| Show WORKS OF FICTION in mr howells little book critics Crit criticism icis m and fiction he reports a correspondent writing biting to him in answer to some bragging claims for the novel as a mental and moral means 1 I have very grave doubts as to the whole list of magnificent things that you seem to think novels have done for the race and can witness in myself many evil things which bithey athey have done for me whatever ev r in in my m mental makeup make up is wild and visionary whatever is untrue whatever is is injurious I 1 can trace to the perusal of some work of fiction worse than that novels beget such high strung and supersensitive per sensitive ideas of life that plain industry D and plodding perseverance are despised espi sed and matter of tact fact poverty or every day distress meets with no sympathy if indeed noticed at all by one who has crept over the impossibly accumulated sufferings of some dashing hero or gaudy heroine mr howells drops the controversy but says novels are now accepted by every one laying claim to cultivated taste and they really form the whole intellectual life of such immense numbers of persons without question of their influence good or bad upon the mind that it is refreshing to have them frankly denounced and he confesses that much fiction has been wholly injurious from its falsehood its folly its wantonness and its aimlessness much novel reading is the emptiest dissipation like opium eating leaving the mind the weaker and crazier for the debauc bo but fiction reading is not responsible for all the evils in the character of its victims the reader who uses care in choosing from this fungus growth in in the fields of literature may nourish himself on the true mushroom at no risk from the poisonous species the tests are plain simple infallible the novel that flatters batters the passions and exalts them above the principles is poisonous the immoral romance th that at preseD presents ts the sins of sense unvisited by the penalties swift or slow but inexorably certain in the real world is poisonous the tale that tickles our prejudice lulls our judgment or pampers our appetite for the marvelous is is innutritious and unwholesome the story that teaches through its gaudy heroine that love or the passion mistaken for it is the chief interest of life above prudence obedience reason duty will make no reader either healthy or wealthy or wise any novel that sins against truth which alone can exalt and purify men that leaves its reader in doubt between what is right and what is wrong what is noble and what is base what is health and what is perdition in the actions and characters which it portrays is a mental and moral pabulum to be let alone but if a novel is true to the motives the impulses the principles that shap the life of actual men and women if it presents that truth which includes the highest morality and the highest art it cannot be wicked it cannot be weak it cannot create wickedness nor weakness it if it is true to what men and women know 0 w of df one an others souls it will be true enough and it may be great and beautiful and beneficent all literature must be inspru ins instructive truc active tive iv entertaining or both at 0 once n ce i novel is no exception n dickens wan our hearts at his christmas fires thac ha eray rouses our indignation an and buic ens our contempt at his sham leas teas mrs stowe makes us witness the de dea of hoary wrongs charles kini kin ley macdonald mrs ward mg us take theological notes but all f t time we are entertained they give the strong story with its startling pa in inda dent its merriment its pathos it its in intro cate plot its wondering what will co coart next in the plot the incidents inte interests interesting int erestine resti in themselves must be so carried fo ward as to form one chief unified action there must be something too to tell 41 and each incident must help tell it but ut a adb leave the reader in suspense to the he en end reade in christie johnstone geores eo eliot in silas warner blackmon u lorna lorna doone payne in Confident confide Us agent show in this respect colstr construe tive live power of the highest bruer the end of the story must havet suitable proportion and relation to beginning happy it that is the pl I 1 righting the wrongs occurring in this action doing justice to virtuous an and cious or a noble termination in trag tragedy lifting the readers nature into a hi hies plane pane of sacrifice and pathos if the ginning points that way no one banfe to read a pointless story the characters must be clear clearly lyv dra draw interesting in themselves suited tro to tsa situations and action and studied f aroa real life there should be at least aw 0 who may impress us as a worthy nj bonal friend whose name lingers in minds the dialogue clever and anat natural must be true to the nature of the s specht ers the action is the result 0 of mental and moral forces at play novelist studies men and women he h concerned with their thoughts t tl feelings their actions his materi material his impressions of life the air of r rei ty is his supreme vitrue anthony TI lope weakly confesses that he could gi his story any other turn the lac lack reality in some of his stories is the S sal confession the novel is a failure W does not make its person sn visible tol to i the incidents and situations ra mi seem probable heroes who wait in 1 middle midd ae of the highway for a i span runaway horses and stop them by strength without yielding an inc inch no longer acceptable the quan quandary ary which john ward preacher and I 1 heterodox wile wife find themselves ca cote never have happened in real life S su a couple would nave have quarreled a dox do times before he could have so swe popped the question and got such sweet yes sir please the descriptive portions must be b ia much m uc h as possible oss I 1 ble incidental brief SUE cestive of Onic pictures tures and strictly coffin confined to what is closely connected with ane development of character and in subordination to it human inter interest must absorb everything else the b bejot storytellers story tellers never divert attention fr frodi the actors charles reade in his comparable cloister and hea shows master strokes of this kind of indirect suggested description A the novel must be instructive L masters of fiction have been de deliberative deliberali liberati ly didactic bunyan bulvan never ansis insisted more strongly on god cod duty immo immortal ity the I 1 sinfulness of sin and the b beauty eat of holiness than the liberal and a artia tic dc romancers must accept and insist on them what is the soul of the work what end does it serve with what spirit does it treat of human nature in what tone in what mood does it leave the reader are questions every critic will ask in passing judgment on a book life is the great school of mankind if a novelist wishes to impress a great truth he merely represents that portion of life which exhibits his truth and the more faithfully the more artistically and didactically by judicious selection he presents noble standards of character and noble lessons of living the good novel adds to our intellectual forces it is of the literature of power as well as of the literature ot of knowledge ow ledge to a wealth of wit and wisdom it adds adas a breadth to our knowledge of men and things of all time wherever we go orttie bare engh ush and scottish history the england and scotland which we know are learned in 0 dickens and thackeray and george fiot liot and aviter walter scott in storytelling story telling a cheerful countenance works wonders A story is attract U htwe only when told brightly humor Is warm pleasant natural without the sparkle of wit and the genial glow i humor a novel is unnatural and re Ve bellant llant take john from the autocrat ant and how much of the glow would digap peat par even that boy with his bis popa aft could not be spared abood A good novel will as much as possible kv athe the reader in good clean company wi tea and their lives are not to be pre sombud in fiction just as they are with no election no idealizing it the base and morally deformed appear it must ba to make hideous their baseness add astl deformity vanity fair would bl jt intolerable on any other ather principle joe i unwholesomeness of cheap sensa onal and much of the realistic fiction w in making us keep company with bl weak minded or vicious vj cious women jast L priggish and irresolute men in the novelists mind is rich ale familiar with lofty ideas and the spiders mind receptive to their in ance tn ce will the novel partake of the ettre of and exert the influence of a Q oric ot of art finally anally the best novel must present bu tatty y oi of literary workmanship faulty ii W Y style detracts irredeemably the sum of all other excellences igent readers love howells for his asar vigorous musical piu english aay y a page in the works of any great of fiction is not carefully vodel wfred up more than irom from any other kia d of prose writer we have a right to act from the novelist a diction clear afele elegant a construction varied and a rhythm and cadence iret of fence |
