The Craft of Fiction

The Craft of Fiction, by Percy
Lubbock

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Title: The Craft of Fiction
Author: Percy Lubbock

Release Date: August 1, 2006 [eBook #18961]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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THE CRAFT OF FICTION
by
PERCY LUBBOCK

Jonathan Cape Eleven Gower Street, London First Published 1921.

THE CRAFT OF FICTION
I
To grasp the shadowy and fantasmal form of a book, to hold it fast, to
turn it over and survey it at leisure--that is the effort of a critic of books,
and it is perpetually defeated. Nothing, no power, will keep a book
steady and motionless before us, so that we may have time to examine
its shape and design. As quickly as we read, it melts and shifts in the
memory; even at the moment when the last page is turned, a great part
of the book, its finer detail, is already vague and doubtful. A little later,
after a few days or months, how much is really left of it? A cluster of
impressions, some clear points emerging from a mist of uncertainty,
this is all we can hope to possess, generally speaking, in the name of a
book. The experience of reading it has left something behind, and these
relics we call by the book's name; but how can they be considered to
give us the material for judging and appraising the book? Nobody
would venture to criticize a building, a statue, a picture, with nothing
before him but the memory of a single glimpse caught in passing; yet
the critic of literature, on the whole, has to found his opinion upon little
more. Sometimes it is possible to return to the book and renew the
impression; to a few books we may come back again and again, till
they do in the end become familiar sights. But of the hundreds and
hundreds of books that a critic would wish to range in his memory, in
order to scrutinize and compare them reflectively, how many can he
expect to bring into a state of reasonable stability? Few indeed, at the
best; as for the others, he must be content with the shapeless,

incoherent visions that respond when the recollection of them is
invoked.
It is scarcely to be wondered at if criticism is not very precise, not very
exact in the use of its terms, when it has to work at such a disadvantage.
Since we can never speak of a book with our eye on the object, never
handle a book--the real book, which is to the volume as the symphony
to the score--our phrases find nothing to check them, immediately and
unmistakably, while they are formed. Of a novel, for instance, that I
seem to know well, that I recall as an old acquaintance, I may
confidently begin to express an opinion; but when, having expressed it,
I would glance at the book once more, to be satisfied that my
judgement fits it, I can only turn to the image, such as it is, that remains
in a deceiving memory. The volume lies before me, no doubt, and if it
is merely a question of detail, a name or a scene, I can find the page
and verify my sentence. But I cannot catch a momentary sight of the
book, the book itself; I cannot look up from my writing and sharpen my
impression with a straight, unhampered view of the author's work; to
glance at a book, though the phrase is so often in our mouths, is in fact
an impossibility. The form of a novel--and how often a critic uses that
expression too--is something that none of us, perhaps, has ever really
contemplated. It is revealed little by little, page by page, and it is
withdrawn as fast as it is revealed; as a whole, complete and perfect, it
could only exist in a more tenacious memory than most of us have to
rely on. Our critical faculty may be admirable; we may be thoroughly
capable of judging a book justly, if only we could watch it at ease. But
fine taste and keen perception are of no use to us if we cannot retain the
image of the book; and the image escapes and evades us like a cloud.
We are so well accustomed to this disability that I