NOTES ON THE NOVEL

Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 98, 27 April 1935, Page 24

NOTES ON THE NOVEL

AN AMERICAN CONVENTION

RCTION BY FORMULA

„ (By "Quivis.") Sometimes after a more or less exciting straggle with one. of these modern novels whose only convention seems to be a complete lack of convention, one feels like something more formal and sedate fora soothing influence. It is then that a visit to the second-hand book shop is indicated, for nothing written since the war is likely to fill the bill. Browsing round in this mood : the.other day, we came across, in the •stand marked "Is," a title that atf: tracted, "Mr: Crewe's Career," by Win- ; ston; Churchill. We looked inside the .volume, noted the illustrations, which . in -themselves, apart from the. women's fashions- displayed, suggested a.suffl- ' ciently. early date, read the opening paragraph, arid forthwith made the purchase. ' No, we knew what we were doing. We did not mistake the author for the Winston Churchill of English. political fame, though we were quite aware that the English statesman had written, as well as made, history, and that he was the author of at least one novel. Our Mr. Churchill was the American Mr. Winston Churchill, who must be much about the same age as the British Winston, for he wrote his first novel away back in the closing years of the last century, when his namesake of the other side of the Atlantic was war correspondent in South Africa, and fell into the hands of the Boers. Moreover, the American Winston had been among the first to turn the novel into the imaginative recreation of the history of his country, illustrating some vital phase with each saccessive story, from George Washington to his own day. One of the earlier of these novels we had read and found good, and it was with pleas- . ant anticipations that we broached "Mr. Crewe's Career." , - • In a few pages we were back where we wanted to be, in a novel of the period of the great American convention, not Convention, though there is a good deal of State politics in the novel, but convention in the aesthetic sense, as applied to any art. What is this great American convention as applied to fiction? It would be easier to explain , at once its taboos. The most important > is that sex in the fleshly sense in which it figures so largely in most modern novels, including American, is absolutely barred from the typical Ameri-. can novel of this period, which roughly . covers this century up to the war. The' reader will sear"eh in vain the. vast: output of American novelists and short , story writers in. those days for the . least .offence in this respect.. It was simply not done. : Upton Sinclair and; 'Theodore Dreiser, who . attempted to break tY\e convention, suffered enormously in popularity as a consequence. It .is not that-the subject; of love is taboo under the convention; far from, it. The love interest. is. stronger in respect of space devoted to it than in contemporary English novels, but the American hero and heroine are more idealised creatures arid their philanderings'are etherealised to a degree rather trying to the unsentimental reader. Another binding article of the convention is a sublime faith in ' America and American life, that basic- ': ally it- is right and only superficially ■ wrong. Fpr this reason criticism is really only superficial. The dedication of "Mr. Crewe's Career" will suggest •■ the limitations: "To the Men who in every State of the Union are engaged in the struggle for purer politics this book is dedicated." The implication is: • "Cleanse your politics, put an end to graft, and all wiirbe well in this beat of all possible worlds." Few Americans • would rest content with this today. It is easy to ridicule the great American convention. Mr. H. L. . Mencken has done it to his. heart's con- :' tent, and the convention is dead in • fiction. Sinclair Lewis. administered .' the" coup de grace with, his "Main ; Street" and "Babbitt." Realism' rules now, stark naked realism, and perhaps, lor a while, at any rate, it is better to be on the bedrock of things, but one has regrets. It was a great period, the heyday of ■the convention, and the whole phenomenon deserves a more thorough critical analysis than can be given here. How is it, for instance, that American fiction of that age, novel and short story alike, swept the English-reading world just as American motor-cars and the pictures did later? May not these movements have something in common? Is it not possible that these clever. .Americans .managed to standardise fiction, as they did the movies and machinery,' and by virtue of mass production of a good sound article captured the market? It sounds queer, but there is suggestive evidence in support of tlie theory that.some sort of standard formula was used; in typical examples of this American school of fiction, Let an interested reader test it out for himself by procuring typical examples by different authors —say, Booth Tarkington, in "The Gentleman .. from Indiana" or "The Conquest of Canaan"; Henry Sydnor Harrison, in ■ "Qiieed" or "V.V.'s Eyes"; Winston Churchill, in "Mr. Crewe's Career"; F. Hopkinson Smith, in "Kennedy Square" these are a few that occur to mind— and let him make a critical comparison of hero and herQine in each case, the^ method of approach, the motive even of the story, the general atmosphere and all points where a comparison, would be fair, and we are greatly mistaken if a curious similarity is not revealed. It is not disparagement ot the authors to make such a suggestion. It is just as if a discovery had come ' to a number of people simultaneously, ■ ' as it does with inventions, of how to, write a best-seller. O. Henry uses the idea for one of his most delightful stories under the very title "BestSeller." But we have been led away. We came to praise the American convention, not to bury it—that is already ■ done—and we would like to say here that "Mr. Crewe's Career" is a fine story. So are those others mentioned. Within the convention an extraordinarily high average standard of craftsmanship was reached, higher than the average in English fiction of the period. In the art of telling a story the Americans excelled and still excel. Sir Lionel Earle tells us in his "Turn Over the Page" that while he was in Ireland once he received a letter from Alfred Austin, the poet laureate, asking if he would let his flat for a few weeks. "I agreed, and terms were arranged. Shortly before his occupation I received a letter from him, saying that he had s small request to make, namely, that I would not leave; a dog in the flat. Never having, at any time, owned a dog, I was able to assure him, but told him that I equally had a small request to make to him, and it was that when he vacated my flat he would not leave any. poems."