OCR Text |
Show What Novel Readers Like! That old question whether the poor prefer to read stories about themselves them-selves rather than about the rich has been revived in England and discussed discuss-ed by serial writers. Some believe that most readers, whether poor or rich, prefer novels dealing with a class different from their own, and some maintain that the majority of readers are more interested in their own class. Nobody knows. Rut something some-thing undoubtedly depends upon the novelist himself. Dickens had no difficulty dif-ficulty in Interesting everybody In the poor. Thackeray made the well-to-do and the rich interesting. So does Mrs. Wharton. And innumerable others. On the other hand, Jack London, Kauffman, James Oppenhelm and possibly pos-sibly two or three others have sketched sketch-ed wonderful pictures of lowly and obscure lives. The "geat American novel," which may have been written, but is still awaiting publication, will deal neither with the rich nor with the poor exclusively, nor with the middle mid-dle class, but with all sorts and conditions con-ditions of men. It will bo a novel of democracy neither aristocratic nor proletarian. |