The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1897-08-29


1t is announced that Gabriel d'Annunzio,
the Italian novelist is coming to this coun-
try to gather materials" for an American
novel. Mr.. Hall Game, whose stories have
heretofore had the local color of the little
island on which he was born and had al
ways had his home, tells everybody who
will listen that as preliminary TO his lat
est story he spent six months in London
gathering material" During this time he
studied the slums, the numerous social
evils, including gambling, intemperance,
racing the theaters, the clubs, the hos
pitals-in fact, pretty much the entire social
fabric except that division in which decent
and respectable people-that is the vast
majority of people--live. AT the end Of six
months he had six barrels full of notes,
and out of this accumula ton of material
he has constructed his London novel AL
ready the critics aye saying Of 1t rhat ii is
a tumble of description lacking In the i'm
press of that realism which can only be
given in it's perfection by one who has
had years of familiarity with his subject
The strength of his work lies in the man
ner in which he depicts human character,
but inasmuch the setting of characters
in fiction must have much to do with the
sense of their actually the men and women
Of The Christian" undoubtedly lack in
effectiveness in just so much as he has
placed them in scenes where he is himself
an outsider-a mere passing observer. 1t
need not be insisted that a writer of fiction
ha hor RE
sional exceptions prove that this is unneces-
sary, but it is true that, to give the true
atmosphere the local COLOR" to use the
literary lingo, they must have lived in that
atmosphere until they were themselves
saturated with it. They cannot travel about
gathering local color up in packages to
spread it out upon the paper as a
painter upon his paette such attempts re-
suit in blur, an indistiuctness, a sense of
unreality. Dickens had been acquainted all
his life with the people and the places he
depicted; Thackeray knew well the ways
of the social classes whom he described;
the most pleasing because the most vivid
scenes in George Eliot's novels are those
which she knew as child. Thomas Hardy
ties he has made so clear to his readers.
Hawthorne, a born New Highlander, spent
his life in study of the early conditions
of New England-and with what marvellous
results! Mr.. Kipling not born to India.
but he went there as boy, and as yet his
best fiction is the result of observations
made at that plastic period. Even he after
a Of IN,
country, has not ventured on an American
novel. Marion Crawford, an American by
courtesy though a foreigner by long resi-
dence, has made a failure of those novels
whose scenes are laid in this country. And
so It goes. The novelist must take men
and women as he knows them and put them
into an environment of which he has
thorough command if he would give to
them that likeness of truth without which
no novel can last. This does not mean
realism in the sense of minute detail or
literal accuracy of description, but the
breathing into the work the breath of life
that can only come when the writer's ma
terlal is a part of himself and is not gath
cred from the wayside by the basketful
Mr.. D'Annunzio may spend a Few weeks
here and write novel in which America
and Americans figure, but he will not write
an American novel. Mr. Game can come to
New York and make a six months study
of it and fail in the same way. 1t is per-
haps not as invariably true of the novelist
as Of the poet that he is born, not made,
but the truth comes very near that saying.
He must at least keep within the field to
which his birth and experiences have fitted
him