Henry
James wrote two essays on the art of fiction. The one I'm reviewing is
THE ART OF FICTION: A LECTURE delivered at the Royal Institution on
April 25, 1884 when the great author was age 41, having already
published seven novels and forty short-stories.
Henry begins by
proclaiming three important points: 1) Fiction is an Art (author's caps)
just as much as painting, sculpture, music and poetry; 2) Fiction has
laws as exact and precise as the other Arts; 3) Similar to painting a
portrait or playing a musical instrument, writing fiction requires a
natural gift.
Henry goes on to praise the novel as being an Art
above all other forms of Art (a great novelist just can't help himself).
How is the novel the most praiseworthy of the arts? We're given an
extensive list of reasons. I'll couple my own observations/comments with
several:
"It has always been the most popular, because it
requires neither culture, education, nor natural genius to understand
and listen to a story;"
Henry James makes an excellent point
about the fine arts. Unlike paintings in a museum or classic music
played in a concert hall, a novel is universally accessible - anybody
who is literate can enjoy a novel of their choosing. Henry goes on to
note the majority of books checked out at libraries and the number of
books purchased at bookstores are novels. This was true back in 1883
when Henry was writing and it is true today, one hundred and forty years
later. No doubt about it - the novel as a popular artform has had
monumental staying power.
"It commands the widest influence,
because it can be carried easily and everywhere, into regions where
pictures are never seen and music is never heard;"
Within the
world of fine arts, this is undoubtedly true: you can read a novel
anywhere, in your favorite chair at home or out on a park bench, at a
train station or on the train, at a coffee house or in a lunch room. Now
that's a profoundly influential and fluid form of art!
"It is
the greatest teaching power, because its lessons are most readily
apprehend and understood. All this, which might have been said thousands
of years ago, may be said today with even greater force and truth."
Of
course, back in 1883, there was no television, film or radio. And Henry
is thinking in terms of the US and Europe, especially England. As
British novelist George Gissing made abundantly clear in his novel New Grub Street,
reading novels has caught on like wildfire (a cliché, I know but in
this case it works perfectly). One consequence of all this reading: the
public looked to the novel to provide models and teach important lessons
about life.
"It is the only way in which people can learn what other men and women are like;"
This
is a critical point that is frequently overlooked: a novel,
especially a novel written in first-person, gives us an opportunity to
share another person's inner thoughts and feelings in the context of
unfolding events within a story. Sad but true: other than in a work of
fiction, the inner life of other people is forever sealed off from us. A
novel can provide us with powerful examples of a woman's or man's
maliciousness, sadism or foolishness, underscoring Schopenhauer's wise
words: "You will always be prey or the plaything of devils and fools in
this world, if you expect to see them going about with horns or jangling
their bells."
Turning to another section of this Henry James
essay, we have: "This Art of Fiction is the most ancient of all Arts and
the most popular; that its field is the whole of humanity; that it
creates and develops that sympathy which is a kind of second sight;
that, like all other Arts, its function is to select, to suppress, and
to arrange; that it suggests as well as narrates."
Henry James
notes most people fail to take in the world around them. This is
certainly not the case for an accomplished novelist since the material
for their novel will be that very world they encounter directly,
particularly the people they come in contact with. According to Henry,
the key to being a true novelist: an extraordinary ability to observe
life, select just the right details and convey one's observations and
selections in clear, compelling language. Here are two quick character
sketches which can serve as examples of what Henry is driving at here:
From Nobody Runs Forever by Donald E. Westlake writing as Richard Stark:
"The
first impression was of a slender, stylish, well-put-together woman in
her forties, but almost instantly the impression changed. She wasn't
slender; she was bone thin, and inside the stylish clothes she walked
with a graceless jitteriness, like someone whose medicine had been cut
off too soon. Beneath the neat cowl of well-groomed ash-blond hair, her
face was too thin, too sharp-featured, too deeply lined. This could have
made her look haggard; instead, it made her look mean. From the
evidence, what would have attracted her husband most would have been her
father's bank."
From The Brothers Cabal by Jonathan L. Howard:
“A
strong brow and nose were betrayed by a weak chin on an otherwise noble
countenance. It was the sort of face that would have looked at home
over a polished chest plate while busily engaging in the infection of
South American natives with Catholicism and smallpox, while all the time
robbing them blind of every grain of gold they might have.”
I'll
let Henry James have the last words, relating to an element he values
above all others: a novelist's style: "It is almost impossible to
estimate too highly the value of careful workmanship, that is, of style.
Everyone, without exception, of the great Masters in Fiction, has
recognized this truth. You will hardly find a single page in any of them
which is not carefully and even elaborately worked up. I think there is
no point on which critics of novels should place greater importance
than this, because it is one which young novelists are so very liable to
ignore."
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