Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1882-11-18
THE NEW SCHOOL OF FICTION.


may be unintelligible to the fathers. 1t is
not always or perhaps often 30. For many
centuries the changes between generations
were very slow and slight. But the last
fifty years have been abnormally freighted
with progressive agencies, and, as should
| have been expected, the revolutionary
novel has long been faithful representa-
| tive of at least some salient characteristics
| Of its period. Thus there has been the
novel of action, the novel of sentiment,
the novel of mixed action and sentiment,
and finally the analytical novel, which is
| the latest result of the modern spirit of
introspection. The novel of action was
naturally the earliest. In the romance
| (where every body is forever fighting or
making love), the crude beginnings of
this form of fiction are found. The
school of sentimental fiction, of the
French kind, was happily exemplitied
once and for all by Richardson.
Fielding was far in advance of his century
in point OF development. Scott revived
and perfected the novel of action, and his
works remain to-day the most vigorous,
robust, manly, and altogether wholesome
examples OF one of the most genial and
natural of methods. In this country the
school of action naturally claimed the pop
ular preference, and Fenimore Cooper and
William Gilmore Simms produced line of
fiction racy of the soil, and which will
long keep its place in virtue of its intrinsic
merits. The development of fiction, how.
ever, in the United States, was checked for
many years. During the period which in
England produced Dickens, Thackersy,
George Eliot, Bulwer, Anthony Trollope,
Charles Reade, and many other talented
authors, our literature was in torpid con-
dition. The American novel was often in
CURED for, but it did not appear. The
facilities for importing English novels
seemed to have paralyzed native talent,
and almost a generation passed without
bringing forth one really considerable
work of fiction on this side of the Atlantic.
During this period the English novel
had been undergoing marked changes. The
analytic style was introduced by Thack-
cray, whose mastery of it has not since
been approached, and it was developed by
George Eliot. Anthony Trollope struck
out new line for himself; kind of analy.
sis possessing the minuteness, colorless.
ness, and uniformity, of fine photograph :;
passionless dissection of motives and
characters which for all its frigidity mas
| deep interest and power. But after so long
silence that the hoped-for American
novel seemed mythical, the new American
school of fiction suddenly revealed itself to
a surprised world as Uniformed phenom-
enon, not only not crude but really repre-
senting the most advanced deductions from
the boldest of the modern intellectual
lights. This new American school has for
its opponents Mr.. Henry James, Jr., and
Mr.. William d. HowelIs It is true that
they resemble one another only in a few
particulars, but their resemblances classify
them as belonging to the same school,
They represent the interpretive Principle
in it's fullest development or, to be quite
precise, Mr.. James does. 1t is Intellectu.
alism consciously asserting itself as against
Animalism. Now the effort to develop
distinctively intellectual and psychological
school of fiction invariably tends to pro-
duce in the artist some exaggeration akin to
that which drove the Scholiasts of the
Middle Ages to so many fantasies, in their
efforts to escape from the Brutalism of their
period. There was a school of Muscular
Christianity not long ago, represented in
fiction by "Tom Browns School Days, u
and such books. The new school might be
called, in eontradistinction to that, the
school of Psychological Agnosticism.
All the old forms are discarded by Mr..
James. There is no moral or hint of one.
There are no unities. There is no plot.
There is no beginning or end. The object
is to paint pictures, as elaborate as micro
scopic views, not only of persons, but of
minds. In "The Portrait of a Lady"
for instance, one may be said to be made
acquainted with peoples souls rather than
their bodies. Mr.. James is continually
taking them apart for analysis. And what
is peculiar to the new school is that it
possesses no humor. In the book just
cited we doubt if there is a humorous |
sentence. The obvious tendency of the |
methods employed is toward somberness
and gloom and a peculiar cultured de. |
spair. In CT The Portrait of Lady" the
heroine is beautiful American gi,l who |
is made to destroy her own happiness in
the most perverse way, and the art of the !
author IS lavished in the subtle and del
icate exposition of this poor girls mel. !
ancholy career. 1t is book which leaves
a singularly painful impression, de-
spite its unquestionable power and
skill. Mr.. Howells pays much more
attention to nature. He is less psyche
logical, and therefore more genial He
can paint character from without. as
George Eliot often did. It often seems
as if mis- interpretive tendency marred
rather than helped his work as though
the subtleties of his method were not al
together in harmony with his natural pre-.
objections. But in his case also the
analytical principle tends towards gloomi-
ness. Take fol example his last story,
a Modern Instance" Here we have
developed most unlovable character in |
the person of Bartley Hubbard, whose
Astounding selfshness leads to the ruin of
his wife's life, and finally to his own wreck.
Now there Ia really nnlrr nr,a r.o..;.I -