The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1883-04-14
MR.. HOWELLS ON MODERN
FICTION.

Mr.. Howells must be disposed to
swear chat he will never do another
good-natured thing. Some months
ago he wrote paper upon Mr.. Henry
James, jr., giving in a most friendly
and pleasant manner his estimate
of that gentleman's talent and work,
and naturally expressing some
views upon fictitious writing in
general, with casual comments upon |
some famous story-telleT5. The |
paper was written in the most quiet |
tone, but it has raised an upr0ar.
Indeed, nothing that Mr.. HoWeiIs |
has ever written has caused such |
commOtiOn. He has been accused |
of depreciating plots in stories be
cause he has no Inventions and Of de- |
crying gFeatnames that he may eXalt |
little men. He is charged with ut
tering a counterfeit theory of novel |
writing to enrich his own reputation
and that of Mr.. James. IN fact,
these two excellent and inoff 5nsiYe
writers are represented as pair of
accomplished literary scracksmen"
| who are bent upon breaking into
the inner treasury of Fame, and
earring eff her choicest prizes for
themselves. The Virulence OF the
assault upon Mr.HoWeils for writing
the paper, and upon Mr.. James for
being written about, recalls the
feeling with which a couple of
clever, we'll dressed, and high man
| nered boys are sometimes regarded
by the crowd of DR.. Birch'S young
| friends.
The turmoil touches the ludicrous
point 'in an article in the London
| Quarterly Re0ieaD, which actually
describes Mr.. HoWells' paper as "a
crafty puff of his friend James and
himself. The Quarterly sneers at
them and pretentlous noveliSts ad-
vertising themselves energetically /;
and with a wholly unnecessary bit
lterness it girdS at the artificial
manGerisms' and "tawdry smart
ness" of their tales, even STOPPING
to speak Of the pretty portrait
published with Mr.. HOWells' paper,
until the reader can not avoid the
suspicion that some personal male
violence goads the writer to a tone
as destitute of literary courtesy as
it is of critical discrimination. 1t
| is surely a severe arraignment of
the reading public of the two Eng
disappearing countries to represent
them as charmed with the works of
a pair Of feeble, dawdling, mutually
admiring, coxcombical pretenders.
The views which Mr.. HoWells
holds Of literary art, of fiction and OF
novel writers, may be sound or un.
sound, according to the readers own
opinion of hose subjects. But they
are the honest opinions of a mar
who, by charming the literary TASTE
of his time has gained the public
ear, and they are expressed with
perfect courtesy and refinement
They are neither disprOved nor dis
turbed by a sheer that he is enYiou:
of Thackeray, and that he is q whip
ster striking at Walter Scott. WheI
Mr.. Howells says that the storie
were all Told lUng ago, ana IndU NOV
we wish mainly to know what TN
, novelist thinks about persons an
situations, he means to say, as W
understand him, that analytic iii
ton is more agreeable to the liteTar
taste of the time than descriptiy
fiction. This does not seem
be very wide of the truth. VIII;
. is it but saying that the novel
adventure like Smollett's, and eve
I the historical novel of Scott, are lie
to the public mind than the critica
observing, mOraliZing story
h George Eliot and Thackeray? N
- Howells says that we should II
permit a writer nowadays to ST.
70 and preach as Thackeray does ia b
% novels. Bat Thackeray good-h
m0redly chides himself for the prs
Al tice, while, for our own part, Y
- think it one Of his delightful trait
M and could no more spare the Sermt
:, than the text.
To represent Mr.. Howells as q
" crying the great masters of his art
" absurd. He is merely noting t
" changes of taste and the new sta
.N. of development, and he points o
M. why, to an age which is introspe
N, tive and analytical, a critical tale
+" in fiction is not less attractive tn
a creative talent. The wrong do
al AZ. to Mr.. HoWells lies in regardl
sSi"1 his paper upon Mr.. James as a CO.
q plete body of doctrine upon nov
writing, and the expression of
~ estimate Of novel-writers. A cri
P' may certainly characterize Hon
- and Dante and Chaucer, and &C
= trast them with other poets, sho
9 ing in what this one excelled, a
- why that one has fallen from faY,
and how schools and standards
poetry have changed, without Ia
~, ing himself justly open to the &C
n domination of depreciation and je
ousY. There is a spirit of the a
MT recognizable in every literary epoC
Would writer be tolerated by t
readers of this magazine who shou
write with the freedom of Fieldi
and Smollett and Sterne? HC
sweet and smiling is uving's genir
but even the Kniekerbocker chrC
icle could not be admitted to the
III pages without judciOus excision,
HGrpeT'S Magazine.