The daily Gate City and constitution-Democrat. (Keokuk, Iowa) 1916-1922, 1917-09-24
! THE LENGTH OF NOVELS.
Authors Of Today Are Asked to boil
Down" and Cut Out Super
fluous Incidents.

Des Moines Register: Henry 3.
Fuller of Chicago. himself writer
of novels, protests in the current
number of the Dial against the great
length of the average novel, which
he believes acquires It's volume
through needless and conventional
descriptions of characters and places,
conversation for its own sake, ana
superfluous incidents used for their
sensationalism.
Mr. Fuller might have gone little
farther, and said that when padded
novel acquires great length-he puts
$4,000 words as the limit OF legitl-
macy-the stripping away OF the en-
cess verbiage usually leaves a story
too thin to stand of it's own strength.
1t has to be propped up by irrelevant
descriptions, and conversations and
episodes of a sensational or SHOCKING
nature.
There are long novels which cannot
be abbreviated without losing valu-
able substance. The test is less in
the answer to the question, Can this
novel be cut without losing part OF
the story" than this one: Can it
be cut without reducing our under.
standing of the characters"
The significance of these questions
may be appreciated by reference to
| tie works of Thomas Hardy befoi g
he turned poet, and Of H. G. Wells
before he became philosopher. Any
typical novel by Wells in the pre-
war days could be cut in two in the
middle or emasculated to the sam .
extent in almost any other way, and
the result would be the loss OF a part
- ,to tr1t oh
complete understanding of the char
acters. Everything that Is to be
known of Wells character before
/ the appearance of Mr.. Drifting can
be grasped in half dozen pages.
But what happens when the knife
! is applied to Hardy? There are long
I descriptions which could be cut down,
although in most cases to eliminate
| them completely would hamper the
| development of mood. But when the
action begins to be pared. in such a
work, for example as Tess Of the
| D'Urbervilles," we straightway lose
| our complete understanding OF the
characters. The loss is vital One
chapter cut from Hardy is more of 4
loss than the compression of a Wells
novel to a fourth OF its original
! length.
But the tests applied to Hardy
and Wells would fail utterly if we
tried to measure Victor Hugo by
them. We can stand the loss in
CURED by destroying half the action
of Wells novel. But what If we
endeavored to cut Les Miserables-"
| There would be the same loss OF
action, but it would be action that
could not be spared without vitality
injuring the novel and occasioning a
loss to literature. Characterization
would remain complete. as in the
case of Hardy, but the loss would
none the less be great.
Or the complete character construc-
ton and action Of Hugo's "Toilers Of
the Sea" could be compressed into
10000 words. But what would COM
pensate for the loss of its wonderful,
Imaginative descriptions If this long
novel were reduced in the slightest
degree?
There Is only one test for the
length Of a novel, and that is whether
what is written is worth reading. A
great book is seldom padded and a
padded book seldom contains even
the germ of greatness.