THE FACTOR OF STYLE.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 69, 14 December 1907, Page 13

THE FACTOR OF STYLE.

There is nothing that will so quickly reveal the presencoof a pessimist as a discussion anent books and bookmen. ;.In a re- ' cent-'pOßt-prandial argument which sought, l . .with::tho peace and good will befitting those j wh'o.have dined comfortably and at leisure, to; : determine tho various elements that con- . tribute' to the success of a novel,' the pessi- | -mist promptly came'to the : front and inter-jected..a-note of discord by asserting that, whatever else might influence'tho popular verdict upon a given piece of fiction, one ... factor at,- least was safely negligible,"and that was tho' factor of style. And I when . his'.dictum had called, forth ,a chorus of ■-■■' more .'or less indignant protests, tho.pessi- ; mist"„went. a step further _ and offored as documentary evidence the lists of "Best Selling Books" in the current number of ,"Tho Bookman," 'challenging those present , to point out any -rational connection between'the books therein set down and the principles .of literary stylo. Tho sad part ' of it was; that there really was not much tj' : say'inrobuttal that was worth the saying.. Tho plain truth is, that if you make a survey of tho .hovels whioh for tho.past quarter of a century ,havo successively claimed their brief. day or month or; year of: popularity, the cases where merit of . stylo;is sufficiently marked to justify,an in-, ferenco that it contributed to the public) verdict are too few to be soriously coh- . _ sidered.' . Ono is reluctantly forced to the ' conclusion that, so long l as' a story holds'the interest, tho general reader either does not -.know when'the stylo is bad, or knowing, does.'not can\ ';■ 'In this respect fiction differs from every i other•branch of writing that lays claim to be7c6nsidoral as literature. The poet, tho essayist, tho critic, must not merely have something well worth tho saying, but must ■ also .bo an artist in the use of words; he must havo an instinct for linguistic form, a reverence for the dolicato values of noun and adjective. It makes no difference whether ho is an Emerson or a G. K. Chesterton, his -.chance of getting a public hearing depends ; not only upon his having'ideas worth listening to, but also upon that elusive and indefinable something which is at once the . . stamp -;of kinship and of individuality in genius, and-which, for want of a precisor term,; we designate as literary style. And of- course the reason is not far to seek. Tho man'who reads a poem or an essay or a critical analysis is looking for some gratification above') and beyond that of the more acquireinformation; ho finds in "Sir Rogor do" Cbverley" a pleasure not afforded by a monograph of country'life in;the reign of Queon' Anno;, in "Tho Light, of Asia 7 ' an emotion beyond that furnished by the' article ■ on' Buddhism in the Encyclopedia Britannica. But it is no exaggeration } to say that to ninety-nine out of overy hundred readers.the chief i interest possessed by a novel is its news value; they read it as they read tho .-• paragraphs in the daily paper, for the sake of the-passing thrill, and'So long as the story is well constructed and the resultant ; thrill genuine, it may be written nn tho loosest of journalistic English without in the least, interfering with its market value. It is easier to recognise the public indifference to lack,of style in novelists than to find a satisfactory explanation of it. Apparently both writers and readers havo arrived at a tacit acceptance of tho-standard embodied in M. Jourdain's historic discovery that ho had boon speaking proso all his life. Now, • excepting in tl)o very general sense that wo habitually speak. something that is not-AJirse, it is an obvious misuse' of lunginigo to say that wo speak in' prose, in tho ordinary intercourse of life. Indeed, if any ano of us should venture, in tho courso of » five minutes' conversation across a dinner table, to adopt tho polishod phraseology of Pater, of .Ruskin, of Edgar Allan Poo,, nur friends would very promptly begin Ui.ischange significant nods and glances. The prose of M. Jourdain being popularly • iwooptod as good onough for familiar intCr- ' co'.trso in ■ real lifo, and consequently good wnough for the dialogue which makes up so largo, a part of current fiction, it is not so hard, aftor all, to understand why it should also be thought good onough to bo the vehicle : for thoso narrative and descriptivo portions which tho voracious modern reader to lightly and systematically skims over. Yes, it is quite true that so far as the ephemeral success of this weeks' popular nove] is, ccrccerned the element of style mav

he safely, neglected. And furthermore, tho fact is hardly' worth a serious regret. Like all products of cheap, hasty, unskilled 'abour, the average "best seller" .is manufactured for tho sako of quick profits, ihe harvost soon reaped and soon forgotten. ■Tiroo is tho all-important element that winnows out tho,chaff from tho. wheat, tho book that is litoratiiro from tho book that is morely merchandise A novel which is a good story and nothing more becomes, so soon as it is read, of no more interest than the puzzlo pago of a magazino after you have guessed tlib answers. For this reason a certain typo of roviowors object on principlo to tho review which discloses tho denouement of a plot, not realising that if tho value of a book will be spoiled by knowing beforehand how it ends, th'on the sooner tho value is spoiled tho bettor. But tho book which has not only interest of plot, but stylo as well, will bo. enjoyed all tho more if you know beforehand what its structure is; it ,will boar reading over again - and still again; and evon when whole paragraphs and chapters have been learned by. heart you still find a renewed pleasure a't each fresh reading, not fronl what it tells you, but from tho way in which it is told. In tho course of tho long, slow levelling process, to .which eventually every author must submit, tho factor of stylo, from being negligible, becomes potent, decisive, paramount. Lack of stylo, iu tho finer souse, is probably the most potent reason why the present generation no longer shares the-enthusiasm of tho past genm-ation fr-r Scott and Fenimore • Cooper—just as it is the chief reason why Jano Austen remains perennially young, while Maria Edgeworth seems hopelessly out of dato; why Thackeray with eacn decade forges slowly but surely ahead of Dickons; and also, it may bo added, why just a few' writers of to-day, such as Kipling and Conrad. and Maurico Hewlett, will be ranked steadily higher as the years go by, long after the, great mass of our present popular writers are forgotten. And this is precisely as it should be, becauso in the long run the world at large is bound to awaken to the fact that in the caso of the few novelists'who are truo artists their mattor, howsoever wonderful it may he, is of vastly .less importance than their manner; and that there,is the same enduring pleasure in rovorting to their pages that there is in revisiting the; familiar canvases of groat masters, to discover, each time some nev.' beauty of lino, some new wonder of light and shade. And this 'permanent appeal of the novelist who possesses stylo is to a large extent independent of' the .'type of story he has to tell.- In tho whole' range of fiction thoro is .nothing which in itself is of i moro ephemeral interest than tho detective story. ' The mystery once solved, what is there :ever.to call you back to it again? And yet, at the hands of Poo, even tho detective: story has acquired a power of appeal which outlives long familiarity. You may know "Tho Purloined , Letter" and '.'The Mystery in the Rue Morguo" like a well-conned lesson, and yet you are lured back to read thorn . onco moro, through sheer delight in tho inimitable art of their construction.—Frederick Tabor Cooper iu New York "Bookman." '