Materials and Methods 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, 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 theater? 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 threescore 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 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.
MATERIALS AND METHODS OF FICTION
CHAPTER I
THE PURPOSE OF FICTION
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, 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.
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.
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.
All human science is an 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 heroically to understand the large reality of which the actual is but a sensuously perceptible embodiment. In the earliest centuries of recorded thought the search was unmethodical; truth was apprehended, if at all, by intuition, and announced as dogma: but in modern centuries certain regular methods have been devised to guide the search. The modern scientist begins his work by collecting a large number of apparently related facts and arranging them in an orderly manner. He then proceeds to induce from the observation of these facts an apprehension of the general law that explains their relation. This hypothesis is then tested in the light of further facts, until it seems so incontestable that the minds of men accept it as the truth. The scientist then formulates it in an abstract theoretic statement, and thus concludes his work.
But it is at just this point that the philosopher begins. Accepting many truths from many scientists, the philosopher compares, reconciles, and correlates them, and thus builds out of them a structure of belief. But this structure of belief remains abstract and theoretic in the mind of the philosopher. It is now the artist's turn. Accepting the correlated theoretic truths which the scientist and the philosopher have given him, he endows them with an imaginative embodiment perceptible to the senses. He translates them back into concrete terms; he clothes them in invented facts; he makes them imaginatively perceptible to a mind native and induced to actuality; and thus he gives expression to the truth.
This triple process of the scientific discovery, the philosophic understanding, and the artistic expression of truth has been explained at length, because every great writer of fiction must pass through the entire mental process. The fiction-writer differs from other seekers for the truth, not in the method of his thought, but merely in its subject-matter. His theme is human life. It is some truth of human life that he endeavors to discover, to understand, and to announce; and in order to complete his work, he must apply to human life an attention of thought which is successively scientific, philosophic, and artistic. He must first observe carefully certain facts of actual life, study them in the light of extended experience, and