Norwich bulletin., 1914-10-20
OPENS COURSE OF
 SLATER HALL LECTURES.
Professor Phelps of Vale Says Modern Novel obeys Law, of Supply and Demand.

The popular lecture course opened ausp1ciously at Slater Hall on Monday
 afternoon with good attendance and
 a good lecture by Professor William
 Lyon Phelphs of Yale University on
 The Novel of Today. Principal Henry
 A. Tirrell introduced the speaker and
 took opportunity to thank Philip John son for his part in obtaining the course. Prof. Phelps also commenting him as a fine impresared- After speak
 ing of his former visit to Norwich
 Prof Phelps turned to the contempor- ary novel Just at present the novel is the most prominent form of literary art. It is ten times as popular as the are published and read than all other kinds of books combined. This has not always been the case. There are literary fashions just as much as fash ions In clothes.
 As a Yale rpofessor he always sees the latest fashion in mems garments Compare these changing styles with the history of the sonnet, which reap peared in 1900 after. long years of exile, or the theological poetry which was all the fashion in 1900. Now the novel has taken their place What is the reason? The same req
 son as rules in the commercial world
 the law of supply and demand. There is demand for the novel, which
 writers are forced to obey.
 P1SlCA1 Cu tO WAASo
 poetry. The grocer has to. keep the
 goods called for,-or go out of business So does the writer. There is only one exception and, that is in the case of genius. BI. people do not like genius and he has to create a demand for his own supply. Examples noted were Magner and Robert Browning. Next, what has created this demand :?
 A glance out of the window will tell
 The great increase in the number and
 quality of secondary schools. Reading
 has become mental resource for peo-
 pie who work. The supply has leaped
 to meet the demand. The bad side of
 this is that many read stuff just to
 keep them from thinking and this has
 it's effect on novel writing as an art.
 whether he knows how or not because
 this is the only way to get an audi
 ence.
 A novel is a good story, well told.
 How many are all that? One just out
 is really a treatise on electicity.
 Other -treatises on various subjects are
 The Inside of the Cup, Robert Elsmere,
 Looking Backward or The Fruit. of the
 Tree. Putnam and the Wolf was a
 gold brick in prose. The three coun-
 tries most successful in the noVe. are
 Russia, England and France. Ger She leads the world in music, but
 lacks the sense of proportion necessary
 to novel writing and has an excess of
 sentimentalfty.
 She cannot get rid of unnecessary detail. America is also backward. She has one good novel, The Scarlet Let ter which is good enough for anybody, and, perhaps Huckleberry Finn will also become immortal. But most of them are trivial. Of the old guard Howells' may survive, James, after his wonderful ghost story, has fallen into evil ways. others have survived their reputation, like James Lane AL len.
 Prof. Phelps recommended Queed, | V. V.'s Eyes, The Way Home, The Squirrel Cage, Ethan Frome, Partners of Providence, The Rosy World, and Our MT. Iwen.
 Russia leads in fiction This has all been written within 100 years and all the writers are now dead. An in- estimable loon is the recent transla- ton from the works of Dostoiefevski, their best author The French have a long list of writers, all dead, too.
 Though the present gives us Jean Christodphe by Romain.
 The English are always successful with the novel and, have a great roll of powerful names. Among them he mentioned MT. De Morgan, Arnold Bennett, Joseph Conrad. Galsworthy, Oliver Eden Philpots, Wm- J. Locke, H. G. Wells, and Thomas Hardy. All of us can remember the rise, flourish and decay of romanticism. in troduced by Stevenson and reaching its climax in 1900. It drove out the