The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1905-06-04
IN THE LITERARY WORLD.

His first book found a publisher
| without any difficulty, and he went on
! in the line of American feeling of
American life, which his temperament
| inspired for him. I couldn't write
| about Dukes and Counts and that sort
| of people, who live largely upon
American snobs, whom they curtesy
| to for money, but whom they secretly
! despise as vulgarians. l don't know
much about them, TO begin with, and
| that ought to be enough How can
you write about something you don't
| know?'
He talked rapidly, fluently, with
! the impulses of a mind trained to trace
/ carefully, persistently, the distance
! between detail and incident, and their
accumulation of proof as to actual
| character
This matter of giving life to the
| pages of novel, he said, lis the result
of industrious study of people There
! is in every human being a main cur
rent, a big temperamental artery.
| which is character. Now, it is posi-
BILE, if you are neglectful of this main
purpose i'm your story, to get lost in
| psychologist eddies. in little counter
currents and undercurrents i'm the
backdraughts of your imagination. 1
never fancied or could see the valua-
bic intention of that delicate scroll
work some writer's attempt and call
psychologist analysis. Man is first and
| foremost an influence by reason of his
character, He may have fits but they
do not belong nor are they part of
his character"
Y on do not encourage any theory
as TO the form of study / asked.
prefer ideas every time.
Ideas in any form are first
rate The style viii come to
a writer. but sometimes the ideas
are lacking. That theory of Flau-
berts was the ruin of Robert Louis
Stevenson, whose endeavor to initiate
other writer's was falsely applauded
by the critics, and he lost his identity
his originality thereby. A writer who is
worrying about form and style is like
the speaker who devotes his last spare
moments before the speech is waxing
his mustache and curling his hair and
otherwise studying his gestures before
the mirror when he should be busy
thinking about his ideas and trusting
to nature to give him the graces of de-
livery. Writing is the result of think
ing about things to write about and
studying the most trivial details of ac-
ton in contemporaneous life, so that
you may set them down, not imagin-
atively, but accurately. \ novelist has
to hang to his ideas night and day as
jealousy as an east side Hebrew sticks
to a bargain problem. There isn't any
time to waste on poses; you're too
busy making notes.
Nothing could shake Phillips's self
confidence i'm methods nor his Ameri- |
canism of vision. two instances of the |
value Of his example to the young con- |
temporaries of American fiction.
why is it so many talented men |
and women never get over the frontier
L.
question of older, more experienced |
writer's. but without much satisfaction |
as Phillips gave in his instinct for |
truth.
Because they are afflicted with I
what they call the artistic tempera- |
ment Now. the artistic temperament |
is nothing but idleness or dyspepsia |
If any symptoms of artistic tempera- |
ment appear, fight to the death Work,
work whether you want to or not. You |
must exercise your brain as scientifi-
caly as you do your muscles. I'throw /
away whole days writing sometimes,
but | am satisfied at least I've done |
days work, and it has kept my steam
up, and prevented me from rusting,
tagging behind. lie learned something, |
too. You can't work an hour at any
thing without learning something
lis criticism valuable to the young
writer / asked, for Phillips was one
of them, although among those in the
lead. And here he showed why he had
gained the front so rapidly, because of
a fixed, positive confidence i'm the vital
ity of his profession, in the dignity
and possibility of the American nov
elist
There's a thing a man should be
very careful about. Criticism! 1t
sounds very formidable, though it
really is extremely useful, but it is one
of the reconstructions i'm intellectual
progress that we need in this coun-
try.
There arc innumerable critics, but
very little criticism, and the best
sounding kind is the most misleading.
The trouble all comes from England.
where oxford and Cambridge turn out
men all of one cut, one brain, one frih-
ed and starched mental vision The
college man is a dangerous dummy
stuffed with the principle that it is bet
ter to be a precieuSe, a mechanical
figure with fixed wires to pull fixed
literary principles than to live shout
der to shoulder with each other in the
of mutual human weakness.
The American colleges. particu
larry those in the East, are turning out
row upon row of men all cut in the
same way, all drilled to believe them
selves superior in intellectual knowl-
edge, all encouraging that most I'M
American thing called class and Gull
ture"
Phillips was a college man himself,
he admitted and the strength of these
he was expressing so en-
became interesting as an
example of his literary method, that
is fearless, that is thinking truth for
truths sake and that is tireless in its
grip on ideas as a bulldog in on a
strange pair of trousers.
What we need is constructive crit
icism in this country, that not only
tears down, but instructs the writer
how to build-a criticism that is not
that is not airing its liter
airy vanity at the expense of the
young writer who has, perhaps, erred
only in enthusiasm of honesty towards
his subject, and is scolded by the pre-
cieuses for pessimism In France they
have overcome this masquerade OF
education which college diploma as
sumes to be knowledge. In France a
young artist has only to show his work
to be instantly recognized by his own.
A young man who has been trying for
sixteen years to get has pictures ex-
hibited i'm New York and could never