Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1902-10-30
CoNDENsING NOVELS.
A New Trade Which is in Growing
Demand and Requires Brains.
From the New York Sun.

From the New York Sum-
There goes one of those condensers,''
said the publisher, pointing to tall, slen-
der young fellow wearing glasses and with
a number of books under his arm. His
business is condensing novels, and when a
man becomes an expert at it he doesn't
have to look for work.
This has been a very busy world for
some time There are thousands of people
who want to keep up with the novels of the
day, but haven't the time to read them as
they are originally written. So there are
hundreds of readers and elocutionists who
go about reading condensed novels to liter
airy circles, clubs, church societies and pri-
vate families.
THE demand for readers for private fam
lilies is growing astonishingly. The readers
go to this house that one night a week,
possibly twice a week The head of the
house invites in few friends, or maybe he
and his family have the reading all to
themselves.
They don't want continuous perform
ance; they must have at least one story an
evening. If the stories they want are too
long for one evening they must be cut down
to fit the time.
THAT fellow who just walked into the
ferryboat tackled The Crisis a little while
ago. The order was to cut the book down
to two hours.
He found 1t took eight hours to read it
as it was written. 1t took him over a
month, working regularly a part of every
day or evening, to cut 1t down. Then the
people who hired him made up their minds
that it must be shorter, so he had to go to
work to hack it down to- one hour and a
quarter. What do you think of that?
He did it, although it was a fearful job.
1t took him longer to cut off that last forty
minutes than it did to get rid of the first
six hours.
1T requires more brains sometimes to cut
a book down than it does to write it in the
first place. Nothing of Importance must be
left out All the strong features, the pretty
scenes, the amusing dialogue and so on,
must be left in.
1T is really surprising however, how lit
tie that Is important Is cut out. If you had
read the original Crisis and then heard the
condensed story you would have to cudgel
your brain a little to make out exactly what
is missing.
There's a knack about 1t, as there is to
anything else. The condenser must first
read the story carefully to get it's general
effect. Then he very often reads it to study
the mechanism.
cat first reading he has seen passa ges
that may be dropped and no one be much
the wiser. On second reading he takes out
even more, and pretty soon he has the
thing cut down perhaps half.
Very likely he will now take a copy of
the book and cut all the pages loose. The
pages he has marked out he throws away,
and the fragments of pages he pastes to-
lines for page.
He knows just how many minutes 1t
takes to read two pages, that is, both sides
of the sheet. Counting up the Sheets he
finds the number of minutes there still are
In the slaughtered book.
tHe is now getting things down to a
working basis, and here it is that his real
genius comes out. He plays strange tricks
with that story as he goes on. and he often
surprises himself at the things he dares
take out. Every now and then he reads the