The newspaper reporter goes to see a fire, finds out all about it, writes
it up, and sends it to his paper. The paper prints it for the readers,
who are anxious to know what the fire was and the damage it did.
The reporter does not write it up in the spirit of doing it for the
pleasure there is in nor does he allow himself to do it in the manner his
mood dictates. He writes so that certain people will get certain facts and
ideas. The facts he had nothing to do with creating, nor did he make the
desire of the people. He was simply a messenger, a purveyor.
The producer of literature, we have said, must write for an audience;
but he does not go and hunt up his audience, find out its needs, and
then tell to it his story. He simple writes for the audience that he
knows, which others have prepared for him. To know human life, to know
what people really need, is work for a genius. It resembles the
building up of a daily paper, with its patronage and its study of the
public pulse. But the reporter has little or nothing to do with that.
Likewise the ordinary writer should not trouble himself about so large
a problem, at least until he has mastered the simpler ones.
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