The Secret Agent

The origin of "The Secret Agent": subject, treatment, artistic purpose
and every other motive that may induce an author to take up his pen,
can, I believe, be traced to a period of mental and emotional reaction.

The actual facts are that I began this book impulsively and wrote it
continuously. When in due course it was bound and delivered to the
public gaze I found myself reproved for having produced it at all. Some
of the admonitions were severe, others had a sorrowful note. I have not
got them textually before me but I remember perfectly the general
argument, which was very simple; and also my surprise at its nature. All
this sounds a very old story now! And yet it is not such a long time
ago. I must conclude that I had still preserved much of my pristine
innocence in the year 1907. It seems to me now that even an artless
person might have foreseen that some criticisms would be based on the
ground of sordid surroundings and the moral squalor of the tale.

That, of course, is a serious objection. It was not universal. In fact,
it seems ungracious to remember so little reproof amongst so much
intelligent and sympathetic appreciation; and I trust that the readers
of this Preface will not hasten to put it down to wounded vanity of a
natural disposition to ingratitude. I suggest that a charitable heart
could very well ascribe my choice to natural modesty. Yet it isn't
exactly modesty that makes me select reproof for the illustration of my
case. No, it isn't exactly modesty. I am not at all certain that I am
modest; but those who have read so far through my work will credit me
with enough decency, tact, savoir faire, what you will, to prevent me
from making a song for my own glory out of the words of other people.
No! The true motive of my selection lies in quite a different trait. I
have always had a propensity to justify my action. Not to defend. To
justify. Not to insist that I was right but simply to explain that there
was no perverse intention, no secret scorn for the natural sensibilities
of mankind at the bottom of my impulses.

That kind of weakness is dangerous only so far that it exposes one to
the risk of becoming a bore; for the world generally is not interested
in the motives of any overt act but in its consequences. Man may smile
and smile but he is not an investigating animal. He loves the obvious.
He shrinks from explanations. Yet I will go on with mine. It's obvious
that I need not have written that book. I was under no necessity to deal
with that subject; using the word subject both in the sense of the tale
itself and in the larger one of a special manifestation in the life of
mankind. This I fully admit. But the thought of elaborating mere
ugliness in order to shock, or even