Cosmopolitan Magazine
The first essential for editing a popular magazine for Americans is that the editor be a sane, normal, every-day American. No mystical genius is required.
He is merchandising a commodity to the American public. If his taste is the taste of the average American, and he puts within the covers of a magazine stories which he has enjoyed reading, other Americans of similar taste in reading will buy his magazine in quantities sufficient to make it a success.
At least, that is the theory I have followed. I know quite well that I am no genius, yet I have seen magazines grow under my direction. And I have no rule for buying a story except that it must be sufficiently interesting and sufficiently well told to interest me.
All sorts of stories interest me. Some time ago, for the satisfaction of a friend of mine, I named the ten short stories which I had liked best of all those I had published. It was interesting even to me to see how they varied. The ten stories were: Back Pay by Fannie Hurst; Hassayampa Jim by Peter B. Kyne; Kazan by James Oliver Curwood; The Story I Can’t Write by Rupert Hughes; The Last Adventure by Frank R. Adams; Boston Blackie’s Mary by Jack Boyle; The Juggler by Arthur Springer; The Snide by Harris Merton Lyon; The Ghost’s Story by Basil King; The Dummy Chucker by Arthur Somers Roche. That’s about as catholic a list as I can imagine.
“Back Pay,” “The Snide” and “The Last Adventure” might be classified as “sex” stories, although I dislike that term. “The Story I Can’t Write” was a trick story; “Boston Blackie’s Mary” was a prison story; “Hassayampa Jim” was a Western story; “The Dummy Chucker” was an O’Henry-ish bit of writing; “Kazan” was a dog story; “The Ghost’s Story” was a story of the supernatural (it was the story from which Mr. King later built his photoplay “Earthbound”); “The Juggler” was a character study with an extraordinary twist in the ending.
No two of these stories in any way resembled each other. I suppose that’s because I believe in variety, not because of any rule that variety makes a good magazine, but because my taste in reading varies. I am likely this evening to read Cellini for relaxation; tomorrow evening to read Mark Twain, the following evening to read De Maupassant. I like each one of them while I am reading him, but I don’t want too much of any one of them.
That probably is true of the average reader of American magazines. He has his favorite authors but he doesn’t want too much of any of them. I think Peter B. Kyne, James Oliver Curwood, Fannie Hurst, Ben Ames Williams, and Frank R. Adams are doing the best work of any magazine writers of to-day, but I feel quite sure that a magazine filled with their work and only their work, month after month, would become a bore.
Each one of these writers is a friend of mine; yet, I am quite sure, neither they nor I would enjoy talking together every evening for a year. I find that I am the average American in virtually everything; that I like what he likes without stopping to find out why; and I believe, too, that there is no reading too good for the American public—that there is nothing real and worth while that is “over his head.”
Ray Long.
Cosmopolitan.
Good Housekeeping.
Harper’s Bazar.
Hearst’s Magazine.
119 West 40th Street,
New York City.