Literature And Life. William Dean Howells

Literature And Life - William Dean Howells


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      Literature And Life

      WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS

      

      

      

       Literature and Life, W. D. Howells

       Jazzybee Verlag Jürgen Beck

       86450 Altenmünster, Loschberg 9

       Deutschland

      

       ISBN: 9783849657741

      

       www.jazzybee-verlag.de

       [email protected]

      

      

      CONTENTS:

       BIBLIOGRAPHICAL.. 1

       THE MAN OF LETTERS AS A MAN OF BUSINESS. 3

       CONFESSIONS OF A SUMMER COLONIST.. 25

       THE EDITOR’S RELATIONS WITH THE YOUNG CONTRIBUTOR.. 37

       LAST DAYS IN A DUTCH HOTEL.. 47

       SOME ANOMALIES OF THE SHORT STORY.. 57

       SPANISH PRISONERS OF WAR.. 67

       AMERICAN LITERARY CENTRES. 75

       THE STANDARD HOUSEHOLD-EFFECT COMPANY.. 84

       STACCATO NOTES OF A VANISHED SUMMER.. 92

       WORRIES OF A WINTER WALK.. 100

       SUMMER ISLES OF EDEN.. 106

       WILD FLOWERS OF THE ASPHALT.. 113

       A CIRCUS IN THE SUBURBS. 117

       A SHE HAMLET.. 122

       THE MIDNIGHT PLATOON... 128

       THE BEACH AT ROCKAWAY.. 133

       SAWDUST IN THE ARENA.. 141

       AT A DIME MUSEUM... 145

       AMERICAN LITERATURE IN EXILE.. 151

       THE HORSE SHOW... 154

       THE PROBLEM OF THE SUMMER.. 161

       AESTHETIC NEW YORK FIFTY-ODD YEARS AGO.. 165

       FROM NEW YORK INTO NEW ENGLAND... 169

       THE ART OF THE ADSMITH.. 177

       THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PLAGIARISM... 182

       PURITANISM IN AMERICAN FICTION... 185

       THE WHAT AND THE HOW IN ART.. 189

       POLITICS OF AMERICAN AUTHORS. 193

       STORAGE.. 198

       “FLOATING DOWN THE RIVER ON THE O-HI-O”. 206

      BIBLIOGRAPHICAL

      Perhaps the reader may not feel in these papers that inner solidarity which the writer is conscious of; and it is in this doubt that the writer wishes to offer a word of explanation. He owns, as he must, that they have every appearance of a group of desultory sketches and essays, without palpable relation to one another, or superficial allegiance to any central motive. Yet he ventures to hope that the reader who makes his way through them will be aware, in the retrospect, of something like this relation and this allegiance.

      For my own part, if I am to identify myself with the writer who is here on his defence, I have never been able to see much difference between what seemed to me Literature and what seemed to me Life. If I did not find life in what professed to be literature, I disabled its profession, and possibly from this habit, now inveterate with me, I am never quite sure of life unless I find literature in it. Unless the thing seen reveals to me an intrinsic poetry, and puts on phrases that clothe it pleasingly to the imagination, I do not much care for it; but if it will do this, I do not mind how poor or common or squalid it shows at first glance: it challenges my curiosity and keeps my sympathy. Instantly I love it and wish to share my pleasure in it with some one else, or as many ones else as I can get to look or listen. If the thing is something read, rather than seen, I am not anxious about the matter: if it is like life, I know that it is poetry, and take it to my heart. There can be no offence in it for which its truth will not make me amends.

      Out of this way of thinking and feeling about these two great things, about Literature and Life, there may have arisen a confusion as to which is which. But I do not wish to part them, and in their union I have found, since I learned my letters, a joy in them both which I hope will last till I forget my letters.

       “So was it when my life began;

       So is it, now I am a man;

       So be it when I shall grow old.”

      

      It is the rainbow in the sky for me; and I have seldom seen a sky without some bit of rainbow in it. Sometimes I can make others see it, sometimes not; but I always like to try, and if I fail I harbor no worse thought of them than that they have not had their eyes examined and fitted with glasses which would at least have helped their vision.

      As to the where and when of the different papers, in which I suppose their bibliography properly lies, I need not be very exact. “The Man of Letters as a Man of Business” was written in a hotel at Lakewood in the May of 1892 or 1893, and pretty promptly printed in Scribner’s Magazine; “Confessions of a Summer Colonist” was done at York Harbor in the fall of 1898 for the Atlantic Monthly, and was a study of life at that pleasant resort as it was lived-in the idyllic times of the earlier settlement, long before motors and almost before private carriages; “American Literary Centres,” “American Literature in Exile,”


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