The Craft of Fiction by Percy Lubbock (e novels to read online txt) 📕

placing of the scenes of the story will be the prime concern. But precisely because it has this high value it will need to be used prudently. If it is wasted it loses force, and if it is weakened the climax—of the story, of a particular turn in the story—has no better resource to turn to instead. And so it is essential to recognize its limitations and to note the purposes which it does not well serve; since it is by using it for these that it is depreciated.

In the scene, it is clear, there can be no foreshortening of time or space; I mean that as it appears to the eye of the reader, it displays the whole of the time and space it occupies. It cannot cover more of either than it actually renders. And therefore it is, for its length, expensive in the matter of time and space; an oblique narrative will give the effect of further distances and longer periods with much greater economy. A few phrases, casting backwards over an incident, will yield the sense of its mere dimensions, where the dramatized scene might cover many pages. Its salience is another matter; but it has to be remembered that though the scene acts vividly, it acts slowly, in relation to its length. I am supposing that it stands alone and unsupported, and must accordingly make its effect from the beginning, must prepare as well as achieve; and evidently in that case a burden is thrown upon it for which it is not specially equipped. At any moment there may be reasons for forcing it to bear the burden—other considerations may preponderate; but nevertheless a scene which is not in some way prepared in advance is a scene which in point of fact is wasting a portion of its strength. It is accomplishing expensively what might have been accomplished for less.

That is the disability of the dramatic scene; and I imagine the novelist taking thought to ensure that he shall press upon it as little as possible. As far as may be he will use the scene for the purpose which it fulfils supremely—to clinch a matter already pending, to demonstrate a result, to crown an effect half-made by other means. In that way he has all the help of its strength without taxing its weakness. He secures its salient relief, and by saving it from the necessity of doing all the work he enables it to act swiftly and sharply. And then the scene exhibits its value without drawback; it becomes a power in a story that is entirely satisfying, and a thing of beauty that holds the mind of the reader like nothing else. It has often seemed that novelists in general are over-shy of availing themselves of this opportunity. They squander the scene; they are always ready to break into dialogue, into dramatic presentation, and often when there is nothing definitely to be gained by it; but they neglect the fully wrought and unified scene, amply drawn out and placed where it gathers many issues together, showing their outcome. Such a scene, in which every part of it is active, advancing the story, and yet in which there is no forced effort, attempting a task not proper to it, is a rare pleasure to see in a book. One immediately thinks of Bovary, and how the dramatic scenes mark and affirm the structural lines of that story.

Drama, then, gives the final stroke, it is the final stroke which it is adapted to deliver; and picture is to be considered as subordinate, preliminary and preparatory. This seems a plain inference, on the whole, from all the books I have been concerned with, not Bovary only. Picture, the general survey, with its command of time and space, finds its opportunity where a long reach is more needed than sharp visibility. It is entirely independent where drama is circumscribed. It travels over periods and expanses, to and fro, pausing here, driving off into the distance there, making no account of the bounds of a particular occasion, but seeking its material wherever it chooses. Its office is to pile up an accumulated impression that will presently be completed by another agency, drama, which lacks what picture possesses, possesses what it lacks. Something of this kind, broadly speaking, is evidently their relation; and it is to be expected that a novelist will hold them to their natural functions, broadly speaking, in building his book. It is only a rough contrast, of course, the first and main difference between them that strikes the eye; comparing them more closely, one might find other divergences that would set their relation in a new light. But closer comparison is what I have not attempted; much more material would have to be collected and studied before it could begin.

Of the art of picture there is more to be said, however. It has appeared continually how the novelist is conscious of the thinness of a mere pictorial report of things; for thin and flat must be the reflection that we receive from the mind of another. There is a constant effort throughout the course of fiction to counteract the inherent weakness of this method of picture, the method that a story-teller is bound to use and that indeed is peculiarly his; and after tracing the successive stages of the struggle, in that which I have taken to be their logical order, we may possibly draw the moral. The upshot seems to be this—that the inherent weakness is to be plainly admitted and recognized, and not only that, but asserted and emphasized—and that then it ceases to be a weakness and actually becomes a new kind of strength. Is not this the result that we have seen? When you recall and picture an impression in words you give us, listeners and readers, no more than a sight of things in a mirror, not a direct view of them; but at the same time there is something of which you do indeed give us a direct view, as we may say, and that is the mirror, your mind itself. Of the mirror, then, you may make a solid and defined and visible object; you may dramatize this thing at least, this mind, if the things that appear in it must remain as pictures only. And so by accepting and using what looked like a mere disability in the method, you convert it into a powerful and valuable arm, with a keen effect of its own.

That is how the story that is centred in somebody's consciousness, passed through a fashioned and constituted mind—not poured straight into the book from the mind of the author, which is a far-away matter, vaguely divined, with no certain edge to it—takes its place as a story dramatically pictured, and as a story, therefore, of stronger stuff than a simple and undramatic report. Thus may be expressed the reason which underlies the novelist's reluctance to tell his story and his desire to interpose another presence between himself and the reader. It seems a good reason, good enough to be acted upon more consistently than it is by the masters of the craft. For though their reluctance has had a progressive history, though there are a few principles in the art of fiction that have appeared to emerge and to become established in the course of time, a reader of novels is left at last amazed by the chaos in which the art is still pursued—frankly let it be said. Different schools, debatable theories, principles upheld by some and rejected by others—such disagreement would all be right and natural, it would be the mark of vigour in the art and the criticism of it. But no connected argument, no definition of terms, no formulation of claims, not so much as any ground really cleared and prepared for discussion—what is a novel-reader to make of such a condition and how is he to keep his critical interest alive and alert?

The business of criticism in the matter of fiction seems clear, at any rate. There is nothing more that can usefully be said about a novel until we have fastened upon the question of its making and explored it to some purpose. In all our talk about novels we are hampered and held up by our unfamiliarity with what is called their technical aspect, and that is consequently the aspect to confront. That Jane Austen was an acute observer, that Dickens was a great humourist, that George Eliot had a deep knowledge of provincial character, that our living romancers are so full of life that they are neither to hold nor to bind—we know, we have repeated, we have told each other a thousand times; it is no wonder if attention flags when we hear it all again. It is their books, as well as their talents and attainments, that we aspire to see—their books, which we must recreate for ourselves if we are ever to behold them. And in order to recreate them durably there is the one obvious way—to study the craft, to follow the process, to read constructively. The practice of this method appears to me at this time of day, I confess, the only interest of the criticism of fiction. It seems vain to expect that discourse upon novelists will contain anything new for us until we have really and clearly and accurately seen their books.

And after all it is impossible—that is certain; the book vanishes as we lay hands on it. Every word we say of it, every phrase I have used about a novel in these pages, is loose, approximate, a little more or a little less than the truth. We cannot exactly hit the mark; or if we do, we cannot be sure of it. I do not speak of the just judgement of quality; as for that, any critic of any art is in the same predicament; the value of a picture or a statue is as bodiless as that of a book. But there are times when a critic of literature feels that if only there were one single tangible and measurable fact about a book—if it could be weighed like a statue, say, or measured like a picture—it would be a support in a world of shadows. Such an ingenuous confession, I think it must be admitted, goes to the root of the matter—could we utter our sense of helplessness more candidly? But still among the shadows there is a spark of light that tempts us, there is a hint of the possibility that behind them, beyond them, we may touch a region where the shadows become at least a little more substantial. If that is so, it seems that our chance must lie in the direction I have named. The author of the book was a craftsman, the critic must overtake him at his work and see how the book was made.

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