IS THE NOVEL WRITTEN OUT?

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 966, 5 November 1910, Page 9

IS THE NOVEL WRITTEN OUT?

i If we are to believe a writer in the "Temps," the occupation of the French bookseller is gone, and his shop is a desert place ' where the foot of man treads no'more.' The presses groan with as maiiy books' as there are writers to pay for printing them, but the books are not sold. 'The public, the bookseller will' tell you,have money_ for magazines, absinthe, bicycles, cigarettes, aviation, sport, but not even a stray sou for literature. It is the crisis of the book. But the writer in the "Temps," not satisfied with this swift _and sweeping despair, has investigated further and made a discovery. There are books that still sell, and sell better than ever—histories, memoirs, political studies—though the volumes be many and the prices.be high. . The books that will not sell are. novels. Somebody once said: "People, are always talking of novels; take to history." And the French people are at length acting on the advice. They will pay ten ifrancs for a volume of reminiscences seasoned with malice or of history plastic with wit, and tlioy will not spare three and a half francs for a novel.

The writer in the "Temps" has an explanation which ■. is , simple, but strong—the novel is written out. "The subject matter of the novel, which is far from being infinite, particularly when, as in most cases, the novel is a love story, appears exhausted, worked out. What is there left to say after so many generations of great novelists?" The mine of romance is exhausted. The grade of oro has become lower - a ntl lower until now not all the chemistry of art can make it yield a dividend. The theory is a pretty one, and who can deny that, if the subject of the novel is the permutations and combinations of the one woman and two men or two women and one man, the field has been thoroughly mapped ? We know the geometry of. that triangle; generations of Euclids have worked it out. But is there nothing more that the novelist can put his hand to? The painting of life, one would have thought, was inexhaustible or exhaustible only with life itself. It is hard to believe that the French reader is tired of the novel because he has ceased to. take an interest in life, or that, there lias been nothing left to write. _ Perhaps the latter-aay French novelist's difficulty is not that he has com<j after giants, but that he is himself no giant.—"Daily News." ■