IMPOSSIBLE PEOPLE IN NOVELS.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 455, 13 March 1909, Page 9

IMPOSSIBLE PEOPLE IN NOVELS.

nariiy different. Jrom real peon or \ You mieht iraagme hat: the-ipeoplo' 1 AVgiiW t lea t would bo,,moreor.Jess lilvo human'beings -but they never ine/ A'man may say that the reason of .this is.that biography toiay isa!??? a s°.rt of modern, paFe, conveniona and hypocritical affair—that, the biographer dare not print nine-tenths-of his mater al *nfl «.T* T 1 ™ 1 ty, ' an -? y of m«™ ha * T™ l ? to make a puppet of bis man. But there are others besides modem biographies and it is true of them all that the people ,ns l de a're not humaii. beings. The moment you try to make them human in writing your history a demon People Who Do Impossible Things. aotarS it '^ m ' te i n ? V€li3ts , t} >e matter is notorious. In© people in novels not,only do notgo on like real people, but they do things S 'IT" V h * sle f*> ? I ™?* morally, impossible to real people. I have often wished to htrj P^ 6 " 1 novelist in order to ask him why his people/went on like that. For instance, people sit down suddenly and write NoT 0115 °t at a moine nt's notice Now even the richest man cannot do that. Uo has his money invested. Ho does not waste it by letting it lie idle in gigantic balances of a current account. S'S 3 ™ o Successful Men, Real and Unreal.' v '' "One might go on for ever piling l up instances of this divorce between the supposed pictures of our modern life ,S d the So it. I mil end with what is to'me, perhaps, the most glaring of all. . Tho attftudo o ficton towards what is called 'success. . No matter who the author is, no.matter what his knowledge of the- world, ho simplv cannot draw 'successful men' as they arofthat is in tA I 7as great as a "y to be discovered m the humaii raco. Men who havey'got on ' that ,s, who aro at once well to-do and we 1 ♦wVV 6 as dlfForen t as men with the toothache, or as men with warts on their

Some are kind, some brutal, some clever, some stupid some got their money by luck gome by inheritance, .some by theft some reillifn l thm Mlm ' s < but at a "y ™te in Jmndln •Cn yOU aro ' about t0 meet somenever fails. Ho may be good or bad, English or foreign, young or old, but he alwafs has in him something of whit you see in a very good sergeant-major at a few sl fe a week, 'an experienced headmaster at a ew hundreds a par, or a capable engineer o> a passenger steamer. He displays qualities which kvo no more to do with what /.called •success' nowadays than red hair or brown twots hare.

i Tils Successful Man is Anyone, _ "In a word, your successful man is a type in the novel. In real life ho is not a typo at all—ho is anyone. And another tiling you nover got m a novel is a well-mannoreu man or a bad-mannered man. I cannot recolJcct ono character who interrupts at the top ot his voice, nor ono who joins tlio conversation of others in an easy war. . . , J3ufc suppose one filled a novel with real peoplo, wnat escape would thero bo from daily life?"