FUTURE OF THE NOVEL.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20508, 8 March 1930, Page 1 (Supplement)

FUTURE OF THE NOVEL.

REMOULDING A TRADITION.

BY Git AH AM HAY,

It becomes clearer every year that there is at tho present time a slump in the production of great English novels. I do not mean merely good'novels, clever and well written, which servo their purpose, whether it bo to amuse, convince, or stir tho imagination and senses. The world has never been richer in these unless it bo in the decade just past. 1 refer to novels in the great English tradition, beginning with Richardson's " Pamela " and Fielding's ' Tom Jones," continued in the succession of Sterne, Jane Austen, Scott, Dickens, Thackeray, tho Brontes, Meredith, Hardy, to Wells, Bennett, Galsworthy, and stopping short there. If the question is suddenly flung out, " Who are tho great English writers of the day?" it is not easy to give an equally quick answer. The mind rummages among a dozen names of writers whose novels arc admired, but hesitates for some reason to name any of them, and in tho end it is any odds that the answer is " Wells, Bennett and Galsworthy." But, wait, wait! When did any of these last write a novel worthy to be placed in the succession, a novel which, unaided, would have made its writer's fame? Galsworthy clearly wrote himself out tffe a novelist with the conclusion of the " Forsyto Saga" proper, before the last three books, like a second growth, marred the complete whole. Thero is no hope of a surprise from him. And it is many moons since Arnold Bennett wrote " Old Wives' Tales," tho " Clayhanger" series and " The Card." Any future success lie is likely to 'attain is unlikely to bo by medium of fiction. More hope lies in Wells, the senior of the party. One remembers the delight which, not so many years ago, " Christina Alberta's Father" aroused as it raised itself abovo the morass of contemporary fiction. But these three definitely belong to a past decade. It is not reasonable to expect them to add materially to the splendid array of novels which lio to their credit. To Whom Must We Look? To whom, then, must we look to carry on the tradition ? Conrad is dead; Barry, Chesterton and de la Mare are more likely to bo remembered in other literary fields, and Francis Brett Young, Conrad's successor, has not yet set foot on Olympus. That clever group of women novelists who seemed to be threatening man's supremacy, Slieila Kaye-Smith, Rose Macaulay, Clemenco Dane, Stella Benson, have either fallen away or grown silent before fulfilling their promise. E. M. Forster dwells in too restricted a field and is too fugitive for highest honours. Norman Douglas, too, makes too limited an appeal. But there are other writers whose literary reputations arc at least equal to most of these; and the significant thing is that, according to the traditional meaning of tho word, they are not writing novels at all. The first essential of a novel, as understood from Richardson to Galsworthy, is that it shall tell a story. For want of a better, an old definition of a novel may well stand—a story, not true, wrought round some human passion, usually love, to a happy or tragic conclusion. How would this definition fit the novels of Virginia Woolf; or, for that matter, of Aldous Huxley? How can we call literary forms, so distinct as " Mrs. Dalioway" and " Treasuro Island," " Orlando " and "Tess of the D Urbervilles" by the same generic term? In Mrs. Woolf's books thero is a plot of a kind, but scarcely any onward march of events. All the action takes place in the mind. Instead of seeing things straight, we sec them through the effect they have in the mind of one or more people outside them; we look at them through other people's emotions. Every slightest indentation they have made on tho grey matter of the brain is carefully, even excitingly, recorded. Thus, at the end of the book, we have travelled emotionally very far. but actually only a few seconds, or minutes, or hours in time. Experiments. Further North the Sitwells are experimenting, too, even more chaotically than Mrs. Woolf, but as their experiments aro for the most part in forms other than the novel, they need not be considered here, except lo note that they havo found the novel of tradition unsuited to their purpose. Nor can James Joyce's "stream of consciousness" method be regarded as essentially allied to the novel form. Everyone has been expecting a great novel from Rebecca West, yet it does not come to fruition. Is it that she is dissatisfied with tho novel form as a vehicle for expression 1 One of the best works of fiction which has appeared during the last few years is Siegfried Sassoon's "Memoirs of a Foxhunting Man." but the story or plot in it is merely the ordinary course of events of the author's life, told with no high lights or crisis, leading nowhere, except to the awakening' and development of mental consciousness. It purports to be fiction, but instinctively- belongs .to the writer's experience. It, is, in fact, a sort of embroidered autobiography. Is it, then, that we have come to a turning point, possibly a crisis, in the tradition of tho English .novel ? Our greatest, writers seem lo have grown dissatisfied with it as a literary form. They aro impatient of the ramifications of the plot of a story dealing with a set of imaginary characters. 'J hey wish to make it closer, more personal, more vital, by doing without the outside aid. Tho best work of most writers has been that dealing with their own actual experiences : as random instances, Childe Harold, Sinister SI. Tonobungay, Joseph Vance. So the modern writer, interested •in the workings of his own consciousness, and knowing that his readers will have had similar experiences, off all pretence, and gives out the experiences as his own. Tho story then becomes less and less important, the mental processes more so. «Instead of a genuine novel, the book becomes a sort of "seeded ' autobiography. All the events described have not happened in the sequence given, or to the author, but they have come within his experience. Mental processes and opinions, philosophies of life, become the books' main purpose, but they are discussed directly, not. through the inteiposition of third persons. Neglect of Plot. To this class belongs much of recent war literature. It is true, as all good literature is true, but it. did not happen exactly as set down. It is designed to give a true picture of what happened within the writer's consciousness, a composite picture, rather than an exact photo. Robert Grave's " Good-bye to all That" is chock full of events which happened most opportunely for his purpose. They are all within his experience, bolstered up by his imagination, working truly and sincerely, but it is unlikely they happened exactly as set down. Aldous Huxley's plots are quite immaterial. It is his attitude toward life and the mental processes he exhibits which matter. Few of his readers care whether his rather scabrous characters grow rich, marry, or die: what they do care about is the intellectual pleasure" of tracing out with Mr. Huxley his philosophy of "Life-worship."