Looking Backward

The Leetes take West to a public library. They tell him he is lucky to now have so many new great works of literature to experience. Dr. Leete explains their social advancements have ushered in an age of art and science unmatched in history. West asks about the publishing industry. Dr. Leete explains that everything is self-published now at the expense of the author and published by the state without any censorship whatsoever. The popular books return enough credit to the author—via a version of royalties—to give the author a reduction in their usual work hours, in order to write more, and the most successful authors can thus spend their career only writing. The value of literature—as well as of art and music—is determined entirely by its popularity with the people.

West believes that at least his century’s “free newspaper press” must have survived the changes to the country (97). Dr. Leete responds that 19th-century newspapers were primarily for profit and controlled by the wealthy. Instead, popular opinion is published by the author in the form of pamphlets or by newspapers run by groups of interested people, by their own expense withdrawn from their annual credit. West notes that artistic success and “inventive productiveness” are the only ways that a person can avoid serving in the industrial army (99).