In reading stories my imagination usually follows. In writing a story it
leads or is led. You will say that, if it is led, it follows. Yes, but
not in the same way. In reading it follows the plot. In writing it
follows something altogether apart from the story and the result of that
following is the story. What is this something which the imagination
follows--which leads the imagination? It is, I think, that which makes
us think at certain times when our thoughts are not lazily centered upon
heat and cold or food and drink--the cravings and sensations of the
body. There is something beyond all selfish desires and emotions and
that _something_ should be master of our thoughts if we are to function
to the best advantage. If there is nothing on the other side of the
grave, then all these ideas are nonsense. If we do continue to "live"
after death, however, then that permanent self is not likely to be born
at death. It is much more probable that we have it now or even that we
may have had it for millions of years--perhaps always. If such should be
the case it might well be that thought or imagination is sometimes
influenced by the contact of our work-a-day mind with that real self
which never dies and which may be a vast store-house of knowledge and
high ideals.
I have considered these matters as "tools of my trade" and I try, very
falteringly, to use them. The best theory upon which to work is, to my
mind, the theory of reincarnation. Perhaps, however, that must be proved
by each man for himself. I have studied it and I do believe that it
gives results.
=Robert Simpson=: When I read a story and can't _see_ the whole
business--people, places, things--I don't go on reading. It is at once a
lifeless thing--inchoate--a blur. I don't try to see and feel and taste
and smell and so forth, if the story is getting over to me. If I don't
experience these sensations in a greater or lesser degree, it is
possible, of course, that I may have dyspepsia, but it is more likely
that the story has a flat tire.
The pictures I see "with my eyes shut" are generally only half formed.
The people are real and distinct enough--too distinct, I think, because
I am tempted, in writing about them, to mark every trivial expression.
Their positions in the pictures are most exact. But the furnishings or
surrounding buildings or landscapes are not very clear, unless a chair
or a house or a tree or several or all of these are absolutely necessary
to the story. The whole scene, in other words, I see clearly. The
details are blurred until they become specific. Then they stick out like
a sore finger. The pictures are black and white for the most part. Red,
yellow and green I can also see with fair distinctness. The finer shades
are blurred. They fade in and fade out in an unsettled kind of way, as
if I were having a hard time holding them there.
I never studied geometry or mathematics and I'm not going to. I was
supposed to study them, but all I ever got out of them was a headache.
When the author of a story has set his stage, I generally see the
setting in my own way. Most folks, I think, are guilty of this crime
against the author's good intentions; particularly artists.
I have no stock pictures of anything I am reading or writing. Some
scenes and things are more or less built to a pattern, but I like to
"see" them differently whether they are or not.
When I am reading my imagination is naturally to a large extent
subservient to the dictates of the printed page. I can make my own
pictures out of the author's words, but I have to keep my imagination
within bounds or I'd lose track of "what came next." When I'm writing,
I'm the boss. I can go where I please and do what I please. It's a
different thing and a different sensation. The first is a receptive mood
that may kind o' tug on the reins, but always goes docilely or
cheerfully on; the other is a creative one that gropes hopefully through
a maze of plot and counterplot, scenes, people who are never where they
ought to be when one wants them, and, finally and tediously and most
importantly, technique.
I have always considered vizualization as the most valuable tool of my
trade. Without it I couldn't write a line. This will indicate how much I
use it.
=Arthur D. Howden Smith=: When I am working at my best I _live_ the
story literally. Color and distinctness depend on my physical condition,
I think--mental states of the moment have something to do with it. As to
solid geometry, don't know what you mean--it never meant anything to me.
Response is up to the author. The question of stock pictures is up to
the author. Reading _vs._ writing--you bet. As to tools, it would take a
book to tell you, principally because my reactions are different at
different times.
=Theodore Seixas Solomons=: I am a visualizer in writing and reading.
Psychologically there is little difference with me in the two processes,
except that in reading I visualize little besides what the author
describes, while in writing I visualize all the attacks I make in the
creation besides the one that stands--is adopted. That is, at every
point where I hesitate between proposed actions, before I adopt one of
them, I visualize each as I think of it. Conceiving it in fancy being
itself a visualizing process.
I do not hear, smell or taste _anything_. I can see their action, as
they talk, see their lips move, if there is any point in the manner of
enunciation--but no sounds. The bear meat may be frying, but I do not
hear it hiss or get mentally the aroma. Nor do I get the sense of touch.
In fine, beyond visualization of the main picture and its immediate
surroundings from point to point in the narrative--my own or that which
I read--my mental activities are conceptual only and never sensory. But
I do _feel_. My mind flames to sympathetic feeling. I have a weak
replica of all the emotions appropriate to the course of the story. This
is far stronger, usually, in writing my own stuff than in reading the
fiction of others. I do not attribute this to any superiority of fancy
in myself, but only to the fact that the act of imagination may be so
much more complete when exercised in the creation of my own fiction than
when stimulated by the fiction of another that it moves me
correspondingly more. When my story is down the stimuli are, of course,
no more numerous for the other person than another writer's have been to
me in _his_ story, but in the process of writing that which forms the
text of my story I have lived through so very much more concerning the
people in it than I have selected to be written that I am beset
emotionally and mentally with many times as many effects--and am
affected proportionally.
To sum up my answer to this question--when I have pictured physically
the scene and people, either in writing or reading, it is my intellect
alone that works as to what takes place in the sense world among them.
Just as in a cinema we imagine by the action of the mind alone sounds,
touches, smells, so my stories (and those I read) are cinemas in which I
imagine, mentally only, the rest of the action. The mental physical
picture--if you get me--is data enough, stimulation enough to suggest to
my mind all other sense perceptions in their _effects_. That is, if I
see the bear-meat frying, I can readily supply smells and touches and
sounds without experiencing any imagined sense impressions of smells,
touches or sounds.
I see things as well with my eyes open, if moving objects do not
sidetrack my attention, as with them shut. In fact, I can not plot or
write without seeing things, any more than I can describe the route to
my place in the mountains without visualizing it as I describe. I see
things in their natural colors. Necessary details are distinct. The
picture, however, is hazy "off the main trail." That is, my visualizing
apparatus is economical--or penurious--enough to refuse to draw and
color in areas beyond the main trend of the story I'm conceiving or
writing.
Solid geometry was pretty easy to me, because of my ready concrete
visualization.
I go beyond the description of the author in some cases. For instance,
in Mr. Dunn's castaway story of the eight or ten men I took his
description of the island as he gave it from time to time and filled in
a lot of details. And I imagined quite a little action besides that
which he narrated. I never changed his descriptions, I merely filled
them out.
I have not exactly stock pictures, but if I am called on imaginatively
to see a village church or a cowboy I am likely to revert visually to
some particular church or particular man that has made a great
impression on me. But with the stimulus of the slightest description
that doesn't fit, my mind facilely makes the necessary modification.
Tools? No. I just "write" as I tend to and can.
=Raymond S. Spears=: Some of my characters are as real, and even more
real, than most people I know. They are usually distinct personalities
that I know better than living people. In writing them I am often quite
unable to give them the bitterness of experiences I have in mind because
I hate to abuse them so! That's a fact, too, and has spoiled some of
my--to me--most interesting ideas and stories. My feeling toward my
characters does not include physical pain, for I can cut or shoot a hero
without compunction, but I hate to embarrass a man or woman, probably
because I am rather sensitive myself.
I hear the music I write about better than I hear the reality; thus the
lapping of wavelets along the hull of a shanty-boat, the ringing of a
bell or gobble of a turkey in a fog is more audible in my imagination
than in fact--for I am hard of hearing. But I have _heard_ these things
at some time or other, and the memory is direct, whether hearing,
seeing, smelling, etc.
What I see is environment I actually know, which I have seen and
studied. I see characters in action. Sometimes I go myself through a
whole story, as one of the characters; then go back and put down the
imaginary episodes with myself as one or other of the characters, but
usually a minor or spectator character. I read others' fiction nearly as
I form my own.
I never studied solid geometry. Poor health kept me out of school, so I
had only two years and a half in a grammar school, after brief period in
a country district school. I had, however, a great working library for a
boy, in my father's collection, to which advantage I later added a
four-years course as _Sun_ reporter in New York, and wide-range reading.
But I do not recall that I ever read anything or studied anything the
need of which I did not acutely feel. Thus in reading fiction it
satisfies some longing as for experience, information, a view-point,
etc. I can overlook errors of statement obviously outside a writer's own
knowledge or experience, if he puts in good things within the scope of
his own data.
In writing, details come into focus if I look at them. That is, if I
describe a trapper's cabin, if it is of logs I see the moss chinking and
the spruce, balsam or other "banking up." I ask the equivalent of this
accuracy of knowledge in what I read and take delight, for instance, in
the minute knowledge of equipment displayed by Pendexter or the desert
flora by Harriman or Tuttle's fine cowboy exaggeration and faithfulness
to a habit or frame of mind.
My stock in trade is a vast junk yard, properties more varied than a
motion-picture lot's, and I seldom see the same thing twice. If I read,
for example, a Western, I may know its exact location (as I do my own
story-atmospheres). In that case I see as I remember, and if I don't
remember very well, I get out a map, note-books, etc., and find out
what's wrong. I read stories for amusement and information, and often I
write stories to give information--hoping to amuse as well.
=Norman Springer=: It depends on the story and the author.
In a romantic story I'm always chiefly interested in the characters. In
a realistic story I am often more interested in the setting, or
background, than in the characters.
Sounds, smells, feels, pictures--if the tale is artfully written, these
are quite real, though, of course, in a subdued or diluted sense.
Suggestion makes these things more real than elaborate description.
Pain, I think, is usually met by the reader with feelings of anger and
pity.
Suggestions of smells are, I think, most vivid to me.
If I visualize a picture, it is in color. The distinctness of details
depends on the intensity of the scene, or my interest in it. Characters
are usually distinct; scenery blurred.
No geometry.
The response, I think, is often killed by too much description.
Suggestion, particularly sensory suggestion, does the work best with
me--and I think with most people. If the author outlines the picture and
sets my five senses--or any of them--to work, I get a much more vivid
and "real" impression than if he spent pages in meticulous description.
If the characters are alive and the setting interesting, the mental
pictures of a story are individual. Otherwise, I suppose they are stock
pictures.
A great deal of difference. In reading I can allow my imagination free
play. In writing I must discipline it, keep it within the bounds of the
story. I find it hard to do.
Yes. I think all writers consider them as tools. They have to be
considered in every story, as it is being written. There is the general
style of the story to be considered, and following that, each situation.
I think, "Now how can I get this effect or that; how can I make this
fellow behave like a real man?" In fact, my stories so far have been a
series of experiments. I nearly always try something new in each story,
something I haven't tried before. Something that I hope will make the
story more real and readable. Quite often the result is a rotten
failure; but sometimes it isn't.
=Julian Street=: It depends on the author's ability to transmit the
pictures he wishes me to see. I am always ready to do my share. My mouth
does not literally water, except possibly over exceptionally fine
descriptions of fine food and drink--which are rare. I do not think,
however, that I get physical pain. My reactions are intellectual and
emotional. Tarkington, for instance, can make me happy or unhappy or
worried about his characters. He presses the buttons--we do the rest.
The work of inferior observers and inferior writers of course reaches me
less and less. I am fastidious in these matters.
When writing a scene, I "see" things vividly in color. In reading less
so, though to a considerable extent if the author has the picture-making
power.
No, thank God, I don't have standard stock pictures of scenes and
persons. I depend on the author to give me his pictures, and if he is
any good, he can do it. If he can't give me pictures, I don't want to
read him.
I resent _not_ having sufficient images made for me. I also resent
images made in a conventional trite way--written out of the author's
reading rather than out of his observation. I want my author to be a
keen observer and artful interpreter. I want him, as Tarkington says, to
"flush me with colors."
Yes, my imagination is most vivid when I am _writing_ stories. The
characters I read, however real to me, are never quite so real as those
I create. Because those I read are other people's children, whereas
those I create are my own. I love my children more than I love those of
others, even though the others may be in every way better products. It
amuses me that this should be so and I am a little ashamed to confess
it.
=T. S. Stribling=: As I said, I almost never read a story. They bore me
to death. It seems to me there are few things in this world as stupid as
fiction.
When I am writing I see everything I write about. I never try to
remember anything; I am simply looking at the thing and it is no more
effort to describe it than it would be to describe the typewriter under
my fingers now. Pictures are always in color, and the details are
blurred except at the point I am describing and that is just as
clear-cut as if I were looking at the real thing, not at a picture.
Yes I studied solid geometry; mathematics never gave me any trouble at
all.
No, I don't have stock pictures for anything or at least I am not
conscious of it. If I say a village church I will then have to decide
what sort of village church I want. However when I get clear out of my
experience, say into the Eskimo, the word Eskimo simply calls up a
little fur-covered man; however if I should start writing about them,
this generalization would instantly dissolve into scores of individuals.
When I read stories my imagination sinks into a profound stupor.
Everything seems too dull and tame; when I write, everything picks up,
life grows gay again, and I have the deuce of a good time.
No, I don't consider them "tools of my trade." I don't consider I have a
trade nor any tools. The first novel I ever wrote was because I couldn't
find a novel that I enjoyed reading; the last one I write will be
written for the same reason.
=Booth Tarkington=: I shall have to leave these answers pretty
indefinite. The answer to each differs with every story. As a reader
every one, I imagine, has, when a village church is mentioned, the image
of some village church he has seen--or I should say, more probably, that
is, a thin haze of a _fragment_ of some village church.
An author forming too many images of course fatigues the reader.
=W. C. Tuttle=: I have always been afraid of paying too much attention
to other authors' work, for fear that I might absorb some of their
traits. A few years ago I was a newspaper cartoonist and I have often
found myself unconsciously using another artist's technique. It was not
because I desired to do this, but because I admired his style. Perhaps
we are all copyists, as far as that is concerned, and I believe it would
be easy to adopt some favorite author's style of writing.
There are certain kinds of stories which lure me on to long periods of
reading. Give me a tale of the days of old, with plumed knights,
stage-coaches drifting over muddy roads, tavern brawls, etc., and I'm
useless until the end of the story. I can fairly smell the tap-room,
hear the rattle of dice and the clash of swords. It is more like a
moving picture than a tale of fiction.
I often envy the writers of these tales. To me this is "real" fiction.
My mind sometimes flashes back to the author and I wonder if he enjoyed
the writing as I did the reading.
I think that in many cases I improve upon the author's description. If
it is a coach team I can see in a flash just the size and color of the
horses, the general appearance of the coach, the contour of the road. It
appears like a moving picture, if you know what I mean. Such detail as
the jolting of the coach, the creaking of harness; little details that
no author would stop to describe, I see and hear them in my own story,
but would never think to burden the reader with such small detail. Yet,
I wonder if it isn't the little detail that makes a good story.
Somehow I always draw a mental picture of the author at work on that
certain story, and I wonder if he planned it all out before putting it
on paper. Did he know what the ending would be? Where and how did he get
the idea in the first place?
It appears to me that an author _must_ see things in color, with detail
clear, in order to convince the reader. A blurred image will not
reproduce clear. I have managed to cover a bad piece of drawing with
technique, but I have never seen a bad piece of writing that could be
concealed in a mass of words. When my mental picture becomes foggy I
quit writing until it clears. At times I have two or more stories under
way, and when one gets blurred I take another. I have never found them
all out of focus, and it has saved me hours of waste time.
Things are pretty much the same when I read a story, and it does not
take me long to feel whether the author knew his characters, locale,
etc. Some of them actually live, while others are merely lay figures,
with labels instead of souls. I can accept bad description, but when the
dialogue is stilted, unreal, I lose interest.
Perhaps it is my imagination that hampers me in writing. I can see every
detail so clearly that I forget that the reader must at least have a
diagram of what I see in order to understand. And I have no stock
picture for anything. It is not a case of "a rock is a rock and a tree
is a tree."
I suppose I absorb a certain amount from reading, although I would be
unable to point out just what benefit it has been to me. The handling of
a story has always interested me, even if the characters were unreal,
and I believe that a well-written story is a "tool of the trade" to any
author, if he will consider it in that light.
=Lucille Van Slyke=: May I add that when I read a story by Laura Jean
Libbey types of writers that I never see anything they write as
real--Abject apology: I never saw anything the lady wrote--it is exactly
like watching a play that is so poor that the eye registers scenery and
grease paint every minute.
Things I see with my eyes shut are never black and white--always sharply
colored. Some one detail will be distinct--from which I edge through
blurred ones. Example. Recently in a story I had to strand a boat on a
sand-bar at twilight. I sit back, shut my eyes and try to remember where
I have got the sand-bar idea. I saw an old coat, plaid, wet, lying on
sand, a basket next to the coat--basket had food in it--tomatoes--red
tomatoes. All this can have nothing to do with my story, you understand,
but I'm back five years ago on a real sand-bar with a stranded picnic
party waiting for tide to come up. Zip, I'm off! Don't have to imagine
it, it's there!
Hate "math" of all kinds but had less trouble with solid geometry than
with any other kind of mathematics. Yet I had the same teacher that I
had for algebra and plane--think perhaps I was a bit older and could
concentrate better.
If my concept were limited to the exact degree to which the author makes
vivid I'd have to quit reading! Again, if he's a real writer man he sets
me tingling--if he isn't I quit reading! If I'm not getting a real
"kick" out of the thing, I stop.
Nope, haven't any stock pictures for anything.
Much resent having every _t_ crossed and every _i_ dotted.
Think you are using the wrong word when you say imagination, anyway the
question is not clear to me. It's like the difference between watching
somebody else work and working myself. If it's going right I enjoy
watching it--if it isn't I want to take off my coat and show the other
fellow how I think it ought to be done.
I consider these matters very much tools of my trade. The most helpful
thing any editor ever said to me was this: Always pretend to yourself
that your reader can not think at all--but always remember that he can
feel--_and make him feel all that you can_.
When I read a story by a--oh, say a Conrad--I think my imagination is
swept along with his to such an extent that I see the thing as an actual
scene. Sounds I never hear consciously, except music. Tastes I do not
get. But smells I do get, distinctly. Touch I think I get because I find
my fingers often move as I read. That "pain" part of the question so
fascinates me that I hope every writer you sent it to is equally
intrigued by it. I have never been able to feel in any degree any pain
that a writer talks about. Neither have I ever been able, even a day or
two after acute pain, to make myself remember how it felt. I can
remember where I felt it and that I was acutely miserable, but I can not
refeel it. I have repeatedly questioned scores of persons in all walks
of life to describe how they felt "the day after"--I always get bromidic
expressions--"Like a toothache"--or "sharp"--or "dull"--or something
that indicates very clearly that the pain itself is obliterated, gone.
I've doped it out this way--that it is nature's kind provision--that we
couldn't any of us exist very long actually facing prolonged acute
pain--we'd be pretty brave for a while but we'd give up eventually. Even
doctors and nurses can't feel the pain they are assuaging. _But_, this
seems to me an extraordinary thing--I have repeatedly noted many young
mothers whose faces unconsciously reflect pain that a very young child
is enduring.
And I can not resist adding this very personal note. I am sometimes
subject to that type of headache that is I believe called migraine--for
which I believe physicians have no known reason. It may not occur for
years in my case--then I may have several blinding attacks of
it--strangely enough when I am quite well otherwise. And I'm a fairly
husky animal. And nothing helps it. I literally fight it for days,
finally submerge--the thing works to its two- or three-hour horrible
climax--and as I begin to feel the pain ooze out--possibly after two or
three days or so of illness--I am suddenly aware that every sense is
working clearly--literally with an after-the-thunder-storm clearness. I
am still too weakened from pain to have any inclination to do
anything--I begin to grow drowsy after many nights of insomnia--but
half-way to the sleep--click, it goes--possibly a half dozen or more
things that have bothered me solve themselves--maybe a story plot that
I've toiled over years before and abandoned and forgotten--possibly
something I was working on when the thing hit me. Or a perfectly new
thing may suggest itself. Or I will know exactly what was the matter
with the unsatisfactory spot in the story I had been reading (by
somebody else!). Find myself wanting to change the endings of plays I
may have seen years before and been disappointed in. This period lasts
sometimes twenty or thirty minutes--sometimes nearly fifty but usually
goes in less than ten--when I fall asleep. Note this--if I am too weak
or not near a pencil--these curious things are washed out forever--just
like dashing a sponge over a slate. For years I was too lazy or stupid
to understand that I must grab at those amazing few moments and grab
hard. Yet I can not anticipate it--nor can I say that I'm very keen
about paying hours of pain in advance for a few ideas! I call it
blasting out of solid ivory--eh? But I do wonder if it happens to other
writer persons and if so, if they consider it has any significance.
=Atreus von Schrader=: The extent to which my imagination reproduces the
story-world of the author depends, I believe, both on the author's skill
and the degree of my interest in what he happens to be writing about, as
well as my familiarity with the same story-world. I hear, see, smell and
taste Kipling; Poe I only hear. I do not feel actual physical pain
presented in a story; my feeling is rather that of a man in a warm room
looking through the window at a raging storm; he gets the effect, and is
glad he's not out in it.
The pictures I see are colored; their clearness again depends on the
skill of the author and my interest in the tale.
I studied solid geometry; it was the only subject in which I failed,
twice, to pass my college entrance examinations.
I do not suffer from stock pictures of physical things or people; I find
it necessary to guard against stock characteristics for certain types of
people; the too heroic hero, the too villainous villain, etc. This is a
common error of certain editors, who insist upon story-heroes being all
white and villains all black. Were it not for the libel laws, I should
like to cite one or two experiences of my own in this connection.
When reading a story the imagination is at liberty to cavort without
restriction. When writing, it is not. But in the latter case I see and
feel with far greater vividness as long as my story is developing; if I
have to stop to feel my way, the picture fades; to reappear as soon as
the thank-you-marm has been passed.
=T. Von Ziekursch=: If an author has written into his or her story
enough of the color of the setting (for instance, if it is a desert
scene the author has got to picture a desert for me as I have seen them,
or the woods as I have lived in them) then my imagination carries me
along with the characters. I believe that just enough of the actual
local color of the story either makes or breaks it, and must confess I
detest these yarns that are merely written around action and incident
and plot. They are cheap and fail utterly to have any value. In their
wake they leave nothing of pleasant memories.
If the author has painted the scene and skilfully laid the settings then
I can drift contentedly with the tale, seeing the characters, the
action, hearing the sounds and smelling pleasant odors in my
imagination. Unpleasant odors are much more difficult to get over with
me. I can not taste, but my imagination has frequently reproduced the
sense of touch. Here is a curious thing. I can only feel pains which I
have experienced. For instance I was badly injured breaking a horse
once; I have been shot four times. Now I can feel it when a character is
injured by a horse or shot.
Details of coloring are usually somewhat indistinct unless the author
has achieved them with abruptness that is very skilful.
Do not ask me what I think of mathematics--and that includes both plane
and solid geometry, trigonometry, logs, algebra and all their brood.
I have formed the opinion that every reader inevitably strides beyond
the scenes laid in the story to develop broader vistas, provided the
author has painted his scenes skilfully enough. To me there are
innumerable little by-paths that the author merely sketches the openings
of--and allows the reader to wander down them at will, formulating his
own vague scenes. As an example--a character in a story is following a
trail in the forest; the author draws the picture of the distant
mountains as the character sees them and perhaps puts in a little touch
more. In reading that story I subconsciously explore those mountains,
looking down on the whole scene almost like a resident of Olympus, and a
deal of the fun and enchantment of the story is in that by-play, I am
confident.
As to the stock pictures in my mind I should say that depends entirely
on the author. If he is writing "plot and action" stories with nothing
else, how could the reader help having anything else but stock pictures
mentally--the kind that have been foisted on the public so long?
In regard to the difference in behavior of the imagination in reading
and writing I am not competent to judge. I have read very, very little
modern American fiction. My imagination holds me an absolute slave when
writing--far more so than when reading.
I can honestly say that I do not remember ever having given any of these
matters a moment's thought. In fact I am greatly surprised that I am
able to tell you as much as I am now doing. I have never thought of the
"tools of my trade." I merely write.
=Henry Kitchell Webster=: My most vivid sensational reactions are to
sound, touch, taste and smell. I would hesitate to say that I can see
things with my eyes shut. I don't remember ever feeling any actual
physical pain, even in the slightest degree, to correspond with the pain
presented in a story. I found solid geometry rather easy, and analytical
geometry, which for the first time gave a meaning to algebra, was a
revelation and a delight. My response to description and suggestion in
what I'm reading or seeing on the stage or in the movies is variable. I
have phases in which I get nothing but the bare fare that is offered me,
and others in which I run out and amplify enormously. I haven't, so far
as I know, any stock pictures for village churches or cowboys. I don't
resent too many images being formed for me; if there are too many, I
simply ignore them. There's an enormous difference in the behavior of my
imagination when I am reading stories and when I am writing them. I do
indeed consider these matters as important "tools" of my trade.
=G. A. Wells=: Sad to relate, very few stories carry me along with them
into the very thick of things. That comes of being too darned
hypercritical. It is hard for me to get away from the author. I believe
I am too much interested in the mechanics and not enough in the result,
always admiring or condemning the author for what he does. With the
exception of a few cases which I will mention the author, like the poor,
"is always with me."
James Connelly's earlier stories--those to be found in the book of the
title _Deep Sea Toll_ especially--carry me with them. Pendexter and
Mundy have this power over me, but not in every case. Also Jack London's
stories, particularly those of the North. Tarkington's _Alice Adams_ and
Hutchinson's _If Winter Comes_ brought me out of myself to a certain
extent. That story of Bill Adams', _The Bosun of the Goldenhorn's Yarn_,
was a gem and affected me very much. No play I have seen for the past
twenty years has made me forget that it was merely a play I was seeing.
The writer whose work has the greatest power over me is Lord Macaulay. I
forget I am alive when I read his essays or history.
I can see and hear characters, scenes and colors, and taste the flavors
of a story, but they are never genuine. When a character is struck with
a club I do not feel it; I simply stand back and watch his reaction to
the blow. Scenery more nearly produces the same results on my senses as
do the actual stimuli.
The things that originate in my own imagination I can see with my eyes
shut as plainly as if they were realities, and things in a story to a
lesser degree of vividness. I can imagine an old hag beating a child and
actually work up tears. The same thing in a story does not have the same
effect by a good deal. The things in stories are to me merely animated
word photographs. I am not strongly susceptible to illusion as it
appears in a story or a play. But the realities of actual, living life
affect me powerfully.
I once saw a man--a beast, rather--kick a dog. If he had kicked me I
could not have felt it more. In a story I would not have felt the kick
the least bit. It would have been a kick on paper. It is my great loss
that I am unable in most cases to get the desired fictional effect.
Paintings, however, act otherwise on me. In the Corcoran gallery at
Washington there is a large painting depicting a body washed ashore on a
beach, and nearby stands a policeman taking the names of a man and woman
in a note-book. The first time I glanced at that picture it gripped me
and in my imagination at this moment I see it in actual detail and feel
the strength of it. I have gone a hundred miles out of my way purposely
to look at that picture. One morning I sat before it from about nine
until noon without scarcely ever taking my eyes from it. The paintings
in the Metropolitan gallery in New York would never tire me. I am
devoted to etchings.
The pictures an author presents to me are never blurred. Nor are they
black and white. They are always without exception distinct and in
natural colors. When Pendexter mentions a British soldier I see a man
with a flaming red coat. When Dingle or Dunn shows me a pirate I see a
man with swarthy face and black eyes. Trees and grass are always green
unless otherwise stated.
Solid geometry was he--ll! It gave me more trouble than all other
studies combined.
My response to the author is nearly always abstract.
I have no stock pictures for anything I read. I let the author paint his
picture by direct description and accept it as he shows it, or form or
paint it for myself from the various hints he scatters through his
story. If his story is laid in the West all he need say for me is that
the incidents occurred on a ranch. I'll paint my own ranch in. If his
story is of the mountains he can say so briefly and depend on me to
picture the mountains.
I have two imaginations--one for reading and the other for writing. The
former is _better_ than the latter. Imagination is, in my opinion, the
chief tool of trade of the writer. It counts for about ninety per cent.
Without that all the other tools in his chest are worthless.
=William Wells=: The nearest that I can come to answering this is to say
that both in reading a well-told story and in building one from my
imagination the scenes are as real as if I were watching them thrown on
the screen. I am oblivious to all else, but detached, take no part
myself. But I possess the faculty of making the scenes reproduce
themselves as often as I wish--in my own stories--or of changing them
and making the characters act as I want them to.
I really "see things" with my eyes shut--or open, for that
matter--perfect in every detail, see the flame of fire or the smoke from
firearms, but my only sensation is that of the onlooker, although I get
quite excited.
Never studied geometry.
The concept sets me to reproducing.
No stock pictures; all different.
Only as I have noted. I can make my own characters do as I wish.