Evening star., 1928-12-20
THIS AND THAT
BY CHARLES E. TRACEWELL.

biographies will be in print 1000 years
hence?
Ebert Hubbard of East Aurora, ir
his Little Journeys to the Homes oi
the Great and Near Great" many years
ago wrote small biographies in strictly
modern form. Discriminating men (in-
Guiding Thomas A. Edison) greeted his
work with applause, but the orthodox
schools of literature Gncluding the pub
fishers of the Sane) would have moth
/ ing to do with him. So he printed
(most exquisitely) his own works.
The Little Journeys" consist of short
lives written in strict "journalese.
This was the one great point of criti-
cism against them. The fact seems tc
be that they we're in advance of their
clay. Previously the "pep" of news
paperdom had been regarded as well
enough for news stories, but somehow
it was not thought good form to carry
it's snap over into book form. Hubbard
| took great man, whether painter, sci
enlist, business man, and made him
first of all a human being. When he
considered Kant, for instance, what in
terested him was that the German phi
| loSopher walked a certain number of
miles every day along exactly the same
route. Maybe he failed to give the eX-
act scope of the mans philosophy, but
certainly he pictured the man very
well, indeed
AS to the question of whether the
novel is outworn, perhaps that is best
| left to time. Many readers will feel, at
! least until time shall have demonstrated
otherwise. that the novel is doing very
well. There is still a great surge of
novels from the presses. Month by
month they come, some by older writer's,
some by newer ones, some the ambi-
tious first novels" of men and women
unknown to literary fame.
Literary forms have their heydayS.
1t is problematical whether poetry will
ever regain with English-speaking peo-
Piles the prestige 1t once held. Perhaps
the novel is doomed to second place,
with biography assuming the first posi-
ton. To say that biography is the
'unrivaled medium of the present day, "
however, seems to us a bit strong. OF
course, there is so much resemblance
between a certain type of novel and a
certain type of biography that one is
almost the other, no matter which form
is considered.
Yet there will always be. we believe,
preference by many for fiction which
IIldkeS no Z lei ptGISllSE. OIldkSSpCdlC Z
said "the pays the thing" but among
the majority of readers the story is the
thing. Undoubtedly that was what
Shakespeare meant. The swing of ac-
ton, the development of plot, the Sus-
pense of suspense, if one may put it
that way. combined with uncertainty
and doubt-these together constitute
the appeal of the story.
Exact definitions of "a novel; leave
one cold, because the medium is so
flexible and has been so variously ham
died, from the days of Fielding to those
of GalsWorthy, that every one realizes
that definitions count for little. In an
cient Greece the people responded to
the charm of poetry, but what really
appealed to them was the narrative.
AS long as human beings are human
beings, they will love stories. The mod
ern biography (Which so prides itself
on being up-to-date) is simply the
story of a mans life told more inter-
estingly-as a story-than it would
have been, in all probability, by the
staid biographer of half century ago.
That old man looked upon the methods
of journalism askance. but since his
days newspapers have established a
pride in themselves and a writing tech
nique which has so many merits that
it is being quietly adopted by writer's
of books. What is best in modern
biographies is journalistic.