Evening star., 1928-10-19
THIS AND THAT
BY CHARLES f. TRACEWELL.

! it the latter may lack. but the dinner is
much the more filling of the two. One
remembers the bon-bon because it was
| tasty and the dinner because it was
| good 1t is the difference between clev-
erness and goodness.
X y X
Our position, in other words, is that
| cleverncsS,. no matter how clever is
| something less than sheer solid worth,
| if the latter lives up to its designation
in both deed and word. What would
! Dickens Christmas Carol be if it
we're cut to 1000 words? 1t is good pre-
cisely in proportion to its length, which
| takes it out of the class of short stories,
as we today know that medium, and
| puts it into the category of noveletteS.
| "A Christmas Carol is, in effect, con-
densed novel rather than a padded
short story. 1t retains all the vigor
which the great novelist put into his
novels. 1t is physically big enough to
put its complete mastery beyond the
| reader at one reading. A score of read
ings, especially if they be at least a
/ year apart, as they should be, will not
exhaust it.. One will continually find
| something new in it-some curious fe-
| licity, some phrase, some good word.
maybe, which hitherto escaped his
notice.
This effect cannot be secured in 1000
words. The marvellous short stories of
our own o. Henry may be inStanced.
| Who, having read them once, ever
wants to read them again? Depending,
as they do, upon a keen flash of plot
wit, if such phrase may be used, uSu-
ally at the very end, they have gone, up
in intellectual smoke, like the mag
nesium powder from the pan of the
flashlight photographer. Their keenest
enjoyment, this very same unexpected
ness, this bit Of essential cleverness of
the unexpected, can never be expert
enced again.
1t is different with the master works
of the great novelists. Lew Wallace S
"Ben-Hur" would have been forgotten,
the chances are. many years ago, if it
had not taken him 600, or 900 pages,
| however many it is, to tell the tale.
| There is a solidity and breadth to that
great story of Jerusalem (Which grew
| into being in small Indiana town.
which no other treatment could have
achieved. 1t is impossible to think of
"Ben-Hur" in terms of iittleness. 1t is
not a miniature, but panorama. When
an olive grove is described, the reader
| gets not just the words .'olive grove, "
but actual details, the very appearance
of certain particular trees. And this
| has its effect, whether the reader be
aware of it or not. ct is best, of course,
| if he be not) Where so many of our
modern novels fall down, it would seem.
is in the lack of this very inclusiveness.
| The average reader is too busy follow
| ing the swing of narrative to paint
in pictures of his own between the lines
If the writer will not do it for him, the
thing Is not done, in the vast majority
Of cases. Hence many bright, clever
novels have a sketchiness about them
that keeps them out of the masterpiece
class. When the reader closes the book
he begins to realize that he hasn't the
| slightest idea of how the heroine
| looked He has been locking at her all
the time, yet never once saw her, be-
cause his writer was too much occupied
with the plot to condescend to tell him
much about the appearance of the lady.
In the old books, however, the reader is
| never left in doubt. If the heroine has
naughty look. the reader is told so
he is not left to guess at it through a
chance remark of another character.
1t is this amplitude of form, content
and intention, above all which makes
the novels of Dickens, Dumas, Balzac.
Scott, Conrad, Thackeray, zola, Cooper
and many others, different though they
may be in most qualities. one in spirit,
the same in giving the reader a feeling,
perfect sense, of life and of living,
and of this great universe in which life
exists and living goes forward forever