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The effect of compactness and instantaneity sought in the short story is attained mainly by the observance of two "unities"--the old traditional one of time, and that other, more modern and complex, which requires that any rapidly enacted episode shall be seen through only one pair of eyes.

It is clear that exactly the same thing never happens to any two people, and that each witness of a given incident will report it differently. Should some celestial task-master set the same theme to Jane Austen and George Meredith the bewildered reader would probably have some difficulty in discovering the common denominator. Henry James, in pointing this out, also made the corollary suggestion that the mind chosen by the author to mirror his given case should be so situated, and so constituted, as to take the widest possible view of it.

One thing more is needful for the ultimate effect of probability; and that is, never to let the character who serves as reflector record anything not naturally within his register. It should be the story-teller's first care to choose this reflecting mind deliberately, as one would choose a building-site, or decide upon the orientation of one's house, and when this is done, to live inside the mind chosen, trying to feel, see and react exactly as the latter would, no more, no less, and, above all, no otherwise. Only thus can the writer avoid attributing incongruities of thought and metaphor to his chosen interpreter.

It remains to try to see what constitutes the underlying norm of the "good short story."

Nietzsche said that it took genius to "make an end"--that is, to give the touch of inevitableness to the conclusion of any work of art. In the art of fiction this is peculiarly true of the novel, that slowly built-up monument in which every stone has its particular weight and thrust to carry and of which the foundations must be laid with a view to the proportions of the highest tower. Of the short story, on the contrary, it might be said that the writer's first care should be to know how to make a beginning.

None the less, the short-story writer's first concern, once he has mastered his subject, is to study what musicians call the "attack." The rule that the first page of a novel ought to contain the germ of the whole is even more applicable to the short story, because in the latter case the trajectory is so short that flash and sound nearly coincide.

Benvenuto Cellini relates in his Autobiography that one day, as a child, while he sat by the hearth with his father, they both saw a salamander in the fire. Even then the sight must have been unusual, for the father instantly boxed his son's ears so that he should never forget what he had seen.

This anecdote might serve as an apothegm for the writer of short stories. If his first stroke be vivid and telling the reader's attention will be instantly won. The "'Hell,' said the Duchess as she lit her cigar" with which an Eton boy is said to have begun a tale for his school magazine, in days when Duchesses less commonly smoked and swore, would undoubtedly have carried his narrative to posterity if what followed had been at the same level.

The arrest of attention by a vivid opening should be something more than a trick. It should mean that the narrator has so brooded on this subject that it has become his indeed, so made over and synthesized within him that, as a great draughtsman gives the essentials of a face or landscape in a half-a-dozen strokes, the narrator can "situate" his tale in an opening passage which shall be a clue to all the detail eliminated.

The precious instinct of selection is distilled by that long patience which, if it be not genius, must be one of genius's chief reliances in communicating itself. On this point repetition and insistence are excusable: the shorter the story, the more stripped of detail and "cleared for action," the more it depends for its effect not only on the choice of what is kept when the superfluous has been jettisoned, but on the order in which these essentials are set forth.

The stories of the German "romantic," Heinrich von Kleist, have likewise been praised for an extreme economy of material, but they should rather be held up as an awful warning against waste, for in their ingenious dovetailing of improbable incidents, the only economy practised is that of leaving out all that would have enriched the subject, visually or emotionally. One, indeed, "The Marquise d'O." , has in it the making of a good novel, not unlike Goethe's "Elective Affinities"; but reduced to the limits of a short story it offers a mere skeleton of its subject.

There is a sense in which the writing of fiction may be compared to the administering of a fortune. Economy and expenditure must each bear a part in it, but they should never degenerate into parsimony or waste. True economy consists in the drawing out of one's subject of every drop of significance it can give, true expenditure in devoting time, meditation and patient labour to the process of extraction and representation.

It all comes back to a question of expense: expense of time, of patience, of study, of thought, of letting hundreds of stray experiences accumulate and group themselves in the memory, till suddenly one of the number emerges and throws its sharp light on the subject which solicits you. It has been often, and inaccurately, said that the mind of a creative artist is a mirror, and the work of art the reflection of life in it. The mirror, indeed, is the artist's mind, with all his experiences reflected in it; but the work of art, from the smallest to the greatest, should be something projected, not reflected, something on which his mirrored experiences, at the right conjunction of the stars, are to be turned for its full illumination.

CONSTRUCTING A NOVEL

CONSTRUCTING A NOVEL

For convenience of division it may be said that the novel of psychology was born in France, the novel of manners in England, and that out of their union in the glorious brain of Balzac sprang that strange chameleon-creature, the modern novel, which changes its shape and colour with every subject on which it rests.

In the general muster the novel of manners will be found to have played the most important part; and here English influences preponderate. If innate aptitude were enough for the producing of a work of art, the flowering of the English novel of manners in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries might have surpassed in quality, and intrinsic importance, that of all other schools.

Balzac's debt to Scott has already been touched on; that of the earlier French fiction to Richardson and Sterne is a commonplace in the history of the novel. But the true orientation of English fiction was away from the fine-drawn analysis of Richardson, the desultory humours of Sterne, in the direction of an ample and powerful novel of manners. Smollett and Fielding brought fresh air and noise, the rough-and-tumble of the street, the ribaldry of the tavern, into the ceremonious drawing-rooms depicted by Richardson and later by Miss Burney. The great, the distinguishing gift of the English novelist was a homely simplicity combined with an observation at once keen and indulgent; good humour was the atmosphere and irony the flavour of this great school of observers, from Fielding to George Eliot.

But for this reaction against truth, this sudden fear of touching on any of the real issues of the human comedy and tragedy, Thackeray's natural endowment would have placed him with the very greatest; Trollope might conceivably have been a lesser Jane Austen; and George Eliot, perhaps born with the richest gifts of any English novelist since Thackeray, might have poured out her treasures of wit and irony and tenderness without continually pausing to denounce and exhort.

But the artist depends on atmosphere for the proper development of his gift; and all these novelists were cramped by the hazard of a social convention from which their continental contemporaries had the good fortune to escape. The artist of other races has always been not only permitted but enjoined to see life whole; and it is this, far more than any superiority of genius, that lifts Balzac, Stendhal and Tolstoy so high above even Thackeray when the universal values are to be appraised. The great continental novelists are all the avowed debtors of their English predecessors; they took the English novel of manners in its amplitude, its merriment and pathos, and in their hands "the thing became a trumpet."

Since then all the restraints of prudery which hampered the English novelists of the nineteenth century have come down with a crash, and the "now-that-it-can-be-told-school" has rushed to the opposite excess of dirt-for-dirt's sake, from which no real work of art has ever sprung. Such a reaction was inevitable. No one who remembers that Butler's great novel, "The Way of All Flesh," remained unpublished for over twenty years because it dealt soberly but sincerely with the chief springs of human conduct can wonder that laborious monuments of school-boy pornography are now mistaken for works of genius by a public ignorant of Rabelais and unaware of Apuleius. The balance will right itself with the habit of freedom. The new novelists will learn that it is even more necessary to see life steadily than to recount it whole; and by that time a more thoughtful public may be ripe for the enjoyment of a riper art.

Most novels, for convenient survey, may be grouped under one or the other of three types: manners, character and adventure. These designations may be thought to describe the different methods sufficiently; but as a typical example of each, "Vanity Fair" for the first, "Madame Bovary" for the second, and, for the third, "Rob Roy" or "The Master of Ballantrae," might be named.

This grouping must be further stretched to include as subdivisions what might be called the farcical novel of manners, the romance and the philosophical romance; and immediately "Pickwick" for the first, "Harry Richmond," "La Chartreuse de Parme" or "Lorna Doone" for the second, and "Wilhelm Meister" or "Marius the Epicurean" for the third category, suggest themselves to the reader.

Lastly, in the zone of the unclassifiable float such enchanting hybrids as "John Inglesant," "Lavengro," and that great Swiss novel, "Der Gr?ne Heinrich," in which fantasy, romance and the homeliest realities are so inimitably mingled. It will be noticed that in the last two groups--of romance pure or hybrid--but one French novel has been cited. The French genius, which made "Romanticism" its own , has seldom touched even the hem of Romance: Tristan and Iseult and their long line of descendants come from Broceliande, not from the Ile de France.

Before going farther it should be added that, in a study of the modern novel, the last-named of the three principal groups, the novel of adventure, is the least important because the least modern. That this implies any depreciation of the type in itself will not for a moment be admitted by a writer whose memory rings with the joyous clatter of Dumas the elder, Herman Melville, Captain Marryat and Stevenson; but their gallant yarns might have been sung to the minstrel's harp before Roland and his peers, and told in Babylonian bazaars to Joseph and his Brethren: the tale of adventure is essentially the parent-stock of all subsequent varieties of the novel, and its modern tellers have introduced few innovations in what was already a perfect formula, created in the dawn of time by the world-old appeal: "Tell us another story."

All attempts at classification may seem to belong to school-examinations and text-books, and to reduce the matter to the level of the famous examination-paper which, in reference to Wordsworth's "O cuckoo, shall I call thee bird, or but a wandering voice?" instructed the student to "state alternative preferred, with reasons for your choice." In a sense, classification is always arbitrary and belittling; yet to the novelist's mind such distinctions represent organic realities. It does not much matter under what heading a school-girl is taught to class "Vanity Fair"; but from the creator's point of view classification means the choice of a manner and of an angle of vision, and it mattered greatly that Thackeray knew just how he meant to envisage his subject, which might have been dealt with merely as the tale of an adventuress, or merely as the romance of an honest couple, or merely as an historical novel, and is all of these, and how much more besides--is, indeed, all that its title promises.

The very fact that so many subjects contain the elements of two or three different types of novel makes it one of the novelist's first cares to decide which method he means to use. Balzac, for instance, gives us in "Le P?re Goriot" and in "Eug?nie Grandet" two different ways of dealing with subjects that contain, after all, much the same elements; in the one, englobing his tragic father in a vast social panorama, in the other projecting his miser in huge Moli?resque relief against the narrow background of a sleepy provincial town peopled by three or four carefully-subordinated characters.

There is another kind of hybrid novel, but in which the manner rather than the matter may be so characterized; the novel written almost entirely in dialogue, after the style, say, of "Gyp's" successful tales. It is open to discussion whether any particular class of subjects calls for this treatment. Henry James thought so, and the oddly-contrived "Awkward Age" was a convinced attempt on his part to write "a little thing in the manner of Gyp"--a resemblance which few readers would have perceived had he not pointed it out. Strangely enough, he was persuaded that certain subjects not falling into the stage-categories require nevertheless to be chattered rather than narrated; and, more strangely still, that "The Awkward Age," that delicate and subtle case, all half-lights and shades, all innuendoes, gradations and transitions, was typically made for such treatment.

His hyper-sensitiveness to any comment on his own work made it difficult to discuss the question with him; but his greatest admirers will probably feel that "The Awkward Age" lost more than it gained by being powdered into dialogue, and that, had it been treated as a novel instead of a kind of hybrid play, the obligation of "straight" narrative might have compelled him to face and elucidate the central problem instead of suffering it to lose itself in a tangle of talk. At any rate, such an instance will probably not do much to convince either novelists or their readers of the advantage of the "talked" novel. As a matter of fact, the mode of presentation to the reader, that central difficulty of the whole affair, must always be determined by the nature of the subject; and the subject which instantly calls for dialogue seems as instantly to range itself among those demanding for their full setting-forth the special artifices of the theatre.

The immense superiority of the novel for any subject in which "situation" is not paramount is just that freedom, that ease in passing from one form of presentation to another, and that possibility of explaining and elucidating by the way, which the narrative permits. Convention is the first necessity of all art; but there seems no reason for adding the shackles of another form to those imposed by one's own. Narrative, with all its suppleness and variety, its range from great orchestral effects to the frail vibration of a single string, should furnish the substance of the novel; dialogue, that precious adjunct, should never be more than an adjunct, and one to be used as skilfully and sparingly as the drop of condiment which flavours a whole dish.

The use of dialogue in fiction seems to be one of the few things about which a fairly definite rule may be laid down. It should be reserved for the culminating moments, and regarded as the spray into which the great wave of narrative breaks in curving toward the watcher on the shore. This lifting and scattering of the wave, the coruscation of the spray, even the mere material sight of the page broken into short, uneven paragraphs, all help to reinforce the contrast between such climaxes and the smooth effaced gliding of the narrative intervals; and the contrast enhances that sense of the passage of time for the producing of which the writer has to depend on his intervening narration. Thus the sparing use of dialogue not only serves to emphasize the crises of the tale but to give it as a whole a greater effect of continuous development.

Another argument against the substitution of dialogue for narrative is the wastefulness and round-aboutness of the method. The greater effect of animation, of presentness, produced by its excessive use will not help the reader through more than half the book, whatever its subject; after that he will perceive that he is to be made to pay before the end for his too facile passage through the earlier chapters. The reason is inherent in the method. When, in real life, two or more people are talking together, all that is understood between them is left out of their talk; but when the novelist uses conversation as a means not only of accentuating but of carrying on his tale, his characters have to tell each other many things that each already knows the other knows. To avoid the resulting shock of improbability, their dialogue must be so diluted with irrelevant touches of realistic commonplace, with what might be described as by-talk, that, as in the least good of Trollope's tales, it rambles on for page after page before the reader, resignedly marking time, arrives, bewildered and weary, at a point to which one paragraph of narrative could have carried him.

In writing of the short story I may have seemed to dwell too much on the need of considering every detail in its plan and development; yet the short story is an improvisation, the temporary shelter of a flitting fancy, compared to the four-square and deeply-founded monument which the novel ought to be.

It is not only that the scale is different; it is because of the reasons for its being so. If the typical short story be the foreshortening of a dramatic climax connecting two or more lives, the typical novel usually deals with the gradual unfolding of a succession of events divided by intervals of time, and in which many people, in addition to the principal characters, play more or less subordinate parts. No need now to take in sail and clear the decks; the novelist must carry as much canvas and as many passengers as his subject requires and his seamanship permits.

Still, the novel-theme is distinguished from that suited to the short story not so much by the number of characters presented as by the space required to mark the lapse of time or to permit the minute analysis of successive states of feeling. The latter distinction, it should be added, holds good even when the states of feeling are all contained in one bosom, and crowded into a short period, as they are in "The Kreutzer Sonata." No one would think of classing "The Kreutzer Sonata," or "Ivan Ilyitch," or "Adolphe," among short stories; and such instances prove the difficulty of laying down a hard-and-fast distinction between the forms. The final difference lies deeper. A novel may be all about one person, and about no more than a few hours in that person's life, and yet not be reducible to the limits of a short story without losing all significance and interest. It depends on the character of the subject chosen.

Since the novel-about-one-person has been touched on, it may be well, before going farther, to devote a short parenthesis to its autobiographical or "subjective" variety. In the study of novel-technique one might almost set aside the few masterpieces in this class, such as the "Princesse de Cl?ves," "Adolphe" and "Dominique," as not novels at all, any more than Musset's "Confession d'un Enfant du Si?cle" is a novel. They are, in fact, all fragments of autobiography by writers of genius; and the autobiographical gift does not seem very closely related to that of fiction. In the case of the authors mentioned, none but Madame de La Fayette ever published another novel, and her other attempts were without interest. In all the arts abundance seems to be one of the surest signs of vocation. It exists on the lowest scale, and, in the art of fiction, belongs as much to the producer of "railway novels" as to Balzac, Thackeray or Tolstoy; yet it almost always marks the great creative artist. Whatever a man has it in him to do really well he usually keeps on doing with an indestructible persistency.

There is another sign which sets apart the born novelist from the authors of self-confessions in novel-form; that is, the absence of the objective faculty in the latter. The subjective writer lacks the power of getting far enough away from his story to view it as a whole and relate it to its setting; his minor characters remain the mere satellites of the principal personage , and disappear when not lit up by their central luminary.

Such books are sometimes masterpieces; but if by the term "art of fiction" be understood the creation of imaginary characters and the invention of their imaginary experiences--and there seems no more convenient definition--then the autobiographical tale is not strictly a novel, since no objectively creative effort has gone to its making.

The question of form--already defined as the order, in time and importance, in which the incidents of the narrative are grouped--is, for obvious reasons, harder to deal with in the novel than in the short story, and most difficult in the novel of manners, with its more crowded stage, and its continual interweaving of individual with social analysis.

The double plot has long since vanished, and the "plot" itself, in the sense of an elaborate puzzle into which a given number of characters have to be arbitrarily fitted, has gone with it to the lumber-room of discarded conventions. But traces of the parallel story linger in the need often felt by young writers of crowding their scene with supernumeraries. The temptation is specially great in composing the novel of manners. If one is undertaking to depict a "section of life," how avoid a crowded stage? The answer is, by choosing as principal characters figures so typical that each connotes a whole section of the social background. It is the unnecessary characters who do the crowding, who confuse the reader by uselessly dispersing his attention; but even the number of subordinate yet necessary characters may be greatly reduced by making the principal figures so typical that they adumbrate most of the others.

The traditions of the Th??tre Fran?ais used to require that the number of objects on the stage--chairs, tables, even to a glass of water on a table--should be limited to the actual requirements of the drama: the chairs must all be sat in, the table carry some object necessary to the action, the glass of water or decanter of wine be a part of the drama.

The stage-realism introduced from England a generation ago submerged these scenic landmarks under a flood of irrelevant upholstery; but as guides in the labyrinth of composition they are still standing, as necessary to the novelist as to the playwright. In both cases a far profounder effect is produced by the penetrating study of a few characters than by the multiplying of half-drawn figures. Neither novelist nor playwright should ever venture on creating a character without first following it out to the end of the projected tale and being sure that the latter will be the poorer for its absence. Characters whose tasks have not been provided for them in advance are likely to present as embarrassing problems as other types of the unemployed.

This leads to another important principle. The impression produced by a landscape, a street or a house should always, to the novelist, be an event in the history of a soul, and the use of the "descriptive passage," and its style, should be determined by the fact that it must depict only what the intelligence concerned would have noticed, and always in terms within the register of that intelligence. Two instances, illustrating respectively the observance and the neglect of this rule, may be cited from the novels of Mr. Hardy: the first, that memorable evocation of Egdon Heath by night, as Eustacia Vye looks forth on it from Rainbarrow; the other, the painfully detailed description, in all its geological and agricultural details, of the Wessex vale through which another of Mr. Hardy's heroines, unseeing, wretched, and incapable at any time of noting such particularities as it has amused her creator to set down, flies blindly to her doom.

The two central difficulties of the novel--both of which may at first appear purely technical--are still to be considered. They have to do with the choice of the point from which the subject is to be seen, and with the attempt to produce on the reader the effect of the passage of time. Both may "appear purely technical"; but even were it possible to draw a definite line between the technique of a work of art and its informing spirit, the points in question go too deep to be so classed. They are rooted in the subject; and--as always, in the last issue--the subject itself must determine and limit their office.

The choice of such reflectors is not easy; still more arduous is the task of determining at what point each is to be turned on the scene. The only possible rule seems to be that when things happen which the first reflector cannot, with any show of probability, be aware of, or is incapable of reacting to, even if aware, then another, an adjoining, consciousness is required to take up the tale.

Thus drily stated, the formula may seem pedantic and arbitrary; but it will be found to act of itself in the hands of the novelist who has so let his subject ripen in his mind that the characters are as close to him as his own flesh. To the novelist who lives among his creations in this continuous intimacy they should pour out their tale almost as if to a passive spectator.

The problem of the co-ordinating consciousness has visibly disturbed many novelists, and the different solutions attempted are full of interest and instruction. Each is of course but another convention, and no convention is in itself objectionable, but becomes so only when wrongly used, as dirt, according to the happy definition, is only "matter in the wrong place."

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