In the Best of Humour

Otago Witness, Issue 4057, 15 December 1931, Page 5

In the Best of Humour

(Copyright.—For the Otago Witness.)

THE LITERATURE OF THE FUTURE.

P. G. WODEHOUSE.

By

What is the art of writing? Simply, when yon boil it down, being able to put plain statements in an uncommon way. The men who make the money get it for having the sense to think out a new way of saying commonplace things in advance of their trade rivals. The ordinary man, who is not an artist, if asked to describe Jones crossing Forty-second street, would say, ’‘Jones crossed Forty-second street.” But hand the same subject to the giants of the craft, and watch them get busy on ' it. Mr Arnold Bennett would treat it as a trilogy. Vol. 1, Jones’s childhood. Vol. 11. Jones, after manhood in the Potteries, comes to New York. Circumstances bring him to ■Forty-second street. Vol. 111, Jones crosses Forty-second street. Result, dollars per word, and instant sale of dramatic and moving picture rights. 1 Sir A. Conan Doyle would have Jones drop the Maharajah’s Emerald under the elevator or pick up a paper covered with

cipher writing, and Sherlock Holmes would have the Mystery of Forty-second street on his hands.

Mr Robert W. Chambers's Jones (an extraordinary handsome man) would meet a deliriously beautiful girl just where the uptown traflic gets you where you try to dodge the down-town traffic, and they would be married in the street opposite the subway kiosk.

If Jones crossed Forty-second street under the guidance of Mr E. Phillips Oppenheim, the traffic cop would turn out to be the Missing Ambassador whom everybody thought had been blown up by Nihilists. Different, you see, in every case. That is the secret. That is why authors have gold bath-tubs, and are able to afford two eggs for breakfast. I am going to have them too. For I have invented a new form of literary expression. My secret is simple. I can afford to give it away, because I have three crates full of manuscripts of the new literature in my sitting room, and shall have flooded the market long before these lines appear.

I have invented the Futurist novel —a complete novel in eight pages. . In these complex, hustling days, if authors are to be true to life, they must put far more into their descriptions of everyday life and action than they have dreamed of doing hitherto. The Futurist painters have realised this, and they make it there aim to put everything into their canvases that space will allow them to cram in. It is the old principle of the Irish Stew. Broadly speaking, you cannot go wrong, whatever you put into an Irish Stew; and I, a Futurist, hold that this rtile applies also to novels.

■ And so it is with the Futurist school of art. Where the old-fashioned artist painted a child playing with a dog, and

let it go at that, the Futurist now uses the figures of the child and dog simply as a basis upon which to build his emotional work. According to him, the older picture only contains half of the subjects, the material half. It merely represents two objects, which so far as they mean anything futuristically, might just as well be a bunch of bananas and half a grapefruit. The futurist knows that” both the child and the dog receive many impressions while playing with each other, a>;d he tries to record them. For instance, the child and the dog in attitude of play, the child’s impression of the dog's teeth, bark, wagging tail, eyes, and all other objects, animate and inaminate, that immediately surround him and the dog. The child also thinks a little about his nurse, his rattle, and his impending dinner, or supper, as the case: may be. So much for the child.

The impressions of the dog are also represented on canvas. For instance, a bone, an open fire, the child's bottle, and a bird's-eye view of a cat, as the dog is probably thinking of his favourite sport.

a bird s-eye view ot a cat, as the dog is probably thinking of his favourite sport. By this method, you see, the futurist makes a picture that represents not merely a stuffed child playing with a stuffed dog, but a living, impressionable child and with a living, impressionable dog. It is really very simple when you know how to do it. Now what the Futurist has done for pictorial art I am going to do for literature. Here are the opening lines of my new mystery novel, “ The Girl Who Took the Wrong Ferry Boat.” “ Jones . . . Zunk . . . Whoosh . . . Wow . . . Now . . . Ah . . . Clangclangclangclang . . . Wow . . . Whew . . . Woof . . . Kindly look where . . . Whoooooo . . . Where do I ... Arden gaze . . . Affinity? . . . Whoosh . . . Wow . . . Wuxtry . . . Brown’s Balsam for the Bilious . . . Wha-a-a-aaa . . . Termination . . . Yipe-yipe-yipe . . , moving pictures ... * Whoosh . . . Oo . . . Affinity . . . Burning stare . . . Clangclangclangclang . . . Hi-vi-yi . . . Whiff ...” I read what I have written, and it seems so absurdly simple that I can scarcely bring myself to insult an intelligent public with explanations. However, as it may be that here and there an isolated individual will be found incapable of apprehending even the most limpid prose, I will explain. It is Jones crossing Broadway at Forty-second street again. Jones is the hero of my novel.' He is a young and wealthy New Yorker, and he is impelled to cross the road by the same motives

that, in similar well-known • circumstances, actuate a chicken. We start off with Jones. Nothing obscure about that? All clear so far? Very well, then. Just as Jones steps off the sidewalk, he cannons into a stout man from Hackensack, who is visiting New York:because his wife has gone to Philadelphia to sit at the bedside of a girlhood friend who. has contracted mumps through kissing her sister’s little boy. If that can be better expressed than by the word “Zunk,” I shall be surprised. Jones then begins to cross the road. “ Whoosh.” An automobile just misses him. “ Wow,” he exclaims. Then, pulling himself together for the effort, he says, “Now. Ah!” and resumes his journey. “ Clangclangclangclang.” An ambulance wagon shaves his trouser-leg. He exclaims “ Wow,” then, mopping his forehead, “ Whew.” “ Woof,” a rushing pedestrian has bucked centre and nearly upset him. He begins to say “ Kindly look where you are going, sir,” when “ W hooooo,” an automobile siren drowns his voice.

And now the action begins to quicken, the plot to thicken, and the readers to get their money’s worth. As the noise of the automobile siren dies away, he hears a clear, girlish voice inquiring of the policeman, “ Where do I ? ” It is Jacqueline, the most beautiful girl outside an all-fiction magazine. He gazes at her ardently. Has he met his affinity? “Y\ hoosh.” Another automobile just misses him. He cries out in a startled voice, and his thoughts are distracted from the girl, so that he hears a newsboy calling the extras. He looks up Broadway, and sees a sign advertising Brown's Balsam for the Bilious. “Wha-a-a-aaa!” A surface car comes to a halt beside him. He looks to the right, and secs tiie Bush Terminal Building, which suggests termination to his mind. As he stands there, a dog runs past, yelling, and at the same moment his eye is caught by a movingpicture theatre. Another automobile whizzes by. Then a cry of rapture escapes him. Through the throng he has again caught sight of Jacqueline. This time he is in no doubt. She is his affinity. He gives her the burning stare, and as he does so, oblivions to all else but her, along comes a fire engine and rams him squarely. The crowd, cries “Hi!” With one loud exhalation he falls unconscious . . . “ Whiff.” And there you are, with the heroine on the stage and the action moving like the Twentieth Century Limited; and all in half-a-dozen lines.

My invention is the compressed soup tablet of literature. In a busy age like this, it supplies a long-felt want. It is vivid. It grips. It has the punch. It has come to stay. How humanity has got along without it all these years is more than I can understand. It is ridiculously easy. Try it yourself. Here is one about a smart dance in New York. Anybody can see the whole picture. “ Why how do you . . . Hotter than . . . Swish-sh . . . Swish—Little more punch ... Hi! You! .. . La-de-dum, dum-de-dum . . . dum-de . . . What a face! .. . This mine? .. . Zing-Zing— . . . Look out, Etta . . . Dancing drugstore .. . Umpty-ump . . . Awfully sorry . . . Brrrrrrrrrum . . . Hole in his sock . . . No, mine has one less hop . . . Clean collars upstairs . . . Puff-puff . . . Chocolate Eclair . . . Whang ... 0! ! ! Pop . . . Stomp and Drag . . . Argentine .. . Back-up, can’t you? .. . She really is divorced .." . Thank Goodness! .. . Whew! Cigarette? .. . Glass Champagne? . . . Call mv car!” My futuristic literature is going to make me very rich. Of this I am so certain that I have already been at great pains to choose the colours for my automobiles. Then, if the one I am in has a blow-out, I can get into the next, and go on without, waste of time. The word will go around that I am out with my motors and tired business men will rush to their windows and envy me. I am now at work picking out names for my butlers. That is a little more difficult than picking colours for my motors, since no two can be alike.