, in this chapter, to discuss the justice or
injustice of the view of motion pictures thus forcibly presented. I have
read _Eris_ with an interest sharpened by the fact that its hero is a
writer. I seem to see in what is said about and by Barry Annan expressions
of Mr. Chambers's own attitude of more than casual importance.

Barry Annan is obsessed with the stupidity of the American mass and more
particularly with the grossness (as he sees it) of New York City.

"Annan went on with his breakfast leisurely. As he ate he read over his
pencilled manuscript and corrected it between bites of muffin and bacon.

"It was laid out on the lines of those modern short stories which had
proven so popular and which had lifted Barry Annan out of the uniform
ranks of the unidentified and given him an individual and approving
audience for whatever he chose to offer them.

"Already there had been lively competition among periodical publishers for
the work of this newcomer.

"His first volume of short stories was now in preparation. Repetition had
stencilled his name and his photograph upon the public cerebrum. Success
had not yet enraged the less successful in the literary puddle. The frogs
chanted politely in praise of their own comrade.

"The maiden, too, who sips the literary soup that seeps through the pages
of periodical publications, was already requesting his autograph. Clipping
agencies began to pursue him; film companies wasted his time with
glittering offers that never materialised. Annan was on the way to
premature fame and fortune. And to the aftermath that follows for all who
win too easily and too soon.

"There is a King Stork for all puddles. His law is the law of
compensations. Dame Nature executes it--alike on species that swarm and on
individuals that ripen too quickly.

"Annan wrote very fast. There was about thirty-five hundred words in the
story of Eris. He finished it by half past ten.

"Re-reading it, he realised it had all the concentrated brilliancy of an
epigram. Whether or not it would hold water did not bother him. The story
of Eris was Barry Annan at his easiest and most persuasive. There was the
characteristic and ungodly skill in it, the subtle partnership with a
mindless public that seduces to mental speculation; the reassuring caress
as reward for intellectual penetration; that inborn cleverness that makes
the reader see, applaud, or pity him or herself in the sympathetic role of
a plaything of C