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Title: The Prop Of Letters
Author: Israel Zangwill [
More Titles by Zangwill]
Is it a bright or a black day for an author when he gets so popular that the big advertisers insist on having him in any organ in which they place their advertisements? There can be no question but that it will be a black day for letters when the advertiser becomes the arbiter of literature, as this newest development forebodes. Where is this leprosy of advertisement to stop? Already it covers almost our whole civilisation. Already the advertiser is a main prop of the press.
A SONG OF ADVERTISEMENTS. (_After_ Whitman.)
Give me Hornihand's Pure Mustard;
Give me Apple's Soap, with the negress laving the cherub;
Give me Bentley's Brimstone Tablets, and Ploughman's Pills--those of the Little Liver.
(O get me ads., you agent with the frock-coat and the fountain pen,
You with the large commissions
And the further discount on cash,
Get me ads., _camarado_!
Full pages preferred, though little ones not scorning,
For I scorn nothing, my brother.)
Give me the Alphabetical Snuff;
Give me Electric Batteries and False Teeth; also the Tooth-powders;
Give me all the Soft Soaps and the Soothing Syrups;
Give me all the Cocoas and Cough Lozenges and Corsets;
Give me Infants' Food--yea, the diet of babes and sucklings;
Give me the Nibs and the Beef Essences, and do not forget the Typewriters.
(Forget nothing, _camarado_, for I, the poet, never forget anything.)
Give me of the Fat of your agency, and of the Anti-Fat thereof!
And I will build you magazines, high-class and well illustrated;
Or pictureless _a volonte_, the latter with heavier articles.
Also newspapers, daily and weekly, with posters flamboyant,
That shall move the state and its pillars,
That shall preach the loftiest morals, elevating the masses,
By the strength of advertisements,
By the mighty strength of advertisements!
It has been suggested that flypapers should be so sprinkled as to produce an aesthetic design in dead flies, so as to introduce beauty into the homes of the poor. It would be more in harmony with the age to lay out our public gardens with floral injunctions to use B's hair-dye and C's corn-plaster. Brag and display are the road to riches, and the trail of vulgarity is over it all. I take credit to myself for having been among the first to cry in the wilderness; but the critics--bless them!--say it is all empty paradox.
[The end]
Israel Zangwill's essay: Prop Of Letters
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