Sentimental Tommy's great predecessor in the relentless pursuit of the
"right word" was, teachers of literature tell us, the unsentimental
Gustave Flaubert. But these academic gentlemen, who insist that the
writer shall spend hours, even days, if necessary, in perfecting a
single sentence, seldom produce any literature. I asked Robert W.
Chambers, who has written more "best sellers" than any other living
writer, what he thought of Flaubert's method of work.
He looked at me rather quizzically. "I think," he said, with a smile,
"that Flaubert was slow. What else is there to think? Of course he was a
matchless workman. But if he spent half a day in hunting for one word,
he was slow, that's all. He might have gone on writing and then have
come back later for that inevitable word."
"But what do you think of Flaubert's method, as a method?" I asked. "Do
you think that a writer who works with such laborious care is right?"
"It's not a question of right or wrong," said Mr. Chambers, "it's a
question of the individual writer's ability and tendency. If a man can
produce novels like those of Flaubert, by writing slowly and
laboriously, by all means let him write that way. But it would not be
fair to establish that as the only legitimate method of writing.
"Some authors always write slowly. With some of them it's like pulling
teeth for them to get their ideas out on paper. It's the same way in
painting. You may see half a dozen men drawing from the same model. One
will make his sketch premier coup; another will devote an hour to his;
another will work all day. They may be artists of equal ability. It is
the result that counts, not the method or the time."
"And what is it that makes a man an artist, in pigments or in words?" I
asked. "Do you believe in the old saying that the poet--the creative
artist--is born and not made?"
"No," said Mr. Chambers, "I do not think that that is the truth. I think
that with regard to the writer it is true to this extent, that there
must exist, in the first place, the inclination to write, to express
ideas in written words. Then the writer must have something to express
really worthy of expression, and he must learn how to express it. These
three things make the writer--the inclination to say something, the
possession of something worth saying, and the knowledge of how to say
it."
"And where does genius come in?" I asked.
"What is genius?" asked Mr. Chambers, in turn. "I don't know. Perhaps
genius is the combination of these three qualities in the highest
degree.
"Of course," he added, with a laugh, "I know that all this is contrary
to the opinion of the public. People like to believe that writers depend
entirely upon an inspiration. They like to think that we are a hazy lot,
sitting around and posing and waiting for some sort of divine afflatus.
They think that writers sit around like a Quaker meeting, waiting for
the spirit to move them."
"But have there not been writers," I asked, "who seem to prove that
there is some truth in the inspiration theory? There is William de
Morgan, for example, beginning to write novels in his old age. He spent
most of his life in working in ceramics, not with words."
"On the contrary," said Mr. Chambers, "I think that William de Morgan
proves my theory. He really spent all his life in learning to write--he
was in training for being a novelist all the while. The novelist's
training may be unconscious. He must have--as William de Morgan surely
always has had--keen interest in the world. That is the main thing for
the writer to have--a vivid interest in life. If we are to devote
ourselves to the production of pictures of humanity according to our own
temperaments, we must have this vivid interest in life; we must have
intense curiosity. The men who have counted in literature have had this
intense, never-satiated curiosity about life.
"This is true for the romanticists as well as the realists. The most
imaginative and fantastic romances must have their basis in real life.
"I know of no better examples of this truth than the gargoyles which one
sees in Gothic architecture in Europe. These extraordinary creatures
that thrust their heads from the sides of cathedrals, misshapen and
grotesque, are nevertheless thoroughly logical. That is, no matter how
fantastic they may be, they have backbones and ribs and tails, and these
backbones and ribs and tails are logical--that is, they could do what
backbones and ribs and tails are supposed to do.
"In real life there are no creatures like the gargoyles, but the
important thing is that the gargoyles really could exist. This is a good
example of the true method of construction. The base of the construction
must rest on real knowledge. The medieval sculptors knew the formation
of existing animals; therefore they knew how to make gargoyles."
"How does this theory apply to poets?" I asked.
"I don't know," answered Mr. Chambers, "but it seems to me to apply to
all creative work. The artist must know life before he can build even a
travesty on life."
I called Mr. Chambers's attention to the work of certain ultra-modern
poets who deliberately exclude life from their work. He was not inclined
to take them seriously.
"There always have been aberrations," he said, "and there always will
be. They're bound to exist. And there is bound to be, from time to time,
attitudinizing and straining after effect on the part of prose writers
as well as poets. And it is all based on one thing--self-consciousness.
It is self-consciousness that spoils the work of some modern writers."
I asked Mr. Chambers to be more specific in his allusions. "I cannot
mention names," he said, "but there are certain writers who are always
conscious of the style in which they are writing. Sometimes they
consciously write in the style of some other men. They are thinking all
the while of their technique and equipment, and the result is that their
work loses its effect. A writer should not be convinced all the while
that he is a realist or a romanticist; he should not subject himself
deliberately to some special school of writing, and certainly he should
not be conscious of his own style. The less a writer thinks of his
technique the sooner he arrives at self-expression.
"It's just like ordinary conversation. A man is known by the way in
which he talks--that is his 'style.' But he is not all the while acutely
conscious of his manner of talking--unless he has an impediment in his
speech. So the writer should be known by his untrammeled and
unembarrassed expression."
I asked Mr. Chambers what he thought of the idea that the popularity of
magazines has vitiated the public taste and lowered the standard of
fiction.
"I do not think that this is the case," he said. "I do not see that the
custom of serial publication has harmed the novel. It is not a modern
innovation, you know. The novels of Dickens, Thackeray, and George Eliot
had serial publication. But I do believe that the American public reads
less fiction than it did a generation ago, and that its taste is not so
good as it was."
This was a surprising statement to come from an author whom the public
has received with such enthusiasm, so I asked Mr. Chambers to explain.
"In the days of our forefathers," he said, "this was an Anglo-Saxon
country. Then the average intelligence of the nation was higher and the
taste in literature better. But there came the great rush of immigration
to the United States from Europe, and the Anglo-Saxon culture of the
country was diluted.
"You see signs of this lowered standard of taste in fiction and on
the stage. The demand is for primitive and childish stuff, and the
reason for this is that the audience has only a sort of backstairs
intelligence. If we had progressed along the lines in which we were
headed before this wave of immigration, we would not be satisfied with
the books and magazines that are given us to-day.
"Of course the magazines are mechanically better to-day than they were a
generation ago. Then we had not the photogravure and the half-tone and
the other processes that make our magazines beautiful. But we had better
taste and also we had more leisure.
"I remember when one of the most widely read of our magazines was a
popular science monthly, which printed articles by great scientists on
biological and other topics. That was in the days when Darwin was
announcing his theory of evolution--the first great jolt which orthodoxy
received. People would not take time to read a magazine of that sort
now. They are so occupied with business and dancing and all sorts of
occupations that they have little leisure for reading."
Mr. Chambers stopped talking suddenly and laughed. "I'm not a good man
for you to bring these questions to," he said, "because I never have had
any special reverence for books or literature as such. I reverence the
books that I like, not all books."
"And have you such a thing as a favorite author?" I asked.
"Yes," said Mr. Chambers. "Dumas."
During the 1870's Mr. Chambers was an art student in Paris, and he has
many interesting memories of the French and English writers and painters
who have made that period memorable. He knew Paul Verlaine (whose poetry
he greatly admires), Charles Conder, and Aubrey Beardsley.
"One day," he said, "I was out on a shooting-trip--I think it was in
Belgium--and I met a young English poet, a charming fellow, whose work I
was later to know and like. It was the poet who wrote at least one great
poem--'Cynara'--it was Ernest Dowson.
"I knew many of the Beaux Arts crowd, because my brother was a student
of architecture at the Beaux Arts. And they were a decent, clean
crowd--they were not 'decadents.' I do not take much stock in the pose
of 'decadence,' nor in the artistic temperament. I never saw a real
artist with the artistic temperament. I always associated that with
weakness."
Mr. Chambers, although he has intimate knowledge of the Quartier Latin,
has little use for "Bohemia."
"What is Bohemia?" he asked. "If it is a place where a number of artists
huddle together for the sake of animal warmth, I have nothing to say
against it. But if it is a place where a number of artists come to
scorn the world, then it is a dangerous thing. The artist should not
separate himself from the world.
"These artistic and literary cults are wrong. I do not believe in
professional clubs and cliques. If writers form a combination for
business reasons, that is all right, but a writer should not associate
exclusively with other writers; he should do his work and then go out
and see and talk to people in other professions. We should sweep the
cobwebs from the profession of writing and not try to fence it in from
the public."
To the somewhat trite question as to the effects of the war on
literature, Mr. Chambers made first his usual modest answer, "I don't
know." But when I told him of the author who had dogmatically stated
that war always stops literature, and that the Civil War had produced no
writing worthy of preservation, Mr. Chambers reconsidered.
"Did he say that the Civil War had produced no literature worthy of
preservation?" he said. "He must have forgotten that the Civil War
caused one man to make contributions to our literature as valuable as
anything we possess. He must have forgotten Abraham Lincoln."
Before I left, I mentioned to Mr. Chambers the theory that literature
is better as a staff than as a crutch, as an avocation than as a
vocation. This, like the "inevitable word" theory, is greatly beloved by
college professors. Mr. Chambers said:
"I disagree utterly with that theory. Do you remember how Dr. Johnson
wrote _Rasselas_? It was in order to raise the money to pay for his
mother's funeral. I believe that the best work is done under pressure.
Of course the work must be enjoyed; a man in choosing a profession
should select that sort of work which he prefers to do in his leisure
moments. Let him do for his lifework the task which he would select for
his leisure--and let him not take himself too seriously!"
_DETERIORATION OF THE SHORT STORY_