The Montgomery advertiser., 1902-01-12
SELECTING THEMES.

tBy Andrew James Mtller.) | IL has always been source of great concern for the new writer to find sub lect upon which to discourse. It is sort of ogre in his or her career, which somehow increases in perplexitys the longer and deeper it is studied. To one. who has been an extended reader of fiction, it would appear as if all Of the fields had been prompted and that noth- Ing was left for the new gleaner. MT. kipling has appropriated India, Gilbert Parker has been allotted Canada, Olive Schriener and Haggard have pre-empted South Africa, MT. Lefcadio Hearn has A deed to Japan, three centuries of French history are apportioned to Stan ley J. Weyman, Scotland was owned by Barrie once, but his preserves are being invaded by McLaren and Crockett, the Christian Era is absorbed by Lew Wal lace. Russian cruelty by kennan, while there Is a general scrapping for first place on Colonial times. The religious novel, by common consent, seems assign cd to Mrs. Humphrey Ward, while the Internal regions have been latterly given to John Kendrick Bangs. Detective stories first belonged to Poe, but this field has passed into the exclusive pos session of Conan Doyle and Anna kathe- -ine Green. MT. Hall Caine has Tee simple title to the manxmen, just as MT. Cable nas to the Creoles. A warning sign of mo thoroughfare'' has been erected by MT. Poultney Bigelow upon all mat ter pertaining to "reminiscences of the German Emperor, while 1t is perhaps unnecessary for James Lane Allen and Paul Leicester Ford to set up the warn- Ing s''keep off the grass" in Kentucky. California, we all know, belongs to Bret Harte, just as Tennessee Is the do- main of Miss Murphree.
 @II Nf fyNIo rirNnf find the wierd and supernatural occupied by Marie Corelli, the sombre and depress- ing by Siepkiewiscz, the realistic and psychological by Tolstoi and Maerterlinck the heroic and unnatural by Jules Verne and Anatole France, the decadent by Ibsen and Barres, character analysis by George Meredith, social life by BJornsen and Harold Frederic, heredity and human sketching by Paul Bourget, the new wo- man by Mrs. Sarah Grand and w. E.. Norris, and fatalism by Sidney Luska. In the same way some literary pioneer has staked off his claim to the Alps. Monte Carlo. the Latin Quartier the vendetta, frontier life, sea tales, oc- cultism, the Mahatmas, etc, while still others have pierced the infinitudes of the future and laid off claims for their posterity.
 As the beginner does not wish to be rlassed as a poacher, or an imitator, he Is disposed to accept the claims of his predecessors as valid, and carefully avoids their varied pre-empted fields. Even should he be bold enough to enter their forbidden precincts. his reward would at best, be equivocal, as he would be compared, as' shadow of the original claimant. The critics might do him the honor of giving him second place. as a clever imitator of MT. So and So, and oven nrophesy that he might some day equal the great original. This is the sort of reflected light that has so often effectually squelched otherwise meritori- ous writers. It is like the unfortunate son of a great father, who might have .isen to prominence with genuine gifts. if t had not been for the incubus of his oaternity-living eternally in the shadow