Evening star., 1932-03-15
THIS AND THAT
BY CHARLES E. TRACEWELL.

Fat novels about London continue to
arrive in America to astonish those
readers who wonder why New York
cannot inspire a similar fecundity in
our own authors.
We have stories laid in Manhattan,
it is true, but they do not take the city
| itself as their theme or do more than
place their characters in its streets and
homes
1 These Londoners evidently find a
greater inspiration in their foggy city.
for their books in recent years have
come to deal more and more with the
city, its streets and the characters they
present.
This feeling of the city dominant
| is this what some American critics
mean when they speak of the 'insu-
larity" of English authors?
Some readers will think that insu-
larity is a good thing. after all; that a
certain provincialism out of which
many Americans have permitted them
selves to be shamed Is a good thing
| for a writer to possess.
! The main gain which provincialism
| brings a writer the reader of present.
! day fiction may suspect, is a hearty
interest in his own time and place.
| He is too busy with what lies all
around him to seek to gain "atmo-
sphere" in any other land. He writes
about what he knows best. If there Is
any better way to write good fiction, it
has not been discovered to date.
While it may be admitted that the
method is known to all writer's, it can
not be said with the same assurance
| that all writer's have followed it.
J Tho ono hidden faII1t whinh urrack c
them, If a reader may judge, is cer-
| tain assumption of the cosmopolitan
! attitude, in the course of which the
strictly insular viewpoint is lost, and
with it the inner conviction Of the
author that what he is writing about
| is very much worth while.
What we like about most of the re-
cent London novels Is that there Is no
doubt in their authors minds that the
content of their books is of real i'm
portance and supreme worth.
Has not every reader felt at times In
reading some of our American works
of fiction that the writer's had their
tongues in their cheeks all the time?
Somehow they conveyed the impress
sion that they were not very much
! interested in their themes themselves,
|
readers to be, but that they would do
the best they could to beguile the few
hours the two would spend together
This standpoint seemed to lead them
on to superficial treatment of char
acters or the raising of their words and
deeds to certain spectacular shallow
ness which reminded one of Nero I'D
ding while Rome burned.
1t is questionable whether Nero was
quite as great a, scoundrel as he figures
in the mind of the average reader of
history After all. the burning of a
city in his day did not mean much.
They had plenty Of cities and plenty
of slaves to build more.
Nero was a scoundrel, but modern
psychology and medical science would
point with the hand of mercy to his
ancestry and forgive him little for his
sins.
Maybe he watched Rome burn much
as any other person watches a great
conhagration because of its intense ap-
peal to the eye and mind.
Nevertheless. the playing Of music
while watching the spectacle showed
superficiality of character in the disso-
lutte Roman emperor for which the
world has never forgiven him.
Many modern novels, by dealing with
human beings who have lost their men
tai and spiritual balance, show the
reader that their authors are some
what unbalanced themselves.
Their very selection of themes gives
them away They have their tongues
in their cheeks, as the saying is, be-