The Certain Hour | Page 6

of "vital" novels know
nothing about the period, beyond a
hazy association
of it with the restrictions of the schoolroom; our

sluggish imaginations instinctively rebel against the
exertion of
forming any notion of such a period; and
all the human nature that
exists even in serious-minded
persons is stirred up to resentment
against the book's
author for presuming to know more than a potential

patron. The book, in fine, simply irritates the
serious-minded
person; and she--for it is only women
who willingly brave the terrors
of department-stores,
where most of our new books are bought
nowadays--quite
naturally puts it aside in favor of some keen and

daring study of American life that is warranted to grip

the reader. So,
modernity of scene is everywhere
necessitated as an essential

qualification for a book's
discussion at the literary evenings of the
local
woman's club; and modernity of scene, of course, is
almost
always fatal to the permanent worth of
fictitious narrative.
It may seem banal here to recall the truism that
first-class art never
reproduces its surroundings; but
such banality is often justified by our
human proneness
to shuffle over the fact that many truisms are true.

And this one is pre-eminently indisputable: that what
mankind has
generally agreed to accept as first-class
art in any of the varied forms
of fictitious narrative
has never been a truthful reproduction of the
artist's
era. Indeed, in the higher walks of fiction art has
never
reproduced anything, but has always dealt with
the facts and laws of
life as so much crude material
which must be transmuted into
comeliness. When
Shakespeare pronounced his celebrated dictum
about
art's holding the mirror up to nature, he was no doubt
alluding
to the circumstance that a mirror reverses
everything which it reflects.
Nourishment for much wildish speculation, in fact,
can be got by
considering what the world's literature
would be, had its authors
restricted themselves, as do
we Americans so sedulously--and
unavoidably--to writing
of contemporaneous happenings. In
fiction-making no
author of the first class since Homer's infancy has

ever in his happier efforts concerned himself at all
with the great
"problems" of his particular day; and
among geniuses of the second
rank you will find such
ephemeralities adroitly utilized only when
they are
distorted into enduring parodies of their actual selves
by
the broad humor of a Dickens or the colossal fantasy
of a Balzac. In
such cases as the latter two writers,
however, we have an otherwise
competent artist
handicapped by a personality so marked that,
whatever
he may nominally write about, the result is, above all
else,
an exposure of the writer's idiosyncrasies.
Then, too, the laws of any
locale wherein Mr.

Pickwick achieves a competence in business, or of
a
society wherein Vautrin becomes chief of police, are
upon the

face of it extra-mundane. It suffices that,
as a general rule, in
fiction-making the true artist
finds an ample, if restricted, field
wherein the proper
functions of the preacher, or the ventriloquist, or
the
photographer, or of the public prosecutor, are
exercised with
equal lack of grace.
Besides, in dealing with contemporary life a
novelist is goaded into
too many pusillanimous
concessions to plausibility. He no longer
moves with
the gait of omnipotence. It was very different in the

palmy days when Dumas was free to play at ducks and
drakes with
history, and Victor Hugo to reconstruct the
whole system of English
government, and Scott to compel
the sun to set in the east, whenever
such minor changes
caused to flow more smoothly the progress of the
tale
these giants had in hand. These freedoms are not
tolerated in
American noveldom, and only a few futile
"high-brows" sigh in vain
for Thackeray's "happy
harmless Fableland, where these things are."
The
majority of us are deep in "vital" novels. Nor is the
reason far
to seek.
IV
One hears a great deal nowadays concerning "vital"
books. Their
authors have been widely praised on very
various grounds. Oddly
enough, however, the writers of
these books have rarely been
commended for the really
praiseworthy charity evinced therein
toward that large
long-suffering class loosely describable as the

average-novel-reader.
Yet, in connection with this fact, it is worthy of
more than passing
note that no great while ago the New
York Times' carefully selected
committee, in picking
out the hundred best books published during a

particular year, declared as to novels--"a `best' book,
in our opinion,
is one that raises an important
question, or recurs to a vital theme and
pronounces
upon it what in some sense is a last word." Now this


definition is not likely ever to receive more praise
than it deserves.
Cavilers may, of course, complain
that actually to write the last word
on any subject is
a feat reserved for the Recording Angel's unique

performance on judgment Day. Even setting that
objection aside, it is
undeniable that no work of
fiction published of late in America
corresponds
quite so accurately to the terms of this definition as
do
the multiplication tables. Yet the multiplication
tables are not without
their claims to applause as
examples of straightforward narrative. It is,
also, at
least permissible to consider that therein the numeral
five,
say, where it figures as protagonist, unfolds
under the stress of its
varying adventures as opulent a
development of real human nature as
does, through
similar ups-and-downs, the Reverend John Hodder in
The
Inside of the Cup. It