Читать книгу Скорбь сатаны / The sorrows of Satan. Уровень 4 онлайн

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I had been out all day trudging from one newspaper office to another, seeking for work and finding none. Every available post was filled. I had also tried, unsuccessfully, to dispose of a manuscript of my own, – a work of fiction which I knew had some merit. But all the ‘readers’ found it exceptionally worthless. These ‘readers’ were novelists themselves who read other people’s productions in their spare moments and passed judgment on them.

The last publisher was a kindly man who looked at my shabby clothes and gaunt face with some commiseration.

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“Pardon me,” I interposed, “but are you sure you judge the public taste correctly?”

He smiled a bland smile.

“Of course I am sure,” he replied. “It is my business to know the public taste as thoroughly as I know my own pocket. Understand me, I don’t suggest that you should write a book on an indecent subject, but I assure you high-class fiction doesn’t sell. The critics don’t like it. What goes down with them and with the public is some sensational realism.”