Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-08-14

One cannot help believing that the
novelist who produces one book a year
can Go a better Job than he who writes
two stories annually.
What can be said, then, for the work
Of man who turns out dozen book
length" novels every IL months.
AS far as we can see there has never
been but one man in the history of the
writing world who succeeded in mass
production writing and at the same
time made his work artistic.
He was Alexandra Dumas
The fact that ne could produce mil
lions of words annually did not vitiate
that arrangement of them which the
world has agreed to call good.
His romanceS, whether he wrote
them entirely himself or only stood in
the relation of master mind to them.
produce an agreeable effect which only
true art in fiction can achieve.
Art, one may be forgiven for oeliev-
ing, is the result of quantity only when
supreme mind makes it so. A mere
productive mind is not enough.
There are scores of ambitious, vital
persons writing heavily for the salts
faction of immediate reading needs.
Against them surely nothing can be
said. except that they are not for the
ages.
They themselves would be the first
to admit this-indeed, do proclaim the
same, in those occasional articles which
they write to satisfy the demands OF
hero worship, in an age when quantity
often uSurps the place once given TO
quality.
We hope readers here will pardon our
annual enthusiasm for Dumas. Here
was a UNIQUE man in the ages, an ex-
ceptlonal writer one whose productive
ity resembled that of a machine, yet
whose masterpieces are the perennial
wonder of all who read and write.
And what is 1t about the Three
Musketeers" series, for instances, which
sets them off sharply from the mass OF
writing done by the rapid-flre men OF
today?
We were reading, or attempting to
read. detective story produced by the
master of the craft in England, a man
who does more in a days work than
the average person produces in week
or month.
Actually.
Probably a month would be a fairer
comparison.
In the end, the story was good, but
it took pages to get started, and the
method used was a mere blocking in,
IL way Vi WlldG
Dumas, in different medium. it must
be confessed, did so much better.
For the quality which made his
stories excel is the one which makes
any fiction breathe, live. 1t is that of
character drawing. Just how it is done
no one can explain. 1t is not to be
Analysed although scores of persons
have set themselves up as analysts.
The quality which we agree to call
life in work of fiction resembles real
life in its irreducibility to rules. The
way one man does it may be torn to
pieces, but it is mere dissection. It
displays the course of the muscles, but
it does not tell who makes them move,
or why.
The queer workings of the human
mind. its reactions, its hates, loves,
vagaries, these constitute life as we
know 1t, for all action and reaction
in rational human beings is dependent
upon the state Of mind Life and love,
viewed from one standpoint (although
not the only one), are merely states
Of mind
Alexandra Dumas. the elder knew
more states of mind in a week than
most of us experience in a lifetime.
He fitted Walt Whitman's description
of himself; he was large, he contained
multitudes.