Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-01-28
THIS AND THAT
BY CHARLES E. TRAcEwELL.

Is the Dickensian style in the novel
coming back?
In this column the other day we
mentioned two new books which tend
to prove that it is
Two novels out of so many hundreds
may not show much, but surely they
are literary straws which show which
way the wind blows.
Writers are going back to the style
OF Charles Dickens, we believe, be-
cause his way of writing was more
natural than the present sophisticated
mode which dominates the American
scene of letters.
In the first place, Dickens knew his
grammar.
Let no one think we mean he made
no grammatical mistakes. His sentences
were rather too long, and many of
them too involved in thought.
No doubt a puriSt might find many
score slips from the strict path of
grace in the thousands of well filled
pages of the master Victorian novelist.
AS a whole, however, his stories are
distinguished by English we'll used, and
by that we mean as the genuine Eng
lishman uses it, which is just little
bit better, everything taken into con-
sideration, than any other English
speaking person uses it.
There was a certain grace in the very
relation of thought to sentence struc-
ture. This is something which many
modern American novelist, proud OF
his incoherent, jerky sentences, might
well study with profit.
Basically, it is matter of good gram
mar. The youngest novelists, both here
and abroad, seem to have seen the
absurdity of protesting against every
thing just because it happens to be
old. They have stopped thumbing their
noses at convention, and are going
about their own good business Of max
ing art out of the written word.
These youngest writers are not TAX
ing life quite so seriously as their i'm
mediate predecessors.
They are beginning to see that there
is a great deal of fun to be found in
men and events, If you have the eye to
see it.
They know, as Dickens did, that it is
possible to describe doorknob in such
a way that it impreSSeS the reader as
a particular doorknob and not just
another one of the mob of doorknobS.
Thus they give the reader a certain
quiet, solid satisfaction which is rather
above and beyond the mere words.
Part of this result seems to be Sc
CuLCO UCCduSC I1lC QudllJy "a AlAAAOL 40
incorporated in their work.
But there is distinctly more to it
than that.
The humor is there not only because
the author has it in himself and wants
to share it with his readers, but even
more because he is considerate of them.
Hrhis consideration for the reader is
something which many a hard 'realist"
Of recent days has utterly forgotten, if
he ever considered it worth his trouble
at all
His readers, he vowed to himself,
would have to take what he wrote, as
he wrote it, or leave it alone, it made
no difference to him.
He gave them Main street, according
to his own neat formula, and If it
pleased the Mighty Mencken, it should
and must please the rest of them.
X X X
The kind reader" however, is not
so easily put off as all that and all
that. He may buy and read by the
thousand copies, but all the time he is
hoping for something different, some
thing away and beyond, something with
more restraint in it.
Restraint, as we see it, is not only