The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1890-01-30
NEWSPAPER STORIES.
They are Said to be Killing Novels.
ord's Magazine

Very often we hear that this is the age
of the novel, but quite as often do we
hear that it is also the age of the news
paper. Slight observation would be
needed to establish the truth Of either
statement One has only to see the woe
full exhibit of pirated paper books on the
stalls of hotels and railway stations for
at least n partial understanding Of how
fiction almost usurps, at present, the en-
tire domain of belles-lettres; and with
respect to the much belauded center.
prise" of journalism, what weightier evil
dence could be presented than that of
the bulky quintuple and sextuple sheets
which now and then rear their presumpt-
uous little hillocks from our breakfast
tables? In the latter it would appear as
if all phases Of life eventually find por-
trayal.
Though it may be iron in the soul of
the novelist to say so, the newspaper has
actually achieved q style. Grammar
forsooth! We must look to our own
verbs and nominatives nowadays, lest
Printing House square prod our choicest
prose with its pen and hold up before
merciless throngs hideous, wriggling
blunder of whose existence we had not
dreamed. Day after day we stare, wide
eyed, upon certain "effects" lavishly
thrown away, as we can't help callingit
on the merest ephemeral descriptions.
And then we have pang of envy when
we tell ourselves that nervous and forci-
bic writing can actually be accom-
plished, like this, by man who knows
ne is Of necessity only manufacturing
"alms for oblivion"
We, the professional novelists, have
grown so careful how we fling any pre-
cious bits of art into that huge and
fathomless ocean Of the unsigned"
We begin to look on the ethical side of
the question, and to assure ourselves that
this writing as well as a fellow can
write, without caring fig for any fame
that may come of it, is a rather excel
lent straightjacket for the egotist. Then
the modern journalist, by his calm capac-
ity, wrought of drill and discipline, can
waken in the sensitive man of letters a
pang of shame. Here is our famous
Robinson, pet of the publishers, who
can't write, let us say, except with a
certain kind of pen, at certain kind of
desk, seated on a certain kind of chair
bottom and amid sepulchral silence. But
with Jones, firm Of nerve and unspoiled
by daintiness, it is quite different mat
ter. He can reel you off his astonish-
ingly good copy" in a tiny little room
that smells of sour paste and trembles
with the cacophonies of the elevated.
Now that realism has gained such
Roadway with the big public of novel
readers, the newspaper is becoming all
the more a rival of the fctionist. So
close is the analogy between their pro-
auctions that the reporter constantly
speaks of his own and his comrades
work as good or bad 'story," and I'M
questionably so regards it. The instant
that such effort as this deserves to be
called literature, its challenge grows a
more than formidable one Not long
ago read in q New York newspaper a
description Of an execution on which,
as it seemed to me, had been be-
slowed eloquence and care of
very striking kind. In their thirst
for actuality, one is prone to ask
why readers should not prefer literary
power when thus expended upon nara
tives that are fragments of living fact.
Beyond doubt q preference of the sort is
augmenting, and one with its increase
directly proportionate to the skill and
strength of our developing journalists.
Any one who glances through a
newspaper of the best character might
be apt to pronounce it in some respects a
unique and spirited story book. Its
tales are treated with a reserve and dig
nifty Of expression that are no doubt the
heritage bequeathed us by great dead
stylists. At the same time they have
nothing of the old fashioned beginning,
middle and end" about them. They
sometimes turn out" with all the dis
NAL abruptness beloved by the Russian
story tellers There is too frequetly
neither q conventional hero nor heroine,
and only few grizzly glimpses of hu-
mainly serve to replace their absence.
The stream Of narration runs between
ragged banks and with haphazard cur
rent, but we feel that it mirrors no i'm
agined sky, and that the weeds trailing
in its tides are growth of no mythic
meadows. When invested with authen-
tic art these little histories make very
pungent and memorable reading. Be-
sides, if there be cult, wave of ten
dency, in their direction, all the more
must they demand respectful heed.
1t is not so very long ago that "plot"
was an imperative essential in the Eng
fish novel, and to this popular require
ment Dickens again and again unhesi-
tatingly, though often bunglingly,
bowed. Thackeray, however, had from
the first sneered at the ancient methods,
and we all remember that passage in the
early part of VANITY Fair" where the
humor now seems SO cumbrous, and
where he tells us that he might have
made it dark and tempestuous night
instead of the sunshiny day in Mayfair
that it had the commonplace misfortune
really to be. For Thackeray, both to his
frantic devotees and his more rational
observers, must be admitted as the first
real English naturalist in fiction after
Fielding. The world moves
along, in spite of certain well meant, if
misdirected, efforts to the contrary.
And no stronger proof of this could be
brought forward than the way in which
naturalistic novel writing is today being
justified and confirmed as desired and
priced form of art by the tendency of
the modern newspaper.
Will it also, in the course of time, be
eclipsed by the newspaper as well? I
confess that sometimes tremble for the
craft of wl&ch am an earnest, if hum
bic, representative, when see with what
force and finish thousand topics are
treated. Innumerable actors in
the immense human comedy are sketched
with vivid fidelity and sometimes appeal
ing power. One can imagine Balzac
himself reading with amazement and ad-
mration file of our modern newspaper.