A Manual of the Art of Fiction. Clayton Meeker Hamilton
those truths which later they have labored to impart. Richardson, the father of the modern English novel, was fifty-one years old when “Pamela” was published; Scott was forty-three when “Waverley” appeared; Hawthorne was forty-six when he wrote “The Scarlet Letter”; Thackeray and George Eliot were well on their way to the forties when they completed “Vanity Fair” and “Adam Bede”; and these are the first novels of each writer.
Wisdom and Technic.––The young author who aspires to write novels must not only labor to acquire the technic of his art: it is even more important that he should so order his life as to grow cunning in the basic truths of human nature. His first problem––the problem of acquiring technic––is comparatively easy. Technic may be learned from books––the master-works of art in fiction. It may be studied empirically. The student may observe what the masters have, and have not, done; and he may puzzle out the reasons why. And he may perhaps be helped by constructive critics of fiction in his endeavor to understand these reasons. But his second problem––the problem of developing wisdom––is more difficult; and he must grapple with it without any aid from books. What he learns of human life, he must learn in his own way, without extraneous assistance.
It is easy enough for the student to learn, for instance, 21 how the great short-stories have been constructed. It is easy enough for the critic, on the basis of such knowledge, to formulate empirically the principles of this special art of narrative. But it is not easy for the student to discover, or for the critic to suggest, how a man in his early twenties may develop such a wise insight into human life as is displayed, for example, in Mr. Kipling’s “Without Benefit of Clergy.” A few suggestions may, perhaps, be offered; but they must be considered merely as suggestions, and must not be overvalued.
General and Particular Experience.––At the outset, it may be noted that the writer of fiction needs two different endowments of experience:––first, a broad and general experience of life at large; and second, a deep and specific experience of that particular phase of life which he wishes to depict. A general and broad experience is common to all masters of the art of fiction: it is in the particular nature of their specific and deep experience that they differ one from another. Although in range and sweep of general knowledge Sir Walter Scott was far more vast than Jane Austen, he confessed amazement at the depth of her specific knowledge of every-day English middle-class society. Most of the great novelists have made, like Jane Austen, a special study of some particular field. Hawthorne is an authority on Puritan New England, Thackeray on London high society, Henry James on cosmopolitan super-civilization. It would seem, therefore, that a young author, while keeping his observation fresh for all experience, should devote especial notice to experience of some particular phase of life. But along comes Mr. Rudyard Kipling, with his world-engirdling knowledge, to jostle us out of faith in too narrow a focus of attention.
Extensive and Intensive Experience.––Experience is of two sorts, extensive and intensive. A mere glance at 22 the range of Mr. Kipling’s subjects would show us the breadth of his extensive experience: evidently he has lived in many lands and looked with sympathy upon the lives of many sorts of people. But in certain stories, like his “They” for instance, we are arrested rather by the depth of his intensive experience. “They” reveals to us an author who not necessarily has roamed about the world, but who necessarily has felt all phases of the mother-longing in a woman. The things that Mr. Kipling knows in “They” could never have been learned except through sympathy.
Intensive experience is immeasurably more valuable to the fiction-writer than extensive experience: but the difficulty is that, although the latter may be gained through the obvious expedients of travel and voluntary association with many and various types of people, the former can never be gained through any amount of deliberate and conscious seeking. The great intensive experiences of life, like love and friendship, must come unsought if they are to come at all; and no man can gain a genuine experience of any joy or sorrow by experimenting purposely with life. The deep experiences must be watched and waited for. The author must be ever ready to realize them when they come: when they knock upon his door, he must not make the mistake of answering that he is not at home. But he must not make the contrary mistake of going out into the highways and hedges to compel them to come within his gates.
The Experiencing Nature.––Undoubtedly, very few people are always at home for every real experience that knocks upon their doors; very few people, to say the thing more simply, have an experiencing nature. But great fiction may be written only by men of an experiencing nature; and here is a basis for confession that, after all, fiction-writers are born, not made. The 23 experiencing nature is difficult to define; but two of its most evident qualities, at any rate, are a lively curiosity and a ready sympathy. A combination of these two qualities gives a man that intensity of interest in human life which is a condition precedent to his ever growing to understand it. Curiosity, for instance, is the most obvious asset in Mr. Kipling’s equipment. We did not need his playful confession in the “Just So Stories”––
| “I keep six honest serving-men (They taught me all I knew):–– Their names are What and Why and When And How and Where and Who”–– |
to convince us that from his very early youth he has been an indefatigable asker of questions. It was only through a healthy curiosity that he could have acquired the enormous stores of specific knowledge concerning almost every walk of life that he has displayed in his successive volumes. On the other hand, it was obviously through his vast endowment of sympathy that Dickens was able to learn so thoroughly all phases of the life of the lowly in London.
Curiosity and Sympathy.––Experience gravitates to the man who is both curious and sympathetic. The kingdom of adventure is within us. Just as we create beauty in an object when we look upon it beautifully, so we create adventure all around us when we walk the world inwardly aglow with love of life. Things of interest happened to Robert Louis Stevenson every day of his existence, because he incorporated the faculty of being interested in things. In one of his most glowing essays, “The Lantern-Bearers,” he declared that never an hour of his life had gone dully yet; if it had been spent waiting at a railway junction, he had had some scattering thoughts, he had counted some grains of 24 memory, compared to which the whole of many romances seemed but dross. The author who aspires to write fiction should cultivate the faculty of caring for all things that come to pass; he should train himself rigorously never to be bored; he should look upon all life that swims into his ken with curious and sympathetic eyes, remembering always that sympathy is a deeper faculty than curiosity: and because of the profound joy of his interest in life, he should endeavor humbly to earn that heritage of interest by developing a thorough understanding of its source. In this way, perhaps, he may grow aware of certain truths of life which are materials for fiction. If so, he will have accomplished the better half of his work: he will have found something to say.
Macbeth: Act V; Scene 3.
REVIEW QUESTIONS
1. What is the logical relation (1) between fact and truth, (2) between fact and fiction, and (3) between truth and fiction?
2. Define the spheres of the respective contributions of art, philosophy, and science to the search for truth.
3. In what way is a well-imagined work of fiction more true to life than a newspaper report of actual occurrences?
4. Explain the logical basis for distinguishing between morality and immorality in a work of art.
SUGGESTED READING
Frank Norris:––“A Problem in Fiction,” in “The Responsibilities of the Novelist.”
Clayton Hamilton:––“On Telling the Truth,” in “The Art World” for September, 1917.
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CHAPTER II