The Writer, Vol. 19: A Monthly Magazine to Interest and Help All Literary Workers, Boston, January, 1907 (Classic Reprint) - Softcover

Inhaltsangabe

Excerpt from The Writer, Vol. 19: A Monthly Magazine to Interest and Help All Literary Workers, Boston, January, 1907

There seems to be an idea among many people that if the purpose Of a book is artis tically conveyed, so that the reader's mind is not unduly prodded to, notice it, the author himself must have been unaware Of a pur pose. I have not read those modern novels of foreign origin to whose unsavory earnestness of purpose Miss Repplier takes strenuous exception in some Of her earlier essays, but the reviews Of them seem fully to justify her abhorrence. I do not, how ever, need them for examples. I will take instead a very innocent book published by Mrs. Elizabeth Phelps Ward. Everything in Trixy is of an unexceptionally high tone - except in its artistic standard - but the choice Of subject, from the artistic point Of view, is, to my mind, inexcusable. When I read the book I sympathized with Marion Crawford's complaint that to read some novels is like the disappointment Of entering a theatre to find a sermon instead Of a play. Neither play nor novel is always written for entertainment pure and simple, but the pub lic has a right to expect, at least. That the subject shall be capable Of artistic treatment. And that the treatment may give an artistic pleasure, even though the import be painful. There are heart-tending sorrows that can in cite a poet's inspiration to its height, and erving wrongs that may arouse an ecstasy Of wrath; but no artistic justification can be found, I think, for the Vivisection of Ani mals as the subject of a novel. The author may contend that she cannot find another and equally influential vehicle for her lesson, but that is her own affair. The concern of the reader is that the book contains nothing to make pleasurable reading in any sense in spite Of a certain brightness of phrase in the conversations.

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