LONG NOVELS

Evening Post, Volume CXIV, Issue 38, 13 August 1932, Page 22

LONG NOVELS

A MODERN REVIVAL

In discussing tho re-lni'th of the long novel, which rivals in length the tJyeedecker of the later decades of the Victorian era, Mr. Hugh Kingsmill writes in the "English Review":—-"If life were a self-contained and self-explana-tory phenomenon, the greatness of a novel would be measured by -the amount of information within its covers, and every ambitious novelist would begin at the beginning of things. But as life cannot be explained by cataloguing its contents, imagination is a more valuable quality in a novelist than industry, and a few emotions realised with intensity more illuminating than a tepid glow diffused over a vast panorama. But the tepid glow is comforting to worn-out nerves, and the solid panorama gives a sense of security to the reader of to-day, harassed by private amd public disturbances. He has had enough o£ intensity, and wants to wander at peace where reality is diluted, not concentrated. This is natural, but does not justify the present opinion that a long novel is necessarily more virtuous than a short one;, that a man who writes a long novel is a thoroughljgood fellow,, who- has never heard of Freud; and a man who writes a short novel is a neurotic wretch, who desires merely to give a little air to some of his more discreditable complexes. "The real difference between the long novel and the short novel is aesthetic, not moral. ... If length does not

imply greater virtue than brevity, neither does it imply greater richness. That in art the half is greater than the whole is universally allowed whcro poetry is concerned. No one would argue that Wordsworth's 'Excursion' is as great as his 'Solitary Beaper,' or Tennyson's 'Enoch Arden* equal to his 'Ulysses.' But when we corn© to fiction, a-volume of 600 pages exhorts unreflecting tribute to the prodigal richness of its perpetrator. People speak rashly of 'the giants of old'—Dickens, Thackeray, Bichardson—without considering that giants are often weakkneed, flaccid, and under-developed in proportion to their size. It is condensation, not prolixity, which enriches imagmativo work, and the superiority of the greatest plays to the greatest novels is chiefly due to the fact that the dramatist has to keep his study within the limits imposed by the unwillingness of human beings to sit in a theatre tor more than three, or at most four hours on end. The number of words in the scenes given to Falstaff the most impressive figure in imaginative literature, would not fill out the briefest of modern novels. -.The epic,' in fact, with all its charm and consoling properties, i s inferior to the drama. th. £"* u°\ el *l ™l>«*atly weaker than the short. There are, it is true more great long novels than great short ones, because writers must adapt themselves to their audience, and length is preferred m an armchair, just as brevity is preferred in a theatre."