THE TIME has come to talk of cats and Chinamen, and rattlesnakes and skulls—and why it is these things abound in yarns for WEIRD TALES. Particularly cats and Chinamen. Believe it or not, every second manuscript we open (and that's placing the average rather low) is concerned with one or the other, or both, of these.
Why is this? Is it because a cat and a Chinaman suggest the mysticism of the Orient, and thus seem excellent "props" for weird fiction? Or is it merely because both mind their own business, imperturbably pursue their destinies, and thereby create the impression that there's some deep-laid mystery here? We ask you that.
Whatever the reason, it's an odd and curious fact that when an author sets out to tell a weird tale his mind turns, as if instinctively, to cats and Chinamen. And then, for good measure, he not infrequently throws in a few rattlesnakes and a skull or two.
Sometimes the result is interesting. And sometimes it is awful! And again, sometimes, it is a ludicrous thing, unconsciously funny.
We have no prejudices against Chinese characters in fiction, and we have none whatever against cats. For that matter, we haven't any prejudices of any sort. We've published a good many stories about Chinese, and quite a large number about cats, and not a few that featured skulls and rattlesnakes. You'll find some in this June issue.
But we didn't accept those stories because of the afore-mentioned features, nor yet in spite of them. We accepted them solely because they were GOOD stories. We observe one rule, and one rule only, in selecting stories for your entertainment. We think we've mentioned this before, but we'll say again that our only requirement is: The thing MUST be interesting!
If a story interests us it will likewise interest others, or so we believe. And if it doesn't—Thumbs Down! And it doesn't matter a good gosh darn whether the hero, or villain, has yellow skin and oblique eyelids, or flaxen hair and sky-blue eyes, or whether or not a green-eyed cat howls atop a grinning skull. The story's the thing!
All the same, though, we would like to know why all these cats and Chinamen are slinking mysteriously through our manuscripts. We read eight before breakfast this morning (chosen quite at random), and we hope to die if there wasn't a Chinaman in every last one of them!
AND still the letters pour in from delighted readers—plenty of them! Manifestly, it is quite impossible to print more than a fractional part of them here, but we can't refrain from quoting at least three that concern Paul Suter's story, "Beyond the Door," which appeared in the April WEIRD TALES.
We take it you remember this story and will therefore be interested in these comments. The first letter comes from R. E. Lambert, secretary of the Washington Square College of New York University, New York, and reads as follows:
"Dear sir: Just as Woodrow Wilson used to say during his most trying days in the presidency that when he wanted to get his mind completely off his work he would turn to a detective story, so I turn for my own relaxation to the horror story.
"I suppose it would take exhaustive questioning by a psychoanalyst to discover why this soft of literature appeals to me, but the fact is it does so appeal. While there are hundreds of others like me in this respect, I doubt whether the number is great enough to make such a venture as yours a considerable financial success—therefore, the more praise to you for your courage in launching WEIRD TALES.
"What particularly impelled me to write this letter is the story in the current issue, entitled 'Beyond the Door.' One reason why I single this one from such a congeries of thrilling, weird tales is that, with all its mystery and suggestion of the supernatural, the dénouement and everything that leads up to it are discovered at the end to be logically and physically 'possible.' So often, in mystery stories, we are called upon to accept much that simply is not naturally possible, and we turn from them, duly horrified, but unpersuaded that the tale is more than a figment of a morbid imagination.
"From the standpoint of construction, I have read few stories that so faithfully adhere to the trinity of short story tradition—unity, coherence. and mass. Especially on the score of unity, the most important of the trinity, do I find this tale worthy of much praise. Not a situation, not a paragraph, nor a sentence, but which has a direct bearing on the unfoldment of the plot. And I find no single instance where the choice of words seems to have resulted from a straining for effect. Of how many stories, whether horrific or any other kind, can this truly be said?
"Then, too, very few tales are really brought home to the reader's own intimate experience of life. Yet here we shudder at the terrors created by a guilty conscience, and approve, while we shudder, of the terrible punishment that is meted out for the wrong-doing. How very real it thus becomes to all of us!
"Finally, the author dares to do, and admirably succeeds in doing, what so few writers of fiction attempt—and mostly bungle when they do attempt. I refer to the linking of his story in the closing paragraphs to man's inevitable, age-old uncertainty as to what is to come in the hereafter. This alone elevates 'Beyond the Door' out of the ordinary run of fiction.
"Here's wishing you a well-merited success!"
The next one was written by Rev. Andrew Wallace MacNeill, minister of the Bethlehem Congregational Church, International Falls, Minnesota:
"Gentlemen: I have read with much interest and pleasure the April number of your new magazine, which I believe will make a distinctive and acceptable place for itself in magazine literature.
"I am particularly interested in the story by a new writer, Paul Suter, 'Beyond the Door' proving exceptionally appealing and gripping. I hope you will publish more work by this writer, as I believe if he maintains the standard of this story your readers will make quite a popular response."
