The Certain Hour | Page 7

is equally allowable to find
the less simple
evolution of the digit seven more
sympathetic, upon the whole, than
those of Undine
Spragg in The Custom of the Country. But, even so,

this definition of what may now, authoritatively, be
ranked as a
"best novel" is an honest and noteworthy
severance from misleading
literary associations such as
have too long befogged our notions
about readingmatter.
It points with emphasis toward the altruistic

obligations of tale-tellers to be "vital."
For we average-novel-readers--we average people, in
a word--are
now, as always, rather pathetically hungry
for "vital" themes, such
themes as appeal directly to
our everyday observation and prejudices.
Did the
decision rest with us all novelists would be put under
bond
to confine themselves forevermore to themes like
these.
As touches the appeal to everyday observation, it
is an old story, at
least coeval with Mr. Crummles' not
uncelebrated pumps and tubs, if
not with the grapes
of Zeuxis, how unfailingly in art we delight to

recognize the familiar. A novel whose scene of action
is explicit will
always interest the people of that
locality, whatever the book's other
pretensions to

consideration. Given simultaneously a photograph of


Murillo's rendering of The Virgin Crowned Queen of
Heaven and a
photograph of a governor's installation
in our State capital, there is no
one of us but will
quite naturally look at the latter first, in order to

see if in it some familiar countenance be recognizable.
And thus,
upon a larger scale, the twentieth century
is, pre-eminently, interested
in the twentieth century.
It is all very well to describe our average-novelreaders'
dislike of
Romanticism as "the rage of Caliban
not seeing his own face in a
glass." It is even within
the scope of human dunderheadedness again
to point out
here that the supreme artists in literature have
precisely
this in common, and this alone, that in their
masterworks they have
avoided the "vital" themes of
their day with such circumspection as
lesser folk
reserve for the smallpox. The answer, of course, in
either
case, is that the "vital" novel, the novel which
peculiarly appeals to us
average-novel-readers, has
nothing to do with literature. There is
between these
two no more intelligent connection than links the paint

Mr. Sargent puts on canvas and the paint Mr. Dockstader
puts on
his face.
Literature is made up of the re-readable books, the
books which it is
possible--for the people so
constituted as to care for that sort of
thing--to read
again and yet again with pleasure. Therefore, in

literature a book's subject is of astonishingly minor
importance, and
its style nearly everything: whereas in
books intended to be read for
pastime, and forthwith to
be consigned at random to the wastebasket
or to the
inmates of some charitable institute, the theme is of

paramount importance, and ought to be a serious one.
The modern
novelist owes it to his public to select a
"vital" theme which in itself
will fix the reader's
attention by reason of its familiarity in the
reader's
everyday life.
Thus, a lady with whose more candid opinions the
writer of this is
more frequently favored nowadays than
of old, formerly confessed to

having only one set rule
when it came to investment in new
reading-matter--
always to buy the Williamsons' last book. Her
reason
was the perfectly sensible one that the Williamsons'
plots
used invariably to pivot upon motor-trips, and
she is an ardent
automobilist. Since, as of late, the
Williamsons have seen fit to
exercise their typewriter
upon other topics, they have as a matter of
course lost
her patronage.
This principle of selection, when you come to
appraise it sanely, is
the sole intelligent method of
dealing with reading-matter. It seems
here expedient
again to state the peculiar problem that we average--

novel-readers have of necessity set the modern
novelist--namely,
that his books must in the main
appeal to people who read for pastime,
to people who
read books only under protest and only when they

have no other employment for that particular half-hour.
Now, reading for pastime is immensely simplified
when the book's
theme is some familiar matter of the
reader's workaday life, because
at outset the reader is
spared considerable mental effort. The motorist
above
referred to, and indeed any average-novel-reader, can

without exertion conceive of the Williamsons' people in
their
automobiles. Contrariwise, were these fictitious
characters embarked
in palankeens or droshkies or
jinrikishas, more or less intellectual
exercise would
be necessitated on the reader's part to form a notion

of the conveyance. And we average-novel-readers do not
open a book
with the intention of making a mental
effort. The author has no right
to expect of us an act
so unhabitual, we very poignantly feel. Our
prejudices
he is freely chartered to stir up--if, lucky rogue, he

can!--but he ought with deliberation to recognize that
it is precisely in
order to avoid mental effort that we
purchase, or borrow, his book,
and afterward discuss
it.
Hence arises our heartfelt gratitude toward such
novels as deal with
"vital" themes, with the questions
we average-novel-readers confront

or make talk about in
those happier hours of our existence wherein
we are not
reduced to reading. Thus, a tale, for example, dealing

either with "feminism" or "white slavery" as the
handiest makeshift
of spinsterdom--or with the divorce
habit and plutocratic iniquity in
general, or with the
probable benefits of converting clergymen to

Christianity, or