THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL
I
When the supreme master of the historical novel modestly confessed
that he could do the "big bow-wow strain," but to Jane Austen must
be accorded the palm of exquisite craftsmanship, there was then no
question upon the critical map of the so-called "great American
novel." Sir Walter Scott--to whom such authors of historical novels
as Chateaubriand and his Martyrs, the Salammbo of Flaubert, and that
well-nigh perfect fiction, The History of Henry Esmond, by
Thackeray, yield precedence--might have achieved the impossible: the
writing of a library, epitomising the social history of "These
States"--as Walt Whitman would say. After Scott no name but Balzac's
occurs to the memory; Balzac, who laid all France under his
microscope (and France is all of a piece, not the checker-board of
nationalities we call America). Even the mighty Tolstoy would have
balked the job. And if these giants would have failed, what may be
said of their successors? The idea of a great American novel is an
"absolute," and nature abhors an absolute, despite the belief of
some metaphysicians to the contrary. Yet the notion still obtains
and inquests are held from time to time, and the opinions of
contemporary novelists are taken toll of; as if each man and woman
could give aught else but their own side of the matter, that side
which is rightfully enough personal and provincial. The question is,
after all, an affair for critics, and the great American novel will
be in the plural; thousands perhaps. America is a chord of many
nations, and to find the key-note we must play much and varied
music.
While a novelist may be cosmopolitan at his own risk, a critic
should be ever so. Consider the names of such widely contrasted
critical temperaments as Sainte-Beuve, Taine, De Gourmont, Matthew
Arnold, Brandes, Swinburne, Arthur Symons, Havelock Ellis, Henry
James, Gosse, and W. C. Brownell; all cosmopolitan as well as
national. The sublime tenuities of Henry James, like the black music
of Michael Artzibashef, are questions largely temperamental. But the
Russian is all Slavic, and no one would maintain that Mr. James
shows a like ingrained nationalism. Nevertheless, he is American,
though dealing only with a certain side of American life, the
cosmopolitan phase. At his peril an American novelist sails eastward
to describe the history of his countrymen abroad. With the critic we
come upon a different territory. He may go gadding after new
mud-gods (the newest god invented by man is always the greatest),
for the time being, and return to his native heath mentally
refreshed and broadened by his foreign outing. Not so the maker of
fiction. Once he cuts loose his balloon he is in danger of not
getting home again.
Mr. James is a splendid case for us; he began in America and landed
in England, there to stay. Our other felicitous example of
cosmopolitanism is Henry Blake Fuller, the author of The Chevalier
Pensieri Vani and The Chatelaine de la Trinite, who was so widely
read in the nineties. After those charming excursions into a rapidly
vanishing Europe Mr. Fuller reversed the proceeding of James; he
returned to America and composed two novels of high artistic
significance, The Cliff Dwellers and With the Procession, which,
while they continued the realistic tradition of William Dean
Howells, were also the forerunners of a new movement in America. It
is not necessary to dwell now on The Last Refuge, or on that
masterly book of spiritual parodies, The Puppet-Booth. But Mr.
Fuller did not write the great American novel. Neither did Mr.
Howells, nor Mr. James. Who has? No one. Is there such a thing?
Without existing it might be described in Celtic fashion, this
mythical work, as pure fiction. Let us admit for the sake of
argument that if it were written by some unknown monster of genius,
it would, like Lewis Carroll's Snark, turn into a Boojum.
Henry James has said that no one is compelled to admire any
particular sort of writing; that the province of fiction is all
life, and he has also wisely remarked that "when you have no taste
you have no discretion, which is the conscience of taste," and may
we add, when you have no discretion you perpetrate the shocking
fiction with which America is deluged at this hour. We are told that
the new writers have altered the old canons of bad taste, but "plus
ca change, plus c'est la meme chose." A liquorish sentimentality is
the ever-threatening rock upon which the bark of young American
novelists goes to pieces. (Pardon the mixed metaphor.) Be
sentimental and you will succeed! We agree with Dostoievsky that in
fiction, as well as in life, there are no general principles, only
special cases. But these cases, could they not be typical? even if
there are not types, only individuals. And are men and women so
inthralled by the molasses of sentimentalism in life? Have the
motion-pictures hopelessly deranged our critical values? I know that
in America charity covers a multitude of mediocrities, nevertheless,
I am loath to believe that all one reads in praise of wretched
contemporary fiction is meant in earnest.
Well, chacun a ses degouts! The "thrilling" detective story, the
romantic sonorities of the ice cream-soda woman novelist?--with a
triple-barrelled name, as Rudyard Kipling put it once upon a
time--or that church of Heavenly Ennui, the historical novel--what
a cemetery of ideas, all of them! An outsider must be puzzle-pated
by this tumult of tasteless writing and worse observation. However,
history in fiction may be a cavalcade of shining shadows, brilliant,
lugubrious, dull, or joyful happenings; but where Thackeray
succeeded multitudes have failed. Who shall bend the bow of that
Ulysses? Native talent, subtle and robust, we possess in abundance;
thus far it has cultivated with success its own parochial
garden--which is as it should be. The United States of Fiction.
America is Cosmopolis.
II
As to the Puritanism of our present novels one may dare to say in
the teeth of youthful protestants that it is non-existent. The
pendulum has swung too far the other way. And as literary artists
are rare, the result has not been reassuring. Zola seems prudish
after some experiments of the younger crowd. How badly they pull off
the trick. How coarse and hard and heavy their touch. Most of these
productions read like stupid translations from a dull French
original. They are not immoral, only vulgar. As old Flaubert used to
say: such books are false, nature is not like that. How keenly he
saw through the humbug of "free love"--a romantic tradition of
George Sand's epoch--may be noted in his comment that Emma Bovary
found in adultery all the platitudes of marriage. Ah! that
much-despised, stupid, venerable institution, marriage! How it has
been flouted since the days of Rousseau--the father of false
romanticism and that stupefying legend, the "equality" of mankind.
(O! the beautiful word, "equality," invented for the delectation of
rudimentary minds.) A century and more fiction has played with the
theme of concubinage. If the Nacquet divorce bill had been
introduced a decade or so before it was in France, what would have
become of the theatre of Dumas fils, or later, of the misunderstood
woman in Ibsen's plays? All such tribal taboos make or unmake
literature.
So, merely as a suggestion to ambitious youngsters, let the novelist
of the future in search of a novelty describe a happy marriage,
children, a husband who doesn't drink or gamble, a wife who votes,
yet loves her home, her family, and knows how to cook. What a
realistic bombshell he would hurl into the camp of sentimental
socialists and them that believe a wedding certificate is like
Balzac's La Peau de Chagrin--a document daily shrinking in
happiness. Absurdities make martyrs, but of all the absurd and
ineffectual martyrdoms that of running off with another's wife is
usually the crowning one. "I don't call this very popular pie," said
the little boy in Richard Grant White's story; and the man in the
case is usually the first to complain of his bargain in pastry.
However, categories are virtually an avowal of mental impuissance,
and all marriages are not made in heaven. In the kingdom of morality
there are many mansions. When too late you may sport with the
shade--not in the shade--of Amaryllis, and perhaps elbow epigrams as
a lean consolation. That is your own affair. Paul Verlaine has told
us that "j'ai vecu enormement," though his living enormously did not
prove that he was happy. Far from it. But he had at least the
courage to relate his terrors. American novelists may agree with
Dostoievsky that "everything in the world always ends in meanness";
or with Doctor Pangloss that all is for the best in the best of
possible worlds. An affair of temperament. But don't mix the values.
Don't confuse intellectual substances. Don't smear a fact with
treacle and call it truth. Above all, don't preach. Impiety is an
indiscretion, yet, don't be afraid to tell the truth. From Jane
Austen and Walter Scott, the parents of the modern English novel, to
many modern instances, fiction has thrived best on naked truth. All
the rest is sawdust, tripe-selling, and sentimentalism. Didn't Mr.
Roundabout declare in one of his famous papers that "Figs are sweet,
but fictions are sweeter"? In our land we can't get the latter sweet
enough. Altruism, Brotherhood of Man Uplifting. These are the
shibboleths of the "nouvelles couches sociales." Prodigious!
III
J.-K. Huysmans declared that in the land of books there are no
schools; no idealism, realism, symbolism; only good writers and bad.
Whistler said the same about painting and painters. Setting aside
the technical viewpoint of such dicta, we fancy that our "best
sellers" do not preoccupy themselves with the "mere writing" of
their fictions, but they have developed a formidable faculty of
preaching. Old-fashioned fiction that discloses personal charm, that
delineates manners, or stirs the pulse of tragedy--not melodrama, is
vanishing from publishers' lists. Are there not as many charming men
and women perambulating the rind of the planet as there were in the
days when Jane Austen, or Howells, or Turgenev wrote? We refuse to
believe there are not; but there is little opportunity, in a word,
no market, for the display of these qualities. The novel with a
purpose, generally an unpleasant purpose, has usurped the rule of
the novel of character and manners. Boanerges, not Balzac, now
occupies the pasteboard pulpit of fiction.
I quoted Henry James to the effect that all life is the province of
the novelist. Nevertheless, the still small garden wherein is reared
the tender solitary flower does but ill represent the vaster,
complicated forest of common humanity. The ivory tower of the
cultivated egoist is not to be unduly admired; rather Zola's La
Terre with its foul facts than a palace of morbid art. Withal, the
didactic side of our fiction is overdone. I set it down to the
humbug about the "masses" being opposed to the "classes." Truly a
false antithesis. As if the French bourgeois were not a product of
the revolution (poor bourgeois, always abused by the novelist). As
if a poor man suddenly enriched didn't prove, as a rule, the hardest
taskmaster to his own class. Consider the new-rich. What a study
they afford the students of manners. A new generation has arisen.
Its taste, intelligence, and culture; its canned manners, canned
music--preferably pseudo-African--canned art, canned food, canned
literature; its devotion to the mediocre--what a field for our
aspiring young "secretaries to society."
Cheap prophylactics, political and religious--for religion is fast
being butchered to make the sensational evangelists' holiday--are in
vogue. They affect our fiction-mongers, who burn to avenge wrongs,
write novels about the "downtrodden masses," and sermons on social
evils--evils that have always existed, always will exist. Like the
knife-grinder, story they have none to tell. Why write fiction, or
what they are pleased to call fiction? Why not join the brave
brigade of agitators and pamphleteers? The lay preachers are
carrying off the sweepstakes. For them Mr. Howells is a
superannuated writer. Would there were more like him in continence
of speech, wholesomeness of judgment, nobility of ideals, and in the
shrewd perception of character.
Fiction, too, is a fine art, though this patent fact has escaped the
juvenile Paul Prys, who are mainly endeavouring to arouse class
against mass. It's an old dodge, this equality theory, as old as
Beelzebub, Lord of Flies. When all fruit fails, welcome envy and
malicious slandering. When you have nothing else to write about,
attack your neighbour, especially if he hath a much-coveted
vineyard. Max Stirner, least understood of social philosophers,
wrote, "Mind your own business," and he forged on the anvil of
experience a mighty leading motive for the conduct of life. But our
busy little penmen don't see in this golden motto a sufficient
sentimental appeal. It doesn't flatter the "masses." Mr. Bryan a few
years ago told us that we were all middle class. What is middle
class? In Carlyle's day it was a "gig-man"; in ours is it the owner
of a "flivver"? But in the case of Snob vs. Mob, Snob always wins.
This twaddle about "democratic art" is the bane of our literature.
There is only good art. Whether it deals with such "democratic"
subjects as L'Assommoir or Germinie Lacerteux, or such "aristocratic"
themes as those of D'Annunzio and Paul Bourget, it is the art
thereof that determines the product. I hold no brief for the
sterile fiction that is enrolled under the banner of "Art for Art."
I go so far as to believe that a novelist with a beautiful style
often allows that style to get in the way of human nature.
Stained-glass windows have their use, but they falsify the daylight.
A decorative style may suit pseudo-mediaeval romances, but for
twentieth-century realism it is sadly amiss. Nor is the
arterio-sclerotic school of psychological analysis to be altogether
commended. It has been well-nigh done to death by Stendhal,
Meredith, James, and Bourget; and it is as cold as a star. Flaubert
urged as an objection to writing a novel, proving something that the
other fellow can prove precisely the opposite. In either case
selection plays the role.
The chief argument against the novel "with a purpose"--as the jargon
goes--is its lack of validity either as a document or as art. A
novel may be anything, but it must not be polemical. Zola has been,
still is, the evil genius of many talented chaps who "sling ink,"
not to make a genuine book, but to create a sensation. Such writers
lack patience, art, and direction. They always keep one eye on the
box-office. Indeed, the young men and women of the day, who are
squandering upon paper their golden genius, painfully resemble in
their productions the dime novels once published by the lamented
Beadle or the lucubrations in the Saturday weeklies of long ago.
But in those publications there was more virility. The heroes then
were not well-dressed namby-pambies; the villains were villainous;
the detectives detected real crimes, and were not weavers of
metaphysical abstractions like your latter-day miracle-workers of an
impossible Scotland Yard; and the girls were girls, neither
neurasthenic, nor did they outgolf all creation. The "new" novelists
still deal with the same raw material of melodrama. Their handling
of love-episodes has much of the blaring-brass quality of
old-fashioned Italian opera. They loudly twang the strings of sloppy
sentiment, which evoke not music, but mush and moonshine. And these
are our "motion-masters" to-day.
IV
There can be no objection to literature and life coming to grips.
Letters should touch reality. Many a sturdy blow has been struck at
abuses by penmen masquerading behind fiction. No need to summon
examples. As for realism--I deny there are commonplace people. Only
those writers are commonplace that believe in the phrase. It is one
of the paradoxes of art that the commonplace folk of Thackeray,
Flaubert, or Anthony Trollope who delight us between covers would in
life greatly bore us. The ennui is artistically suggested, though
not experienced by the reader. It is the magic of the novelist, his
style and philosophy, that make his creations vital.
Dostoievsky says there are no old women--to be sure he puts the
expression in the mouth of the sensualist Karamazov--and as a
corollary I maintain that nothing is uninteresting if painted by a
master hand, from carrots to Chopin. As for the historical novel,
there is Sentimental Education as a model, if you desire something
epical in scale and charged with the modern ironic spirit. A
Flaubertian masterpiece, this book, with its daylight atmosphere;
the inimitable sound, shape, gait, and varied prose rhythms of its
sentences, its marvellous gallery of portraits executed in the Dutch
manner of Hals and Vermeer, its nearness to its environment, and its
fidelity to the pattern of life. It is a true "historical" novel,
for it is real--to employ the admirable simile of Mr. Howells.
No need to transpose the tragic gloom of Artzibashef to America; we
are an optimistic people, thanks to our air and sky, political
conditions, and the immigration of sturdy peasant folk. Yet we, too,
have our own peculiar gloom and misery and social problems to solve.
We are far from being the "shadow-land" of fiction, as a certain
English critic said. When I praise the dissonantal art of Michael
Artzibashef it is not with the idea that either his style or his
pessimism should be aped. That way unoriginality lies. But I do
contend that in the practice of his art, its sincerity, its
profundity, he might be profitably patterned after by the younger
generation. Art should elevate as well as amuse. Must fiction always
be silly and shallow? It need be neither sordid nor didactic.
William James put the matter in a nutshell when he wrote that "the
whole atmosphere of present-day Utopian literature tastes mawkish
and dish-watery to people who still keep a sense of life's more
bitter flavours." And on this fundamentally sound note I must end my
little sermon--for I find that I have been practising the very
preaching against which I warned embryo novelists. But, then, isn't
every critic a lay preacher?