored by your acceptance of my mite, and have felt a partnership-interest, consequently, in the success of . I want it to succeed, for its success in a large measure means my success. If you perpetrate what you contemplate I and others like me will wonder how much 'fun'