A Manual of the Art of Fiction. Clayton Meeker Hamilton
of all kinds are presenting themselves for discussion. Has the rise of realism made romance impossible? Is there a valid distinction between romance and romanticism? Is the short-story a definite form, differing from the novel in purpose as well as in length? What is the best way to tell a story––in the third person, xxv as in the epic––in the first person, as in an autobiography––or in letters? Which is of most importance, character or incident or atmosphere? Is the novel-with-a-purpose legitimate? Why is it that dramatized novels often fail in the theatre? Ought a novelist to take sides with his characters and against them, or ought he to suppress his own opinions and remain impassive, as the dramatist must? Does a prodigality in the invention of incidents reveal a greater imagination in the novelist than is required for the sincere depicting of simple characters in every-day life? Why has the old trick of inserting brief tales inside a long novel––such as we find in “Don Quixote” and “Tom Jones” and the “Pickwick Papers”––been abandoned of late years? How far is a novelist justified in taking his characters so closely from actual life that they are recognizable by his readers? What are the advantages and disadvantages of local color? How much dialect may a novelist venture to employ? Is the historical novel really a loftier type of fiction than the novel of contemporary life? Is it really possible to write a veracious novel about any other than the novelist’s native land? Why is it that so many of the greater writers of fiction have brought forth their first novel only after they had attained to half the allotted three score years and ten? Is the scientific spirit going to be helpful or harmful to the writer of fiction? Which is the finer form for fiction, a swift and direct telling of the story, with the concentration of a Greek tragedy, such as we find in the “Scarlet Letter” and in “Smoke,” or an ampler and more leisurely movement more like that of the Elizabethan plays, such as we may see in “Vanity Fair” and in “War and Peace”?
These questions, and many another, we may expect to hear discussed, even if they cannot all of them be answered, in any consideration of the materials and the xxvi methods of fiction. And the result of these inquiries cannot fail to be beneficial, both to the writer of fiction and to the reader of fiction. To the story-teller himself they will serve as a stimulus and a guide, calling attention to the technic of his craft and broadening his knowledge of the principles of his art. To the idle reader even they ought to be helpful, because they will force him to think about the novels he may read and because they will lead him to be more exacting, to insist more on veracity in the portrayal of life, and to demand more care in the method of presentation. Every art profits by a wider understanding of its principles, of its possibilities and of its limitations, as well as by a more diffused knowledge of its technic.
Brander Matthews.
Columbia University: 1908.
Postscript: It is a good sign for the future of the novel that in the ten years which have elapsed since this introduction was written, the professors of literature in our colleges and in our graduate schools have been paying increased attention to the study of prose fiction. They had, first of all, to inform themselves more abundantly as to its past history, and as to the relation it has borne to the epic on the one hand and to the drama on the other. Then, secondly, they have been encouraged to pass on to the students they were guiding the results of their researches and of their reflections. And as a result the significance of the novel is day by day made more manifest.
Brander Matthews.
Columbia University: 1918.
A
MANUAL OF THE ART
OF FICTION
3
CHAPTER I
THE PURPOSE OF FICTION
Fiction a Means of Telling Truth––Fact and Fiction––Truth and Fact––The Search for Truth––The Necessary Triple Process––Different Degrees of Emphasis––The Art of Fiction and the Craft of Chemistry––Fiction and Reality––Fiction and History––Fiction and Biography––Biography, History, and Fiction––Fiction Which Is True––Fiction Which Is False––Casual Sins against the Truth in Fiction––More Serious Sins against the Truth––The Futility of the Adventitious––The Independence of Created Characters––Fiction More True Than a Casual Report of Fact––The Exception and the Law––Truthfulness the only Title to Immortality––Morality and Immorality in Fiction––The Faculty of Wisdom––Wisdom and Technic––General and Particular Experience––Extensive and Intensive Experience––The Experiencing Nature––Curiosity and Sympathy.
Fiction a Means of Telling Truth.––Before we set out upon a study of the materials and methods of fiction, we must be certain that we appreciate the purpose of the art and understand its relation to the other arts and sciences. The purpose of fiction is to embody certain truths of human life in a series of imagined facts. The importance of this purpose is scarcely ever appreciated by the casual careless reader of the novels of a season. Although it is commonly believed that such a reader overestimates the weight of works of fiction, the opposite is true––he underestimates it. Every novelist of genuine importance seeks not merely to divert but also to instruct––to instruct, not abstractly, like the essayist, but concretely, by presenting to the reader characters and actions which are true. For the best fiction, although it deals with the lives of imaginary people, is no less true than the best history and biography, 4 which record actual facts of human life; and it is more true than such careless reports of actual occurrences as are published in the daily newspapers. The truth of worthy fiction is evidenced by the honor in which it has been held in all ages among all races. “You can’t fool all the people all the time”; and if the drama and the epic and the novel were not true, the human race would have rejected them many centuries ago. Fiction has survived, and flourishes to-day, because it is a means of telling truth.
Fact and Fiction.––It is only in the vocabulary of very careless thinkers that the words truth and fiction are regarded as antithetic. A genuine antithesis subsists between the words fact and fiction; but fact and truth are not synonymous. The novelist forsakes the realm of fact in order that he may better tell the truth, and lures the reader away from actualities in order to present him with realities. It is of prime importance, in our present study, therefore, that we should understand at the very outset the relation between fact and truth, the distinction between the actual and the real.
Truth and Fact.––A fact is a specific manifestation of a general law: this general law is the truth because of which that fact has come to be. It is a fact that when an apple-tree is shaken by the wind, such apples as may be loosened from their twigs fall to the ground: it is a truth that bodies in space attract each other with a force that varies inversely as the square of the distance between them. Fact is concrete, and is a matter of physical experience: truth is abstract, and is a matter of mental theory. Actuality is the realm of fact, reality the realm of truth. The universe as we apprehend it with our senses is actual; the laws of the universe as we comprehend them with our understanding are real.
The Search for Truth.––All human science is an 5 endeavor to discover the truths which underlie the facts that we perceive: all human philosophy is an endeavor to understand and to appraise those truths when once they are discovered: and all human art is an endeavor to utter them clearly and effectively when once they are appraised and understood. The history of man is the history of a constant and continuous seeking for the truth. Amazed before a universe of facts, he has striven earnestly to discover the truth which underlies them––striven