The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-02-15
AS HowELLs SEES FICTION.

The Novelist Talks on the Tendencies
 of the Day--The Naturalistic School
 Has Come to Stay, Although it May
 Be Developed Along Psychical Lines {, The Great American Novelist to
 Come From the Middle West-Wo-
 mems Place in Fiction Writing.
 Surely W. D. Howells is the mildest mannered man that ever made himself famous by his writing. Sincere, kind ly, sympathetic, he is willing to talk about anything except himself, and literary lion as he is, he will roar. you gently as any sucking dove" Even when. having settled down for an af- ternoon's work, which the storm out side has guaranteed will be uninter- rupted, he is disturbed by an inquisi- tive reporter, MT. Howells doesn't lose his serenity. He doesn't look sur prised. One might think that snow storms invariably blew reporters into the Howells's parlors. He comes into the room smiling, and the warmth of his smile and his voice bullies the storm outside, and makes it a thing of no importance.
 There are few men whose voices are bids for liking, but MT. Howells Is one of the few, and if one should but hear him repeat the Sanskrit alphabet, one | would feel sure of his interest in hu- manity. Perhaps it is that creed of his-that all things in the world are Ivy n fn | sees clearly--that makes him so equa- | ble when the world breaks in upon his | quiet afternoon. It may be that, after
 all, the reporter is the one interviewed. l q had an interview once that was | really accurate" the novelist says, l meditatively. 'It was in the Sun. The | things I said were in 1t, and some of | my language, too Usually l come out so ornate in those interviews that l don't recognize myself" His eyes
 twinkle so encouragingly that if l there's a note of warning in the re-
 mark the reporter decides 1t wasn't in- | tentional.
 What shall we talk about? Fic-
 tion? Oh, well, there has been only | one clearly defined tendency in fiction | in the last few years, and that is to- | ward realism or naturalism. like that word better. It Is easy enough to | see how the thing has come. There l has been natural progress from clas- 1 sicism to romanticism, from romanti-
 cism to naturalism. Classicism made
 laws of beauty so strict that they were | uncomfortable. Then romanticisn caught at the strained and extraordi-
 nary, and that vein was worked out | Now we have naturalism which finds | the beauty and interest in common l everyday life and feeling, and I should | say it will endure as long as that life
 and feeling endure.
 "All the great minds are at work
 along that line. There hasn't been g | writer of the first class dealing with | romantic fiction within the last twen- | ty-five years. Just look the ground l over and see. Plenty of second ano | third-class men have gone on writing | romantic novels and they have more | readers than the naturalists; but, al | the same, the brains are going into | naturalism. Literature and thought | progress along the lines Of natural law | and follow natural transitions, but there are always what one might cal survivals. and so far as romanticism is | concerned the survival is among th'
 uneducated masses-for the masses art uneducated-and the critics. There i! | always a class of readers that keep:
 up with the advanced lines of thought
 but the majority sticks to form o | literature or art after the world ha;