Show D I JB Cetter ett T I J BY B Y RICHARD RIG H f R D LE L E GALLIENNE G f L L TEN Nt HE literary event of tho tho t week Hoek for or us in America anyhow has been the publication TI T tion Uon of Frank Norris novel nove The Pit Pit Doubleday Dou Doubleday Doubleday bleday Page Co and I am afraid If U we are areto areto areto to be honest onest and judge the book by the high aims of its author and his previous striking ment we e 0 must confess the event a disappointment nt From the the point of view of oC the average novel reader r ader asking ask asking askIng ing only a good entertainment or or the business bu lne s man manon manon manon on the lookout for something to read on the oars some something something something thing dealing with his own world The Pit is all right though as that its success Is not remarkable Merely as 10 a astory story it lacks novelty for or both plot ana apU characters are ar so usual to be something like She convent conven conventions ions ns of or the modern American novel The strong worthwhile w American business man the more more or less dilettante art artist artIst let the queenly hal developed romantic American girl alternately drawn to the one type and the other the fierce battlefield of the floor the Napoleonic deal dealand dealand dealand and the Inevitable Waterloo crish these are as much the recognized material of Cf romance nowadays as King Sing Arthur and the Round Table Business men men have hate little use for or artists but the despised literary artist with that Imaginative sympathy which takes the whole world for his hlf province has long ago entered Into the u mind of or ortho the tho business man and Interpreted his romance r mance and cele celebrated celebrated celebrated his strength his underlying poetry and his gen general general ry eral oral This was done long IonS before Norris was born Therefore if i Norris was to do It again his success obviously could not depend on the novelty of oC his theme but only on the tho quality of his hip treat treatment t the significance of or his aim the breadth of or his handling ha ji ing the general force and freshness of his bis presentation Now Nov No Norris aim was big and ambitious enough It has been b en much mu h advertised and it JI Is Js written large and anda a little venturesomely ventur on his title page ge The h Epic of or Wheat The Pit PitA A Story of Chicago Chicag This bode bo we know was was to be the second part ofa or of a another venturesome word of which The Octopus was the first and of oC which alas the third ca cap never er be written The conception was poetic In the large largo way wheat as asan asan LS an elemental It was unquestionably an epic idea But it Is one thing to see Jin an epic idea and another to embody v it In a form which shall have hav the epic breadth the epic simplicity the epic universality Your figures must be epic as well as your our idea Ide They must at once be men and women and yet so universalized universalized universalized as to be types latently symbolic of of their epic plc significance Then the whole book bo k must be filled with the indefinable epic breath the sense sen of a ai world atmos atmosphere atm s phere just as for illustration one feels fin in inN New w York Rork the enveloping breath of ot the Atlantic t it must be said that except for a hint of or It In the opening chapter ch pi r The he Pit fails tails entirely to convey this epic Impression I Its title page with unconscious un irony records both th its aim and Its achievement achI Its aim im Is the epic er J of wheat its achievement achievement i is a Story of ot Chicago A clever cle well written story if you OU like but still nl a 1 Story of Chicago strangely falling failing to mean that larger universal uni universal unIversal versal meaning with which Norris dreamed of charging It Only as I said in the striking opening g chapter h Pter are we for a moment m ment conscious of epic forces The whole book Is there in embryo but the chapters chanter n that follow are a strangely inadequate developments development The e grouping gr of contrasting forces and personalities the contrast be between between between tween the romance world of the imagination as embodied em embodied embodIed bodied in the opera the romance of ideal ic eal types of leg legend leg end and the romance of the living world being acted every overy moment around us as embodied in hi the smothered whispers of business men talking quotations quo ns under their breath while the prima donna executes exe tes an aria arla f is la forcibly forcIbly forcibly bly and even cen poignantly brought br home us As Asa a pre prelude prelude prelude lude a manifesto of f epic Intention this first chapter chaPt J is notably successful though the very completeness 1 l of its suggestion sugg perhaps a little too much mu the air ah of ofa ofa ofa a text test t t on which the ensuing novel noel Is to enlarge enlarge and aDd indeed the characters throughout seem se m rather r minia miniature minia miniature ia ture Illustrations of that hat epic Intention than living men eJland and women unconsciously embodying vast ast forces and filling a world stage Far from being epic Curtis Jadwin and an all the other dramatis personae pc seem to tomoye move moye like pigmies under the sky of or Norris great gr at Idea Instead of at beIn being dignified Jy by his artistic motive they are dwarfed Into absolute insignificance n by the she size of of o othe the th stage unon Ulon which he be has hits thrust them the t from the grandiose suggestiveness to toy fi f i t Ct ts to the om domestic triviality of the second is isa isa a shock almost startling particularly In such a strong writer as Norris and the larger air of that prelude preludes is never regained though the literary machinery of ot o f it is occasionally employed here and there thore after atter the manner mariner of a refrain Curtis Jadwin whether in n prosperity or orin orIn orin in the hour of his final catastrophe obstinately refuses to take on any of those epic attributes utes with which his creator Is fain to endue him In vain val Norris talks of the Board of at Trade building as black monolithic crouch inn ing In on its foundations found like a monstrous m sphinx with blind eyes Curtis Jadwin Is no as Bal Eel Balsac sac mc lc or Zola might have made him He Is simply one more business man involved in operations too big for fr him and all those implicated in his are equally private provincial Nor do dowe we even feel fee the fateful presence of the wheat ajl through as we did in inThe inThe The Octopus Oct pus A pretty good story of Chicago Yes but The Tho Epic of W Nol Norris had much more ore of oC the true epic touch to ch in his early e book the disagreeably powerful ague But Hut there it was unconscious as it always must be In this wheat trilogy he has been too conscious co of his pur purpose pur purpose pur pose One feels so to say that his theme had hadnot not been sufficiently long in soak It did not really possess P him He stood outside it it all the time The wheat had hadnot hadnot hadnot not not really entered into In o his soul L t imagine e that even the business machinery of ot the book boo t will seem superficial cial vial and external to business men though here I am amnot not nota a competent judge as its psychology and its character characterization characterization characterization assuredly are No it is to be feared that epics are born without knowing they the jara ur are epics and c f e enot not of deliberate artistic Intention however strenuous str n nits its Assuredly it is i as well welI not to label l b thom them in advance ad n e and it may ma very nry well be that America must remain Its own epic t tAn All An this of course Is not one tw word rd against a the no nobility nObility of Frank Norris aim the fine sincerity of his art and the pity of his cruelly shortened career a ca ea career 8 reer reel the till presage of or which Js Is s in no degree belied by his comparative comp failure in The Pit Finer work has al ai already alread ready read stood to his name came und and far fur finer Ch er work must In Inevitably have followed Copyright 1503 Doi l by b Robert Howard Hor card Russell |