Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1929-10-08

Does the individual taste for fiction
change with the years?
Short stories, we believe, are young
peoples fiction; novels are more likely
to be the entertainment of middle age.
Time brings most readers from senti-
ment to reality and works O somewhat
similar revolution in regard to short
story and novel.
These revolutions Of taste have no
exact boundaries. A reader may never
outgrow his liking for q good short
story; q young man or woman may
have decided preference for longer
fiction.
Personal taste changes merely in re-
lation to what may be termed the
larger liking: Perhaps a better way to
put 1t would be to say that the para
mount enthusiasm changes for better
or worse.
The reader who finds most excellent
diversion In his reading necessarily has
individual preferences, which are
marked by intense enthusiasms. As q
boy he preferred history to any other
reading. or 1t may have been poetry.
The essay form attracts another.
For the time being all other writings
are minor, in so far as the particular
too much poetry, history, essay. He
revels in what he likes.
X X
Time, which is nothing more than
experience. looked at one way, does sly
things to the human spirit.
Its effect may be recognized by the
killing Of one enthusiasm and the sub
Stitution of another therefor.
In no sphere of life does this show
more than in the artistic. Here the
amateur vies with the professional. We
have always wondered why such hue
and cry was made about the profess
Sional in sports, when in artistic mat
tiers he Is regarded without spleen. The
taking OF money for art does not vitiate
q mans standing, whereas in physical
fields, where Drawn combines well with
lucre. the acceptance Is regarded as
Of competition the world cannot free
itself from the belief that pay may be
made-and accepted-for q variety Of
purposes, whereas In art 1t will surely
be for the best that the professor can do.
The killing of one enthusiasm in
reading, and the acquisition Of another.
brought about through the action Of
time, which slides along upon silent
feet, comes not in day or an hour
or year, but occurs SO imperceptibly
that the victim, If such he Is, Is scarcely
aware Of it.
Tell former lover of poetry that he
does not care for it any more, he most
likely will dispute heatedly with you
about the matter. The change has come
so subtly that he Is not aware of 1t.
Go to his bookcases, however, and look
for new volumes of poetry. Point out
to hin-if you dare-that he has not
purchased one since he left college.
He venerates poetry, would die in its
defense, but both the veneration and
the willingness to defend it are theo-
retical. The actuality Of verse has
ceased to exist for him.
So we find thousands Of men who
praise Longfellow, but do not read him.
just as there are perhaps hundreds Of
thousands of Americans, brought up on
the tradition of Dickens, who Loyalty
believe they like his books, but who
have turned away to the actual reading
OF the master French fictionists. This
is what 1t means to change ones read
ing enthusiasm, to become enamored of
new ways in books. to attempt to hold
fast to the old when all the time whole
shelves of books have sunk away from
beneath ones literary feet.
\ X
There Is nothing to be sorry for in
this. It is life, and the world Of men
knows nothing greater, as witness the
hopes Of humanity, which place the
crown of achievement in life eternal.
Life does strange things tn men and