initial commit of ebook 3120HEADmain

9 files changed, 2947 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6833f05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.gitattributes
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+* text=auto
+*.txt text
+*.md text
diff --git a/3120.txt b/3120.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..842cd2a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/3120.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,990 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Modern Fiction, by Charles Dudley Warner
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Modern Fiction
+
+Author: Charles Dudley Warner
+
+Release Date: December 6, 2004 [EBook #3120]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MODERN FICTION ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+MODERN FICTION
+
+By Charles Dudley Warner
+
+One of the worst characteristics of modern fiction is its so-called truth
+to nature. For fiction is an art, as painting is, as sculpture is, as
+acting is. A photograph of a natural object is not art; nor is the
+plaster cast of a man's face, nor is the bare setting on the stage of an
+actual occurrence. Art requires an idealization of nature. The amateur,
+though she may be a lady, who attempts to represent upon the stage the
+lady of the drawing-room, usually fails to convey to the spectators the
+impression of a lady. She lacks the art by which the trained actress, who
+may not be a lady, succeeds. The actual transfer to the stage of the
+drawing-room and its occupants, with the behavior common in well-bred
+society, would no doubt fail of the intended dramatic effect, and the
+spectators would declare the representation unnatural.
+
+However our jargon of criticism may confound terms, we do not need to be
+reminded that art and nature are distinct; that art, though dependent on
+nature, is a separate creation; that art is selection and idealization,
+with a view to impressing the mind with human, or even higher than human,
+sentiments and ideas. We may not agree whether the perfect man and woman
+ever existed, but we do know that the highest representations of them in
+form--that in the old Greek sculptures--were the result of artistic
+selection of parts of many living figures.
+
+When we praise our recent fiction for its photographic fidelity to nature
+we condemn it, for we deny to it the art which would give it value. We
+forget that the creation of the novel should be, to a certain extent, a
+synthetic process, and impart to human actions that ideal quality which
+we demand in painting. Heine regards Cervantes as the originator of the
+modern novel. The older novels sprang from the poetry of the Middle Ages;
+their themes were knightly adventure, their personages were the nobility;
+the common people did not figure in them. These romances, which had
+degenerated into absurdities, Cervantes overthrew by "Don Quixote." But
+in putting an end to the old romances he created a new school of fiction,
+called the modern novel, by introducing into his romance of
+pseudo-knighthood a faithful description of the lower classes, and
+intermingling the phases of popular life. But he had no one-sided
+tendency to portray the vulgar only; he brought together the higher and
+the lower in society, to serve as light and shade, and the aristocratic
+element was as prominent as the popular. This noble and chivalrous
+element disappears in the novels of the English who imitated Cervantes.
+"These English novelists since Richardson's reign," says Heine, "are
+prosaic natures; to the prudish spirit of their time even pithy
+descriptions of the life of the common people are repugnant, and we see
+on yonder side of the Channel those bourgeoisie novels arise, wherein the
+petty humdrum life of the middle classes is depicted." But Scott
+appeared, and effected a restoration of the balance in fiction. As
+Cervantes had introduced the democratic element into romances, so Scott
+replaced the aristocratic element, when it had disappeared, and only a
+prosaic, bourgeoisie fiction existed. He restored to romances the
+symmetry which we admire in "Don Quixote." The characteristic feature of
+Scott's historical romances, in the opinion of the great German critic,
+is the harmony between the artistocratic and democratic elements.
+
+This is true, but is it the last analysis of the subject? Is it a
+sufficient account of the genius of Cervantes and Scott that they
+combined in their romances a representation of the higher and lower
+classes? Is it not of more importance how they represented them? It is
+only a part of the achievement of Cervantes that he introduced the common
+people into fiction; it is his higher glory that he idealized his
+material; and it is Scott's distinction also that he elevated into
+artistic creations both nobility and commonalty. In short, the essential
+of fiction is not diversity of social life, but artistic treatment of
+whatever is depicted. The novel may deal wholly with an aristocracy, or
+wholly with another class, but it must idealize the nature it touches
+into art. The fault of the bourgeoisie novels, of which Heine complains,
+is not that they treated of one class only, and excluded a higher social
+range, but that they treated it without art and without ideality. In
+nature there is nothing vulgar to the poet, and in human life there is
+nothing uninteresting to the artist; but nature and human life, for the
+purposes of fiction, need a creative genius. The importation into the
+novel of the vulgar, sordid, and ignoble in life is always unbearable,
+unless genius first fuses the raw material in its alembic.
+
+When, therefore, we say that one of the worst characteristics of modern
+fiction is its so-called truth to nature, we mean that it disregards the
+higher laws of art, and attempts to give us unidealized pictures of life.
+The failure is not that vulgar themes are treated, but that the treatment
+is vulgar; not that common life is treated, but that the treatment is
+common; not that care is taken with details, but that no selection is
+made, and everything is photographed regardless of its artistic value. I
+am sure that no one ever felt any repugnance on being introduced by
+Cervantes to the muleteers, contrabandistas, servants and serving-maids,
+and idle vagabonds of Spain, any more than to an acquaintance with the
+beggar-boys and street gamins on the canvases of Murillo. And I believe
+that the philosophic reason of the disgust of Heine and of every critic
+with the English bourgeoisie novels, describing the petty, humdrum life
+of the middle classes, was simply the want of art in the writers; the
+failure on their part to see that a literal transcript of nature is poor
+stuff in literature. We do not need to go back to Richardson's time for
+illustrations of that truth. Every week the English press--which is even
+a greater sinner in this respect than the American--turns out a score of
+novels which are mediocre, not from their subjects, but from their utter
+lack of the artistic quality. It matters not whether they treat of
+middle-class life, of low, slum life, or of drawing-room life and lords
+and ladies; they are equally flat and dreary. Perhaps the most inane
+thing ever put forth in the name of literature is the so-called domestic
+novel, an indigestible, culinary sort of product, that might be named the
+doughnut of fiction. The usual apology for it is that it depicts family
+life with fidelity. Its characters are supposed to act and talk as people
+act and talk at home and in society. I trust this is a libel, but, for
+the sake of the argument, suppose they do. Was ever produced so insipid a
+result? They are called moral; in the higher sense they are immoral, for
+they tend to lower the moral tone and stamina of every reader. It needs
+genius to import into literature ordinary conversation, petty domestic
+details, and the commonplace and vulgar phases of life. A report of
+ordinary talk, which appears as dialogue in domestic novels, may be true
+to nature; if it is, it is not worth writing or worth reading. I cannot
+see that it serves any good purpose whatever. Fortunately, we have in our
+day illustrations of a different treatment of the vulgar. I do not know
+any more truly realistic pictures of certain aspects of New England life
+than are to be found in Judd's "Margaret," wherein are depicted
+exceedingly pinched and ignoble social conditions. Yet the characters and
+the life are drawn with the artistic purity of Flaxman's illustrations of
+Homer. Another example is Thomas Hardy's "Far from the Madding Crowd."
+Every character in it is of the lower class in England. But what an
+exquisite creation it is! You have to turn back to Shakespeare for any
+talk of peasants and clowns and shepherds to compare with the
+conversations in this novel, so racy are they of the soil, and yet so
+touched with the finest art, the enduring art. Here is not the realism of
+the photograph, but of the artist; that is to say, it is nature
+idealized.
+
+When we criticise our recent fiction it is obvious that we ought to
+remember that it only conforms to the tendencies of our social life, our
+prevailing ethics, and to the art conditions of our time. Literature is
+never in any age an isolated product. It is closely related to the
+development or retrogression of the time in all departments of life. The
+literary production of our day seems, and no doubt is, more various than
+that of any other, and it is not easy to fix upon its leading tendency.
+It is claimed for its fiction, however, that it is analytic and
+realistic, and that much of it has certain other qualities that make it a
+new school in art. These aspects of it I wish to consider in this paper.
+
+It is scarcely possible to touch upon our recent fiction, any more than
+upon our recent poetry, without taking into account what is called the
+Esthetic movement--a movement more prominent in England than elsewhere. A
+slight contemplation of this reveals its resemblance to the Romantic
+movement in Germany, of which the brothers Schlegel were apostles, in the
+latter part of the last century. The movements are alike in this: that
+they both sought inspiration in mediaevalism, in feudalism, in the
+symbols of a Christianity that ran to mysticism, in the quaint, strictly
+pre-Raphael art which was supposed to be the result of a simple faith. In
+the one case, the artless and childlike remains of old German pictures
+and statuary were exhumed and set up as worthy of imitation; in the
+other, we have carried out in art, in costume, and in domestic life, so
+far as possible, what has been wittily and accurately described as
+"stained-glass attitudes." With all its peculiar vagaries, the English
+school is essentially a copy of the German, in its return to
+mediaevalism. The two movements have a further likeness, in that they are
+found accompanied by a highly symbolized religious revival. English
+aestheticism would probably disown any religious intention, although it
+has been accused of a refined interest in Pan and Venus; but in all its
+feudal sympathies it goes along with the religious art and vestment
+revival, the return to symbolic ceremonies, monastic vigils, and
+sisterhoods. Years ago, an acute writer in the Catholic World claimed
+Dante Gabriel Rossetti as a Catholic writer, from the internal evidence
+of his poems. The German Romanticism, which was fostered by the Romish
+priesthood, ended, or its disciples ended, in the bosom of the Roman
+Catholic Church. It will be interesting to note in what ritualistic
+harbor the aestheticism of our day will finally moor. That two similar
+revivals should come so near together in time makes us feel that the
+world moves onward--if it does move onward--in circular figures of very
+short radii. There seems to be only one thing certain in our Christian
+era, and that is a periodic return to classic models; the only stable
+standards of resort seem to be Greek art and literature.
+
+The characteristics which are prominent, when we think of our recent
+fiction, are a wholly unidealized view of human society, which has got
+the name of realism; a delight in representing the worst phases of social
+life; an extreme analysis of persons and motives; the sacrifice of action
+to psychological study; the substitution of studies of character for
+anything like a story; a notion that it is not artistic, and that it is
+untrue to nature, to bring any novel to a definite consummation, and
+especially to end it happily; and a despondent tone about society,
+politics, and the whole drift of modern life. Judged by our fiction, we
+are in an irredeemably bad way. There is little beauty, joy, or
+light-heartedness in living; the spontaneity and charm of life are
+analyzed out of existence; sweet girls, made to love and be loved, are
+extinct; melancholy Jaques never meets a Rosalind in the forest of Arden,
+and if he sees her in the drawing-room he poisons his pleasure with the
+thought that she is scheming and artificial; there are no happy marriages
+--indeed, marriage itself is almost too inartistic to be permitted by our
+novelists, unless it can be supplemented by a divorce, and art is
+supposed to deny any happy consummation of true love. In short, modern
+society is going to the dogs, notwithstanding money is only three and a
+half per cent. It is a gloomy business life, at the best. Two learned but
+despondent university professors met, not long ago, at an afternoon
+"coffee," and drew sympathetically together in a corner. "What a world
+this would be," said one, "without coffee!" "Yes," replied the other,
+stirring the fragrant cup in a dejected aspect "yes; but what a hell of a
+world it is with coffee!"
+
+The analytic method in fiction is interesting, when used by a master of
+dissection, but it has this fatal defect in a novel--it destroys
+illusion. We want to think that the characters in a story are real
+persons. We cannot do this if we see the author set them up as if they
+were marionettes, and take them to pieces every few pages, and show their
+interior structure, and the machinery by which they are moved. Not only
+is the illusion gone, but the movement of the story, if there is a story,
+is retarded, till the reader loses all enjoyment in impatience and
+weariness. You find yourself saying, perhaps, What a very clever fellow
+the author is! What an ingenious creation this character is! How brightly
+the author makes his people talk! This is high praise, but by no means
+the highest, and when we reflect we see how immeasurably inferior, in
+fiction, the analytic method is to the dramatic. In the dramatic method
+the characters appear, and show what they are by what they do and say;
+the reader studies their motives, and a part of his enjoyment is in
+analyzing them, and his vanity is flattered by the trust reposed in his
+perspicacity. We realize how unnecessary minute analysis of character and
+long descriptions are in reading a drama by Shakespeare, in which the
+characters are so vividly presented to us in action and speech, without
+the least interference of the author in description, that we regard them
+as persons with whom we might have real relations, and not as bundles of
+traits and qualities. True, the conditions of dramatic art and the art of
+the novel are different, in that the drama can dispense with
+delineations, for its characters are intended to be presented to the eye;
+but all the same, a good drama will explain itself without the aid of
+actors, and there is no doubt that it is the higher art in the novel,
+when once the characters are introduced, to treat them dramatically, and
+let them work out their own destiny according to their characters. It is
+a truism to say that when the reader perceives that the author can compel
+his characters to do what he pleases all interest in them as real persons
+is gone. In a novel of mere action and adventure, a lower order of
+fiction, where all the interest centres in the unraveling of a plot, of
+course this does not so much matter.
+
+Not long ago, in Edinburgh, I amused myself in looking up some of the
+localities made famous in Scott's romances, which are as real in the mind
+as any historical places. Afterwards I read "The Heart of Midlothian." I
+was surprised to find that, as a work of art, it was inferior to my
+recollection of it. Its style is open to the charge of prolixity, and
+even of slovenliness in some parts; and it does not move on with
+increasing momentum and concentration to a climax, as many of Scott's
+novels do; the story drags along in the disposition of one character
+after another. Yet, when I had finished the book and put it away, a
+singular thing happened. It suddenly came to me that in reading it I had
+not once thought of Scott as the maker; it had never occurred to me that
+he had created the people in whose fortunes I had been so intensely
+absorbed; and I never once had felt how clever the novelist was in the
+naturally dramatic dialogues of the characters. In short, it had not
+entered my mind to doubt the existence of Jeanie and Effie Deans, and
+their father, and Reuben Butler, and the others, who seem as real as
+historical persons in Scotch history. And when I came to think of it
+afterwards, reflecting upon the assumptions of the modern realistic
+school, I found that some scenes, notably the night attack on the old
+Tolbooth, were as real to me as if I had read them in a police report of
+a newspaper of the day. Was Scott, then, only a reporter? Far from it, as
+you would speedily see if he had thrown into the novel a police report of
+the occurrences at the Tolbooth before art had shorn it of its
+irrelevancies, magnified its effective and salient points, given events
+their proper perspective, and the whole picture due light and shade.
+
+The sacrifice of action to some extent to psychological evolution in
+modern fiction may be an advance in the art as an intellectual
+entertainment, if the writer does not make that evolution his end, and
+does not forget that the indispensable thing in a novel is the story. The
+novel of mere adventure or mere plot, it need not be urged, is of a lower
+order than that in which the evolution of characters and their
+interaction make the story. The highest fiction is that which embodies
+both; that is, the story in which action is the result of mental and
+spiritual forces in play. And we protest against the notion that the
+novel of the future is to be, or should be, merely a study of, or an
+essay or a series of analytic essays on, certain phases of social life.
+
+It is not true that civilization or cultivation has bred out of the world
+the liking for a story. In this the most highly educated Londoner and the
+Egyptian fellah meet on common human ground. The passion for a story has
+no more died out than curiosity, or than the passion of love. The truth
+is not that stories are not demanded, but that the born raconteur and
+story-teller is a rare person. The faculty of telling a story is a much
+rarer gift than the ability to analyze character and even than the
+ability truly to draw character. It may be a higher or a lower power, but
+it is rarer. It is a natural gift, and it seems that no amount of culture
+can attain it, any more than learning can make a poet. Nor is the
+complaint well founded that the stories have all been told, the possible
+plots all been used, and the combinations of circumstances exhausted. It
+is no doubt our individual experience that we hear almost every day--and
+we hear nothing so eagerly--some new story, better or worse, but new in
+its exhibition of human character, and in the combination of events. And
+the strange, eventful histories of human life will no more be exhausted
+than the possible arrangements of mathematical numbers. We might as well
+say that there are no more good pictures to be painted as that there are
+no more good stories to be told.
+
+Equally baseless is the assumption that it is inartistic and untrue to
+nature to bring a novel to a definite consummation, and especially to end
+it happily. Life, we are told, is full of incompletion, of broken
+destinies, of failures, of romances that begin but do not end, of
+ambitions and purposes frustrated, of love crossed, of unhappy issues, or
+a resultless play of influences. Well, but life is full, also, of
+endings, of the results in concrete action of character, of completed
+dramas. And we expect and give, in the stories we hear and tell in
+ordinary intercourse, some point, some outcome, an end of some sort. If
+you interest me in the preparations of two persons who are starting on a
+journey, and expend all your ingenuity in describing their outfit and
+their characters, and do not tell me where they went or what befell them
+afterwards, I do not call that a story. Nor am I any better satisfied
+when you describe two persons whom you know, whose characters are
+interesting, and who become involved in all manner of entanglements, and
+then stop your narration; and when I ask, say you have not the least idea
+whether they got out of their difficulties, or what became of them. In
+real life we do not call that a story where everything is left
+unconcluded and in the air. In point of fact, romances are daily
+beginning and daily ending, well or otherwise, under our observation.
+
+Should they always end well in the novel? I am very far from saying that.
+Tragedy and the pathos of failure have their places in literature as well
+as in life. I only say that, artistically, a good ending is as proper as
+a bad ending. Yet the main object of the novel is to entertain, and the
+best entertainment is that which lifts the imagination and quickens the
+spirit; to lighten the burdens of life by taking us for a time out of our
+humdrum and perhaps sordid conditions, so that we can see familiar life
+somewhat idealized, and probably see it all the more truly from an
+artistic point of view. For the majority of the race, in its hard lines,
+fiction is an inestimable boon. Incidentally the novel may teach,
+encourage, refine, elevate. Even for these purposes, that novel is the
+best which shows us the best possibilities of our lives--the novel which
+gives hope and cheer instead of discouragement and gloom. Familiarity
+with vice and sordidness in fiction is a low entertainment, and of
+doubtful moral value, and their introduction is unbearable if it is not
+done with the idealizing touch of the artist.
+
+Do not misunderstand me to mean that common and low life are not fit
+subjects of fiction, or that vice is not to be lashed by the satirist, or
+that the evils of a social state are never to be exposed in the novel.
+For this, also, is an office of the novel, as it is of the drama, to hold
+the mirror up to nature, and to human nature as it exhibits itself. But
+when the mirror shows nothing but vice and social disorder, leaving out
+the saving qualities that keep society on the whole, and family life as a
+rule, as sweet and good as they are, the mirror is not held up to nature,
+but more likely reflects a morbid mind. Still it must be added that the
+study of unfortunate social conditions is a legitimate one for the author
+to make; and that we may be in no state to judge justly of his exposure
+while the punishment is being inflicted, or while the irritation is
+fresh. For, no doubt, the reader winces often because the novel reveals
+to himself certain possible baseness, selfishness, and meanness. Of this,
+however, I (speaking for myself) may be sure: that the artist who so
+represents vulgar life that I am more in love with my kind, the satirist
+who so depicts vice and villainy that I am strengthened in my moral
+fibre, has vindicated his choice of material. On the contrary, those
+novelists are not justified whose forte it seems to be to so set forth
+goodness as to make it unattractive.
+
+But we come back to the general proposition that the indispensable
+condition of the novel is that it shall entertain. And for this purpose
+the world is not ashamed to own that it wants, and always will want, a
+story--a story that has an ending; and if not a good ending, then one
+that in noble tragedy lifts up our nature into a high plane of sacrifice
+and pathos. In proof of this we have only to refer to the masterpieces of
+fiction which the world cherishes and loves to recur to.
+
+I confess that I am harassed with the incomplete romances, that leave me,
+when the book is closed, as one might be on a waste plain at midnight,
+abandoned by his conductor, and without a lantern. I am tired of
+accompanying people for hours through disaster and perplexity and
+misunderstanding, only to see them lost in a thick mist at last. I am
+weary of going to funerals, which are not my funerals, however chatty and
+amusing the undertaker may be. I confess that I should like to see again
+the lovely heroine, the sweet woman, capable of a great passion and a
+great sacrifice; and I do not object if the novelist tries her to the
+verge of endurance, in agonies of mind and in perils, subjecting her to
+wasting sicknesses even, if he only brings her out at the end in a
+blissful compensation of her troubles, and endued with a new and sweeter
+charm. No doubt it is better for us all, and better art, that in the
+novel of society the destiny should be decided by character. What an
+artistic and righteous consummation it is when we meet the shrewd and
+wicked old Baroness Bernstein at Continental gaming-tables, and feel that
+there was no other logical end for the worldly and fascinating Beatrix of
+Henry Esmond! It is one of the great privileges of fiction to right the
+wrongs of life, to do justice to the deserving and the vicious. It is
+wholesome for us to contemplate the justice, even if we do not often see
+it in society. It is true that hypocrisy and vulgar self-seeking often
+succeed in life, occupying high places, and make their exit in the
+pageantry of honored obsequies. Yet always the man is conscious of the
+hollowness of his triumph, and the world takes a pretty accurate measure
+of it. It is the privilege of the novelist, without introducing into such
+a career what is called disaster, to satisfy our innate love of justice
+by letting us see the true nature of such prosperity. The unscrupulous
+man amasses wealth, lives in luxury and splendor, and dies in the odor of
+respectability. His poor and honest neighbor, whom he has wronged and
+defrauded, lives in misery, and dies in disappointment and penury. The
+novelist cannot reverse the facts without such a shock to our experience
+as shall destroy for us the artistic value of his fiction, and bring upon
+his work the deserved reproach of indiscriminately "rewarding the good
+and punishing the bad." But we have a right to ask that he shall reveal
+the real heart and character of this passing show of life; for not to do
+this, to content himself merely with exterior appearances, is for the
+majority of his readers to efface the lines between virtue and vice. And
+we ask this not for the sake of the moral lesson, but because not to do
+it is, to our deep consciousness, inartistic and untrue to our judgment
+of life as it goes on. Thackeray used to say that all his talent was in
+his eyes; meaning that he was only an observer and reporter of what he
+saw, and not a Providence to rectify human affairs. The great artist
+undervalued his genius. He reported what he saw as Raphael and Murillo
+reported what they saw. With his touch of genius he assigned to
+everything its true value, moving us to tenderness, to pity, to scorn, to
+righteous indignation, to sympathy with humanity. I find in him the
+highest art, and not that indifference to the great facts and deep
+currents and destinies of human life, that want of enthusiasm and
+sympathy, which has got the name of "art for art's sake." Literary
+fiction is a barren product if it wants sympathy and love for men. "Art
+for art's sake" is a good and defensible phrase, if our definition of art
+includes the ideal, and not otherwise.
+
+I do not know how it has come about that in so large a proportion of
+recent fiction it is held to be artistic to look almost altogether upon
+the shady and the seamy side of life, giving to this view the name of
+"realism"; to select the disagreeable, the vicious, the unwholesome; to
+give us for our companions, in our hours of leisure and relaxation, only
+the silly and the weak-minded woman, the fast and slangy girl, the
+intrigante and the "shady"--to borrow the language of the society she
+seeks--the hero of irresolution, the prig, the vulgar, and the vicious;
+to serve us only with the foibles of the fashionable, the low tone of the
+gay, the gilded riffraff of our social state; to drag us forever along
+the dizzy, half-fractured precipice of the seventh commandment; to bring
+us into relations only with the sordid and the common; to force us to sup
+with unwholesome company on misery and sensuousness, in tales so utterly
+unpleasant that we are ready to welcome any disaster as a relief; and
+then--the latest and finest touch of modern art--to leave the whole
+weltering mass in a chaos, without conclusion and without possible issue.
+And this is called a picture of real life! Heavens! Is it true that in
+England, where a great proportion of the fiction we describe and loathe
+is produced; is it true that in our New England society there is nothing
+but frivolity, sordidness, decay of purity and faith, ignoble ambition
+and ignoble living? Is there no charm in social life--no self-sacrifice,
+devotion, courage to stem materialistic conditions, and live above them?
+Are there no noble women, sensible, beautiful, winning, with the grace
+that all the world loves, albeit with the feminine weaknesses that make
+all the world hope? Is there no manliness left? Are there no homes where
+the tempter does not live with the tempted in a mush of sentimental
+affinity? Or is it, in fact, more artistic to ignore all these, and paint
+only the feeble and the repulsive in our social state? The feeble, the
+sordid, and the repulsive in our social state nobody denies, nor does
+anybody deny the exceeding cleverness with which our social disorders are
+reproduced in fiction by a few masters of their art; but is it not time
+that it should be considered good art to show something of the clean and
+bright side?
+
+This is pre-eminently the age of the novel. The development of variety of
+fiction since the days of Scott and Cooper is prodigious. The prejudice
+against novel-reading is quite broken down, since fiction has taken all
+fields for its province; everybody reads novels. Three-quarters of the
+books taken from the circulating library are stories; they make up half
+the library of the Sunday-schools. If a writer has anything to say, or
+thinks he has, he knows that he can most certainly reach the ear of the
+public by the medium of a story. So we have novels for children; novels
+religious, scientific, historical, archaeological, psychological,
+pathological, total-abstinence; novels of travel, of adventure and
+exploration; novels domestic, and the perpetual spawn of books called
+novels of society. Not only is everything turned into a story, real or so
+called, but there must be a story in everything. The stump-speaker holds
+his audience by well-worn stories; the preacher wakes up his congregation
+by a graphic narrative; and the Sunday-school teacher leads his children
+into all goodness by the entertaining path of romance; we even had a
+President who governed the country nearly by anecdotes. The result of
+this universal demand for fiction is necessarily an enormous supply, and
+as everybody writes, without reference to gifts, the product is mainly
+trash, and trash of a deleterious sort; for bad art in literature is bad
+morals. I am not sure but the so-called domestic, the diluted, the
+"goody," namby-pamby, unrobust stories, which are so largely read by
+school-girls, young ladies, and women, do more harm than the "knowing,"
+audacious, wicked ones,--also, it is reported, read by them, and written
+largely by their own sex. For minds enfeebled and relaxed by stories
+lacking even intellectual fibre are in a poor condition to meet the
+perils of life. This is not the place for discussing the stories written
+for the young and for the Sunday-school. It seems impossible to check the
+flow of them, now that so much capital is invested in this industry; but
+I think that healthy public sentiment is beginning to recognize the truth
+that the excessive reading of this class of literature by the young is
+weakening to the mind, besides being a serious hindrance to study and to
+attention to the literature that has substance.
+
+In his account of the Romantic School in Germany, Heine says, "In the
+breast of a nation's authors there always lies the image of its future,
+and the critic who, with a knife of sufficient keenness, dissects a new
+poet can easily prophesy, as from the entrails of a sacrificial animal,
+what shape matters will assume in Germany." Now if all the poets and
+novelists of England and America today were cut up into little pieces
+(and we might sacrifice a few for the sake of the experiment), there is
+no inspecting augur who could divine therefrom our literary future. The
+diverse indications would puzzle the most acute dissector. Lost in the
+variety, the multiplicity of minute details, the refinements of analysis
+and introspection, he would miss any leading indications. For with all
+its variety, it seems to me that one characteristic of recent fiction is
+its narrowness--narrowness of vision and of treatment. It deals with
+lives rather than with life. Lacking ideality, it fails of broad
+perception. We are accustomed to think that with the advent of the
+genuine novel of society, in the first part of this century, a great step
+forward was taken in fiction. And so there was. If the artist did not use
+a big canvas, he adopted a broad treatment. But the tendency now is to
+push analysis of individual peculiarities to an extreme, and to
+substitute a study of traits for a representation of human life.
+
+It scarcely need be said that it is not multitude of figures on a
+literary canvas that secures breadth of treatment. The novel may be
+narrow, though it swarms with a hundred personages. It may be as wide as
+life, as high as imagination can lift itself; it may image to us a whole
+social state, though it pats in motion no more persons than we made the
+acquaintance of in one of the romances of Hawthorne. Consider for a
+moment how Thackeray produced his marvelous results. We follow with him,
+in one of his novels of society, the fortunes of a very few people. They
+are so vividly portrayed that we are convinced the author must have known
+them in that great world with which he was so familiar; we should not be
+surprised to meet any of them in the streets of London. When we visit the
+Charterhouse School, and see the old forms where the boys sat nearly a
+century ago, we have in our minds Colonel Newcome as really as we have
+Charles Lamb and Coleridge and De Quincey. We are absorbed, as we read,
+in the evolution of the characters of perhaps only half a dozen people;
+and yet all the world, all great, roaring, struggling London, is in the
+story, and Clive, and Philip, and Ethel, and Becky Sharpe, and Captain
+Costigan are a part of life. It is the flowery month of May; the scent of
+the hawthorn is in the air, and the tender flush of the new spring
+suffuses the Park, where the tide of fashion and pleasure and idleness
+surges up and down-the sauntering throng, the splendid equipages, the
+endless cavalcade in Rotten Row, in which Clive descries afar off the
+white plume of his ladylove dancing on the waves of an unattainable
+society; the club windows are all occupied; Parliament is in session,
+with its nightly echoes of imperial politics; the thronged streets roar
+with life from morn till nearly morn again; the drawing-rooms hum and
+sparkle in the crush of a London season; as you walk the midnight
+pavement, through the swinging doors of the cider-cellars comes the burst
+of bacchanalian song. Here is the world of the press and of letters; here
+are institutions, an army, a navy, commerce, glimpses of great ships
+going to and fro on distant seas, of India, of Australia. This one book
+is an epitome of English life, almost of the empire itself. We are
+conscious of all this, so much breadth and atmosphere has the artist
+given his little history of half a dozen people in this struggling world.
+
+But this background of a great city, of an empire, is not essential to
+the breadth of treatment upon which we insist in fiction, to broad
+characterization, to the play of imagination about common things which
+transfigures them into the immortal beauty of artistic creations. What a
+simple idyl in itself is Goethe's "Hermann and Dorothea"! It is the
+creation of a few master-touches, using only common material. Yet it has
+in it the breadth of life itself, the depth and passion of all our human
+struggle in the world-a little story with a vast horizon.
+
+It is constantly said that the conditions in America are unfavorable to
+the higher fiction; that our society is unformed, without centre, without
+the definition of classes, which give the light and shade that Heine
+speaks of in "Don Quixote"; that it lacks types and customs that can be
+widely recognized and accepted as national and characteristic; that we
+have no past; that we want both romantic and historic background; that we
+are in a shifting, flowing, forming period which fiction cannot seize on;
+that we are in diversity and confusion that baffle artistic treatment; in
+short, that American life is too vast, varied, and crude for the purpose
+of the novelist.
+
+These excuses might be accepted as fully accounting for our failure--or
+shall we say our delay?--if it were not for two or three of our literary
+performances. It is true that no novel has been written, and we dare say
+no novel will be written, that is, or will be, an epitome of the manifold
+diversities of American life, unless it be in the form of one of Walt
+Whitman's catalogues. But we are not without peculiar types; not without
+characters, not without incidents, stories, heroisms, inequalities; not
+without the charms of nature in infinite variety; and human nature is the
+same here that it is in Spain, France, and England. Out of these
+materials Cooper wrote romances, narratives stamped with the distinct
+characteristics of American life and scenery, that were and are eagerly
+read by all civilized peoples, and which secured the universal verdict
+which only breadth of treatment commands. Out of these materials, also,
+Hawthorne, child-endowed with a creative imagination, wove those
+tragedies of interior life, those novels of our provincial New England,
+which rank among the great masterpieces of the novelist's art. The master
+artist can idealize even our crude material, and make it serve. These
+exceptions to a rule do not go to prove the general assertion of a
+poverty of material for fiction here; the simple truth probably is that,
+for reasons incident to the development of a new region of the earth,
+creative genius has been turned in other directions than that of
+fictitious literature. Nor do I think that we need to take shelter behind
+the wellworn and convenient observation, the truth of which stands in
+much doubt, that literature is the final flower of a nation's
+civilization.
+
+However, this is somewhat a digression. We are speaking of the tendency
+of recent fiction, very much the same everywhere that novels are written,
+which we have imperfectly sketched. It is probably of no more use to
+protest against it than it is to protest against the vulgar realism in
+pictorial art, which holds ugliness and beauty in equal esteem; or
+against aestheticism gone to seed in languid affectations; or against the
+enthusiasm of a social life which wreaks its religion on the color of a
+vestment, or sighs out its divine soul over an ancient pewter mug. Most
+of our fiction, in its extreme analysis, introspection and
+self-consciousness, in its devotion to details, in its disregard of the
+ideal, in its selection as well as in its treatment of nature, is simply
+of a piece with a good deal else that passes for genuine art. Much of it
+is admirable in workmanship, and exhibits a cleverness in details and a
+subtlety in the observation of traits which many great novels lack. But I
+should be sorry to think that the historian will judge our social life by
+it, and I doubt not that most of us are ready for a more ideal, that is
+to say, a more artistic, view of our performances in this bright and
+pathetic world.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Modern Fiction, by Charles Dudley Warner
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MODERN FICTION ***
+
+***** This file should be named 3120.txt or 3120.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/3/1/2/3120/
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/3120.zip b/3120.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2fd7cfb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/3120.zip
diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6312041
--- /dev/null
+++ b/LICENSE.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..37eb882
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #3120 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3120)
diff --git a/old/cwmft10.txt b/old/cwmft10.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ad28d85
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/cwmft10.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,958 @@
+Project Gutenberg Etext Modern Fiction, by Charles Dudley Warner
+(#24 in our series by Charles Dudley Warner)
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check
+the laws for your country before redistributing these files!!!
+
+Please take a look at the important information in this header.
+We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an
+electronic path open for the next readers.
+
+Please do not remove this.
+
+This should be the first thing seen when anyone opens the book.
+Do not change or edit it without written permission.  The words
+are carefully chosen to provide users with the information they
+need about what they can legally do with the texts.
+
+
+**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
+
+**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
+
+*These Etexts Prepared By Hundreds of Volunteers and Donations*
+
+Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get Etexts, and
+further information is included below.  We need your donations.
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a 501(c)(3).
+
+As of 12/12/00 contributions are only being solicited from people in:
+Colorado, Connecticut, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa,
+Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Montana,
+Nevada, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota,
+Texas, Vermont, and Wyoming.
+
+As the requirements for other states are met,
+additions to this list will be made and fund raising
+will begin in the additional states.  Please feel
+free to ask to check the status of your state.
+
+These donations should be made to:
+
+Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+PMB 113
+1739 University Ave.
+Oxford, MS 38655
+
+
+Title: Modern Fiction
+
+Author: Charles Dudley Warner
+
+Release Date: March, 2002  [Etext #3120]
+[Yes, we are about one year ahead of schedule]
+[The actual date this file first posted = 01/16/01]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Project Gutenberg Etext Modern Fiction, by Charles Dudley Warner
+******This file should be named cwmft10.txt or cwmft10.zip******
+
+Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, cwmft11.txt
+VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, cwmft10a.txt
+
+This etext was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
+
+Project Gutenberg Etexts are usually created from multiple editions,
+all of which are in the Public Domain in the United States, unless a
+copyright notice is included.  Therefore, we usually do NOT keep any
+of these books in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+We are now trying to release all our books one year in advance
+of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing.
+Please be encouraged to send us error messages even years after
+the official publication date.
+
+Please note:  neither this list nor its contents are final till
+midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement.
+The official release date of all Project Gutenberg Etexts is at
+Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month.  A
+preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment
+and editing by those who wish to do so.
+
+Most people start at our sites at:
+http://gutenberg.net
+http://promo.net/pg
+
+
+Those of you who want to download any Etext before announcement
+can surf to them as follows, and just download by date; this is
+also a good way to get them instantly upon announcement, as the
+indexes our cataloguers produce obviously take a while after an
+announcement goes out in the Project Gutenberg Newsletter.
+
+http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext02
+or
+ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext02
+
+Or /etext01, 00, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90
+
+Just search by the first five letters of the filename you want,
+as it appears in our Newsletters.
+
+
+Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)
+
+We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work.  The
+time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours
+to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright
+searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc.  This
+projected audience is one hundred million readers.  If our value
+per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2
+million dollars per hour this year as we release fifty new Etext
+files per month, or 500 more Etexts in 2000 for a total of 3000+
+If they reach just 1-2% of the world's population then the total
+should reach over 300 billion Etexts given away by year's end.
+
+The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away One Trillion Etext
+Files by December 31, 2001.  [10,000 x 100,000,000 = 1 Trillion]
+This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers,
+which is only about 4% of the present number of computer users.
+
+At our revised rates of production, we will reach only one-third
+of that goal by the end of 2001, or about 3,333 Etexts unless we
+manage to get some real funding.
+
+Something is needed to create a future for Project Gutenberg for
+the next 100 years.
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+Presently, contributions are only being solicited from people in:
+Colorado, Connecticut, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa,
+Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Nevada,
+Montana, Nevada, Oklahoma, South Carolina,
+South Dakota, Texas, Vermont, and Wyoming.
+
+As the requirements for other states are met,
+additions to this list will be made and fund raising
+will begin in the additional states.
+
+These donations should be made to:
+
+Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+PMB 113
+1739 University Ave.
+Oxford, MS 38655
+
+
+Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+has been approved as a 501(c)(3) organization by the US Internal
+Revenue Service (IRS).  Donations are tax-deductible to the extent
+permitted by law.  As the requirements for other states are met,
+additions to this list will be made and fund raising will begin in the
+additional states.
+
+All donations should be made to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation.  Mail to:
+
+Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+PMB 113
+1739 University Avenue
+Oxford, MS 38655  [USA]
+
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+You can get up to date donation information at:
+
+http://www.gutenberg.net/donation.html
+
+
+***
+
+You can always email directly to:
+
+Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com>
+
+hart@pobox.com forwards to hart@prairienet.org and archive.org
+if your mail bounces from archive.org, I will still see it, if
+it bounces from prairienet.org, better resend later on. . . .
+
+We would prefer to send you this information by email.
+
+
+Example command-line FTP session:
+
+ftp ftp.ibiblio.org
+login: anonymous
+password: your@login
+cd pub/docs/books/gutenberg
+cd etext90 through etext99 or etext00 through etext02, etc.
+dir [to see files]
+get or mget [to get files. . .set bin for zip files]
+GET GUTINDEX.??  [to get a year's listing of books, e.g., GUTINDEX.99]
+GET GUTINDEX.ALL [to get a listing of ALL books]
+
+
+**The Legal Small Print**
+
+
+(Three Pages)
+
+***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS**START***
+Why is this "Small Print!" statement here?  You know: lawyers.
+They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with
+your copy of this etext, even if you got it for free from
+someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our
+fault.  So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement
+disclaims most of our liability to you.  It also tells you how
+you can distribute copies of this etext if you want to.
+
+*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS ETEXT
+By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
+etext, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept
+this "Small Print!" statement.  If you do not, you can receive
+a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this etext by
+sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person
+you got it from.  If you received this etext on a physical
+medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request.
+
+ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM ETEXTS
+This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etexts,
+is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor Michael S. Hart
+through the Project Gutenberg Association (the "Project").
+Among other things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright
+on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and
+distribute it in the United States without permission and
+without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules, set forth
+below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this etext
+under the Project's "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.
+
+Please do not use the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark to market
+any commercial products without permission.
+
+To create these etexts, the Project expends considerable
+efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain
+works.  Despite these efforts, the Project's etexts and any
+medium they may be on may contain "Defects".  Among other
+things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
+intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged
+disk or other etext medium, a computer virus, or computer
+codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.
+
+LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES
+But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below,
+[1] the Project (and any other party you may receive this
+etext from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext) disclaims all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including
+legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR
+UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT,
+INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE
+OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE
+POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
+
+If you discover a Defect in this etext within 90 days of
+receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any)
+you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that
+time to the person you received it from.  If you received it
+on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and
+such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement
+copy.  If you received it electronically, such person may
+choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to
+receive it electronically.
+
+THIS ETEXT IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS".  NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS
+TO THE ETEXT OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT
+LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
+PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
+
+Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or
+the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the
+above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you
+may have other legal rights.
+
+INDEMNITY
+You will indemnify and hold the Project, its directors,
+officers, members and agents harmless from all liability, cost
+and expense, including legal fees, that arise directly or
+indirectly from any of the following that you do or cause:
+[1] distribution of this etext, [2] alteration, modification,
+or addition to the etext, or [3] any Defect.
+
+DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm"
+You may distribute copies of this etext electronically, or by
+disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this
+"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg,
+or:
+
+[1]  Only give exact copies of it.  Among other things, this
+     requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the
+     etext or this "small print!" statement.  You may however,
+     if you wish, distribute this etext in machine readable
+     binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form,
+     including any form resulting from conversion by word
+     processing or hypertext software, but only so long as
+     *EITHER*:
+
+     [*]  The etext, when displayed, is clearly readable, and
+          does *not* contain characters other than those
+          intended by the author of the work, although tilde
+          (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may
+          be used to convey punctuation intended by the
+          author, and additional characters may be used to
+          indicate hypertext links; OR
+
+     [*]  The etext may be readily converted by the reader at
+          no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent
+          form by the program that displays the etext (as is
+          the case, for instance, with most word processors);
+          OR
+
+     [*]  You provide, or agree to also provide on request at
+          no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the
+          etext in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC
+          or other equivalent proprietary form).
+
+[2]  Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this
+     "Small Print!" statement.
+
+[3]  Pay a trademark license fee to the Project of 20% of the
+     gross profits you derive calculated using the method you
+     already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  If you
+     don't derive profits, no royalty is due.  Royalties are
+     payable to "Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation"
+     the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were
+     legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent
+     periodic) tax return.  Please contact us beforehand to
+     let us know your plans and to work out the details.
+
+WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?
+The Project gratefully accepts contributions of money, time,
+public domain etexts, and royalty free copyright licenses.
+If you are interested in contributing scanning equipment or
+software or other items, please contact Michael Hart at:
+hart@pobox.com
+
+*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.12.12.00*END*
+
+
+
+
+
+This etext was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
+
+
+
+
+
+Modern Fiction
+
+By Charles Dudley Warner
+
+
+
+
+One of the worst characteristics of modern fiction is its so-called truth
+to nature.  For fiction is an art, as painting is, as sculpture is, as
+acting is.  A photograph of a natural object is not art; nor is the
+plaster cast of a man's face, nor is the bare setting on the stage of an
+actual occurrence.  Art requires an idealization of nature.  The amateur,
+though she may be a lady, who attempts to represent upon the stage the
+lady of the drawing-room, usually fails to convey to the spectators the
+impression of a lady.  She lacks the art by which the trained actress,
+who may not be a lady, succeeds.  The actual transfer to the stage of the
+drawing-room and its occupants, with the behavior common in well-bred
+society, would no doubt fail of the intended dramatic effect, and the
+spectators would declare the representation unnatural.
+
+However our jargon of criticism may confound terms, we do not need to be
+reminded that art and nature are distinct; that art, though dependent on
+nature, is a separate creation; that art is selection and idealization,
+with a view to impressing the mind with human, or even higher than human,
+sentiments and ideas.  We may not agree whether the perfect man and woman
+ever existed, but we do know that the highest representations of them in
+form--that in the old Greek sculptures--were the result of artistic
+selection of parts of many living figures.
+
+When we praise our recent fiction for its photographic fidelity to nature
+we condemn it, for we deny to it the art which would give it value.
+We forget that the creation of the novel should be, to a certain extent,
+a synthetic process, and impart to human actions that ideal quality which
+we demand in painting.  Heine regards Cervantes as the originator of the
+modern novel.  The older novels sprang from the poetry of the Middle
+Ages; their themes were knightly adventure, their personages were the
+nobility; the common people did not figure in them.  These romances,
+which had degenerated into absurdities, Cervantes overthrew by "Don
+Quixote."  But in putting an end to the old romances he created a new
+school of fiction, called the modern novel, by introducing into his
+romance of pseudo-knighthood a faithful description of the lower classes,
+and intermingling the phases of popular life.  But he had no one-sided
+tendency to portray the vulgar only; he brought together the higher and
+the lower in society, to serve as light and shade, and the aristocratic
+element was as prominent as the popular.  This noble and chivalrous
+element disappears in the novels of the English who imitated Cervantes.
+"These English novelists since Richardson's reign," says Heine, "are
+prosaic natures; to the prudish spirit of their time even pithy
+descriptions of the life of the common people are repugnant, and we see
+on yonder side of the Channel those bourgeoisie novels arise, wherein the
+petty humdrum life of the middle classes is depicted."  But Scott
+appeared, and effected a restoration of the balance in fiction.  As
+Cervantes had introduced the democratic element into romances, so Scott
+replaced the aristocratic element, when it had disappeared, and only a
+prosaic, bourgeoisie fiction existed.  He restored to romances the
+symmetry which we admire in "Don Quixote."  The characteristic feature of
+Scott's historical romances, in the opinion of the great German critic,
+is the harmony between the artistocratic and democratic elements.
+
+This is true, but is it the last analysis of the subject?  Is it a
+sufficient account of the genius of Cervantes and Scott that they
+combined in their romances a representation of the higher and lower
+classes?  Is it not of more importance how they represented them?  It is
+only a part of the achievement of Cervantes that he introduced the common
+people into fiction; it is his higher glory that he idealized his
+material; and it is Scott's distinction also that he elevated into
+artistic creations both nobility and commonalty.  In short, the essential
+of fiction is not diversity of social life, but artistic treatment of
+whatever is depicted.  The novel may deal wholly with an aristocracy,
+or wholly with another class, but it must idealize the nature it touches
+into art.  The fault of the bourgeoisie novels, of which Heine complains,
+is not that they treated of one class only, and excluded a higher social
+range, but that they treated it without art and without ideality.  In
+nature there is nothing vulgar to the poet, and in human life there is
+nothing uninteresting to the artist; but nature and human life, for the
+purposes of fiction, need a creative genius.  The importation into the
+novel of the vulgar, sordid, and ignoble in life is always unbearable,
+unless genius first fuses the raw material in its alembic.
+
+When, therefore, we say that one of the worst characteristics of modern
+fiction is its so-called truth to nature, we mean that it disregards the
+higher laws of art, and attempts to give us unidealized pictures of life.
+The failure is not that vulgar themes are treated, but that the treatment
+is vulgar; not that common life is treated, but that the treatment is
+common; not that care is taken with details, but that no selection is
+made, and everything is photographed regardless of its artistic value.
+I am sure that no one ever felt any repugnance on being introduced by
+Cervantes to the muleteers, contrabandistas, servants and serving-maids,
+and idle vagabonds of Spain, any more than to an acquaintance with the
+beggar-boys and street gamins on the canvases of Murillo.  And I believe
+that the philosophic reason of the disgust of Heine and of every critic
+with the English bourgeoisie novels, describing the petty, humdrum life
+of the middle classes, was simply the want of art in the writers; the
+failure on their part to see that a literal transcript of nature is poor
+stuff in literature.  We do not need to go back to Richardson's time for
+illustrations of that truth.  Every week the English press--which is even
+a greater sinner in this respect than the American--turns out a score of
+novels which are mediocre, not from their subjects, but from their utter
+lack of the artistic quality.  It matters not whether they treat of
+middle-class life, of low, slum life, or of drawing-room life and lords
+and ladies; they are equally flat and dreary.  Perhaps the most inane
+thing ever put forth in the name of literature is the so-called domestic
+novel, an indigestible, culinary sort of product, that might be named the
+doughnut of fiction.  The usual apology for it is that it depicts family
+life with fidelity.  Its characters are supposed to act and talk as
+people act and talk at home and in society.  I trust this is a libel,
+but, for the sake of the argument, suppose they do.  Was ever produced so
+insipid a result?  They are called moral; in the higher sense they are
+immoral, for they tend to lower the moral tone and stamina of every
+reader.  It needs genius to import into literature ordinary conversation,
+petty domestic details, and the commonplace and vulgar phases of life.
+A report of ordinary talk, which appears as dialogue in domestic novels,
+may be true to nature; if it is, it is not worth writing or worth
+reading.  I cannot see that it serves any good purpose whatever.
+Fortunately, we have in our day illustrations of a different treatment of
+the vulgar.  I do not know any more truly realistic pictures of certain
+aspects of New England life than are to be found in Judd's "Margaret,"
+wherein are depicted exceedingly pinched and ignoble social conditions.
+Yet the characters and the life are drawn with the artistic purity of
+Flaxman's illustrations of Homer.  Another example is Thomas Hardy's "Far
+from the Madding Crowd."  Every character in it is of the lower class in
+England.  But what an exquisite creation it is!  You have to turn back to
+Shakespeare for any talk of peasants and clowns and shepherds to compare
+with the conversations in this novel, so racy are they of the soil, and
+yet so touched with the finest art, the enduring art.  Here is not the
+realism of the photograph, but of the artist; that is to say, it is
+nature idealized.
+
+When we criticise our recent fiction it is obvious that we ought to
+remember that it only conforms to the tendencies of our social life, our
+prevailing ethics, and to the art conditions of our time.  Literature is
+never in any age an isolated product.  It is closely related to the
+development or retrogression of the time in all departments of life.
+The literary production of our day seems, and no doubt is, more various
+than that of any other, and it is not easy to fix upon its leading
+tendency.  It is claimed for its fiction, however, that it is analytic
+and realistic, and that much of it has certain other qualities that make
+it a new school in art.  These aspects of it I wish to consider in this
+paper.
+
+It is scarcely possible to touch upon our recent fiction, any more than
+upon our recent poetry, without taking into account what is called the
+Esthetic movement--a movement more prominent in England than elsewhere.
+A slight contemplation of this reveals its resemblance to the Romantic
+movement in Germany, of which the brothers Schlegel were apostles, in the
+latter part of the last century.  The movements are alike in this: that
+they both sought inspiration in mediaevalism, in feudalism, in the
+symbols of a Christianity that ran to mysticism, in the quaint, strictly
+pre-Raphael art which was supposed to be the result of a simple faith.
+In the one case, the artless and childlike remains of old German pictures
+and statuary were exhumed and set up as worthy of imitation; in the
+other, we have carried out in art, in costume, and in domestic life,
+so far as possible, what has been wittily and accurately described as
+"stained-glass attitudes."  With all its peculiar vagaries, the English
+school is essentially a copy of the German, in its return to
+mediaevalism.  The two movements have a further likeness, in that they
+are found accompanied by a highly symbolized religious revival.  English
+aestheticism would probably disown any religious intention, although it
+has been accused of a refined interest in Pan and Venus; but in all its
+feudal sympathies it goes along with the religious art and vestment
+revival, the return to symbolic ceremonies, monastic vigils, and
+sisterhoods.  Years ago, an acute writer in the Catholic World claimed
+Dante Gabriel Rossetti as a Catholic writer, from the internal evidence
+of his poems.  The German Romanticism, which was fostered by the Romish
+priesthood, ended, or its disciples ended, in the bosom of the Roman
+Catholic Church.  It will be interesting to note in what ritualistic
+harbor the aestheticism of our day will finally moor.  That two similar
+revivals should come so near together in time makes us feel that the
+world moves onward--if it does move onward--in circular figures of very
+short radii.  There seems to be only one thing certain in our Christian
+era, and that is a periodic return to classic models; the only stable
+standards of resort seem to be Greek art and literature.
+
+The characteristics which are prominent, when we think of our recent
+fiction, are a wholly unidealized view of human society, which has got
+the name of realism; a delight in representing the worst phases of social
+life; an extreme analysis of persons and motives; the sacrifice of action
+to psychological study; the substitution of studies of character for
+anything like a story; a notion that it is not artistic, and that it is
+untrue to nature, to bring any novel to a definite consummation, and
+especially to end it happily; and a despondent tone about society,
+politics, and the whole drift of modern life.  Judged by our fiction, we
+are in an irredeemably bad way.  There is little beauty, joy, or light-
+heartedness in living; the spontaneity and charm of life are analyzed out
+of existence; sweet girls, made to love and be loved, are extinct;
+melancholy Jaques never meets a Rosalind in the forest of Arden, and if
+he sees her in the drawing-room he poisons his pleasure with the thought
+that she is scheming and artificial; there are no happy marriages--
+indeed, marriage itself is almost too inartistic to be permitted by our
+novelists, unless it can be supplemented by a divorce, and art is
+supposed fo deny any happy consummation of true love.  In short, modern
+society is going to the dogs, notwithstanding money is only three and a
+half per cent.  It is a gloomy business life, at the best.  Two learned
+but despondent university professors met, not long ago, at an afternoon
+"coffee," and drew sympathetically together in a corner.  "What a world
+this would be," said one, "without coffee!"  "Yes," replied the other,
+stirring the fragrant cup in a dejected aspect "yes; but what a hell of a
+world it is with coffee!"
+
+The analytic method in fiction is interesting, when used by a master of
+dissection, but it has this fatal defect in a novel--it destroys
+illusion.  We want to think that the characters in a story are real
+persons.  We cannot do this if we see the author set them up as if they
+were marionettes, and take them to pieces every few pages, and show their
+interior structure, and the machinery by which they are moved.  Not only
+is the illusion gone, but the movement of the story, if there is a story,
+is retarded, till the reader loses all enjoyment in impatience and
+weariness.  You find yourself saying, perhaps, What a very clever fellow
+the author is!  What an ingenious creation this character is!  How
+brightly the author makes his people talk!  This is high praise, but by
+no means the highest, and when we reflect we see how immeasurably
+inferior, in fiction, the analytic method is to the dramatic.  In the
+dramatic method the characters appear, and show what they are by what
+they do and say; the reader studies their motives, and a part of his
+enjoyment is in analyzing them, and his vanity is flattered by the trust
+reposed in his perspicacity.  We realize how unnecessary minute analysis
+of character and long descriptions are in reading a drama by Shakespeare,
+in which the characters are so vividly presented to us in action and
+speech, without the least interference of the author in description, that
+we regard them as persons with whom we might have real relations, and not
+as bundles of traits and qualities.  True, the conditions of dramatic art
+and the art of the novel are different, in that the drama can dispense
+with delineations, for its characters are intended to be presented to the
+eye; but all the same, a good drama will explain itself without the aid
+of actors, and there is no doubt that it is the higher art in the novel,
+when once the characters are introduced, to treat them dramatically, and
+let them work out their own destiny according to their characters.  It is
+a truism to say that when the reader perceives that the author can compel
+his characters to do what he pleases all interest in them as real persons
+is gone.  In a novel of mere action and adventure, a lower order of
+fiction, where all the interest centres in the unraveling of a plot, of
+course this does not so much matter.
+
+Not long ago, in Edinburgh, I amused myself in looking up some of the
+localities made famous in Scott's romances, which are as real in the mind
+as any historical places.  Afterwards I read "The Heart of Midlothian."
+I was surprised to find that, as a work of art, it was inferior to my
+recollection of it.  Its style is open to the charge of prolixity, and
+even of slovenliness in some parts; and it does not move on with
+increasing momentum and concentration to a climax, as many of Scott's
+novels do; the story drags along in the disposition of one character
+after another.  Yet, when I had finished the book and put it away, a
+singular thing happened.  It suddenly came to me that in reading it I had
+not once thought of Scott as the maker; it had never occurred to me that
+he had created the people in whose fortunes I had been so intensely
+absorbed; and I never once had felt how clever the novelist was in the
+naturally dramatic dialogues of the characters.  In short, it had not
+entered my mind to doubt the existence of Jeanie and Effie Deans, and
+their father, and Reuben Butler, and the others, who seem as real as
+historical persons in Scotch history.  And when I came to think of it
+afterwards, reflecting upon the assumptions of the modern realistic
+school, I found that some scenes, notably the night attack on the old
+Tolbooth, were as real to me as if I had read them in a police report of
+a newspaper of the day.  Was Scott, then, only a reporter?  Far from it,
+as you would speedily see if he had thrown into the novel a police report
+of the occurrences at the Tolbooth before art had shorn it of its
+irrelevancies, magnified its effective and salient points, given events
+their proper perspective, and the whole picture due light and shade.
+
+The sacrifice of action to some extent to psychological evolution in
+modern fiction may be an advance in the art as an intellectual
+entertainment, if the writer does not make that evolution his end, and
+does not forget that the indispensable thing in a novel is the story.
+The novel of mere adventure or mere plot, it need not be urged, is of a
+lower order than that in which the evolution of characters and their
+interaction make the story.  The highest fiction is that which embodies
+both; that is, the story in which action is the result of mental and
+spiritual forces in play.  And we protest against the notion that the
+novel of the future is to be, or should be, merely a study of, or an
+essay or a series of analytic essays on, certain phases of social life.
+
+It is not true that civilization or cultivation has bred out of the world
+the liking for a story.  In this the most highly educated Londoner and
+the Egyptian fellah meet on common human ground.  The passion for a story
+has no more died out than curiosity, or than the passion of love.  The
+truth is not that stories are not demanded, but that the born raconteur
+and story-teller is a rare person.  The faculty of telling a story is a
+much rarer gift than the ability to analyze character and even than the
+ability truly to draw character.  It may be a higher or a lower power,
+but it is rarer.  It is a natural gift, and it seems that no amount of
+culture can attain it, any more than learning can make a poet.  Nor is
+the complaint well founded that the stories have all been told, the
+possible plots all been used, and the combinations of circumstances
+exhausted.  It is no doubt our individual experience that we hear almost
+every day--and we hear nothing so eagerly--some new story, better or
+worse, but new in its exhibition of human character, and in the
+combination of events.  And the strange, eventful histories of human life
+will no more be exhausted than the possible arrangements of mathematical
+numbers.  We might as well say that there are no more good pictures to be
+painted as that there are no more good stories to be told.
+
+Equally baseless is the assumption that it is inartistic and untrue to
+nature to bring a novel to a definite consummation, and especially to end
+it happily.  Life, we are told, is full of incompletion, of broken
+destinies, of failures, of romances that begin but do not end, of
+ambitions and purposes frustrated, of love crossed, of unhappy issues, or
+a resultless play of influences.  Well, but life is full, also, of
+endings, of the results in concrete action of character, of completed
+dramas.  And we expect and give, in the stories we hear and tell in
+ordinary intercourse, some point, some outcome, an end of some sort.
+If you interest me in the preparations of two persons who are starting on
+a journey, and expend all your ingenuity in describing their outfit and
+their characters, and do not tell me where they went or what befell them
+afterwards, I do not call that a story.  Nor am I any better satisfied
+when yon describe two persons whom you know, whose characters are
+interesting, and who become involved in all manner of entanglements, and
+then stop your narration; and when I ask, say you have not the least idea
+whether they got out of their difficulties, or what became of them.
+In real life we do not call that a story where everything is left
+unconcluded and in the air.  In point of fact, romances are daily
+beginning and daily ending, well or otherwise, under our observation.
+
+Should they always end well in the novel?  I am very far from saying
+that.  Tragedy and the pathos of failure have their places in literature
+as well as in life.  I only say that, artistically, a good ending is as
+proper as a bad ending.  Yet the main object of the novel is to
+entertain, and the best entertainment is that which lifts the imagination
+and quickens the spirit; to lighten the burdens of life by taking us for
+a time out of our humdrum and perhaps sordid conditions, so that we can
+see familiar life somewhat idealized, and probably see it all the more
+truly from an artistic point of view.  For the majority of the race, in
+its hard lines, fiction is an inestimable boon.  Incidentally the novel
+may teach, encourage, refine, elevate.  Even for these purposes, that
+novel is the best which shows us the best possibilities of our lives--the
+novel which gives hope and cheer instead of discouragement and gloom.
+Familiarity with vice and sordidness in fiction is a low entertainment,
+and of doubtful moral value, and their introduction is unbearable if it
+is not done with the idealizing touch of the artist.
+
+Do not misunderstand me to mean that common and low life are not fit
+subjects of fiction, or that vice is not to be lashed by the satirist,
+or that the evils of a social state are never to be exposed in the novel.
+For this, also, is an office of the novel, as it is of the drama, to hold
+the mirror up to nature, and to human nature as it exhibits itself.  But
+when the mirror shows nothing but vice and social disorder, leaving out
+the saving qualities that keep society on the whole, and family life as a
+rule, as sweet and good as they are, the mirror is not held up to nature,
+but more likely reflects a morbid mind.  Still it must be added that the
+study of unfortunate social conditions is a legitimate one for the author
+to make; and that we may be in no state to judge justly of his exposure
+while the punishment is being inflicted, or while the irritation is
+fresh.  For, no doubt, the reader winces often because the novel reveals
+to himself certain possible baseness, selfishness, and meanness.  Of
+this, however, I (speaking for myself) may be sure: that the artist who
+so represents vulgar life that I am more in love with my kind, the
+satirist who so depicts vice and villainy that I am strengthened in my
+moral fibre, has vindicated his choice of material.  On the contrary,
+those novelists are not justified whose forte it seems to be to so set
+forth goodness as to make it unattractive.
+
+But we come back to the general proposition that the indispensable
+condition of the novel is that it shall entertain.  And for this purpose
+the world is not ashamed to own that it wants, and always will want,
+a story--a story that has an ending; and if not a good ending, then one
+that in noble tragedy lifts up our nature into a high plane of sacrifice
+and pathos.  In proof of this we have only to refer to the masterpieces
+of fiction which the world cherishes and loves to recur to.
+
+I confess that I am harassed with the incomplete romances, that leave me,
+when the book is closed, as one might be on a waste plain at midnight,
+abandoned by his conductor, and without a lantern.  I am tired of
+accompanying people for hours through disaster and perplexity and
+misunderstanding, only to see them lost in a thick mist at last.  I am
+weary of going to funerals, which are not my funerals, however chatty and
+amusing the undertaker may be.  I confess that I should like to see again
+the lovely heroine, the sweet woman, capable of a great passion and a
+great sacrifice; and I do not object if the novelist tries her to the
+verge of endurance, in agonies of mind and in perils, subjecting her to
+wasting sicknesses even, if he only brings her out at the end in a
+blissful compensation of her troubles, and endued with a new and sweeter
+charm.  No doubt it is better for us all, and better art, that in the
+novel of society the destiny should be decided by character.  What an
+artistic and righteous consummation it is when we meet the shrewd and
+wicked old Baroness Bernstein at Continental gaming-tables, and feel that
+there was no other logical end for the worldly and fascinating Beatrix of
+Henry Esmond!  It is one of the great privileges of fiction to right the
+wrongs of life, to do justice to the deserving and the vicious.  It is
+wholesome for us to contemplate the justice, even if we do not often see
+it in society.  It is true that hypocrisy and vulgar self-seeking often
+succeed in life, occupying high places, and make their exit in the
+pageantry of honored obsequies.  Yet always the man is conscious of the
+hollowness of his triumph, and the world takes a pretty accurate measure
+of it.  It is the privilege of the novelist, without introducing into
+such a career what is called disaster, to satisfy our innate love of
+justice by letting us see the true nature of such prosperity.  The
+unscrupulous man amasses wealth, lives in luxury and splendor, and dies
+in the odor of respectability.  His poor and honest neighbor, whom he has
+wronged and defrauded, lives in misery, and dies in disappointment and
+penury.  The novelist cannot reverse the facts without such a shock to
+our experience as shall destroy for us the artistic value of his fiction,
+and bring upon his work the deserved reproach of indiscriminately
+"rewarding the good and punishing the bad."  But we have a right to ask
+that he shall reveal the real heart and character of this passing show of
+life; for not to do this, to content himself merely with exterior
+appearances, is for the majority of his readers to efface the lines
+between virtue and vice.  And we ask this not for the sake of the moral
+lesson, but because not to do it is, to our deep consciousness,
+inartistic and untrue to our judgment of life as it goes on.  Thackeray
+used to say that all his talent was in his eyes; meaning that he was only
+an observer and reporter of what he saw, and not a Providence to rectify
+human affairs.  The great artist undervalued his genius.  He reported
+what he saw as Raphael and Murillo reported what they saw.  With his
+touch of genius he assigned to everything its true value, moving us to
+tenderness, to pity, to scorn, to righteous indignation, to sympathy with
+humanity.  I find in him the highest art, and not that indifference to
+the great facts and deep currents and destinies of human life, that want
+of enthusiasm and sympathy, which has got the name of "art for art's
+sake."  Literary fiction is a barren product if it wants sympathy and
+love for men.  "Art for art's sake" is a good and defensible phrase, if
+our definition of art includes the ideal, and not otherwise.
+
+I do not know how it has come about that in so large a proportion of
+recent fiction it is held to be artistic to look almost altogether upon
+the shady and the seamy side of life, giving to this view the name of
+"realism"; to select the disagreeable, the vicious, the unwholesome;
+to give us for our companions, in our hours of leisure and relaxation,
+only the silly and the weak-minded woman, the fast and slangy girl, the
+intrigante and the "shady"--to borrow the language of the society she
+seeks--the hero of irresolution, the prig, the vulgar, and the vicious;
+to serve us only with the foibles of the fashionable, the low tone of the
+gay, the gilded riffraff of our social state; to drag us forever along
+the.  dizzy, half-fractured precipice of the seventh commandment; to
+bring us into relations only with the sordid and the common; to force us
+to sup with unwholesome company on misery and sensuousness, in tales so
+utterly unpleasant that we are ready to welcome any disaster as a relief;
+and then--the latest and finest touch of modern art--to leave the whole
+weltering mass in a chaos, without conclusion and without possible issue.
+And this is called a picture of real life!  Heavens!  Is it true that in
+England, where a great proportion of the fiction we describe and loathe
+is produced; is it true that in our New England society there is nothing
+but frivolity, sordidness, decay of purity and faith, ignoble ambition
+and ignoble living?  Is there no charm in social life--no self-sacrifice,
+devotion, courage to stem materialistic conditions, and live above them?
+Are there no noble women, sensible, beautiful, winning, with the grace
+that all the world loves, albeit with the feminine weaknesses that make
+all the world hope?  Is there no manliness left?  Are there no homes
+where the tempter does not live with the tempted in a mush of sentimental
+affinity?  Or is it, in fact, more artistic to ignore all these, and
+paint only the feeble and the repulsive in our social state?  The feeble,
+the sordid, and the repulsive in our social state nobody denies, nor does
+anybody deny the exceeding cleverness with which our social disorders are
+reproduced in fiction by a few masters of their art; but is it not time
+that it should be considered good art to show something of the clean and
+bright side?
+
+This is pre-eminently the age of the novel.  The development of variety
+of fiction since the days of Scott and Cooper is prodigious.  The
+prejudice against novel-reading is quite broken down, since fiction has
+taken all fields for its province; everybody reads novels.  Three-
+quarters of the books taken from the circulating library are stories;
+they make up half the library of the Sunday-schools.  If a writer has
+anything to say, or thinks he has, he knows that he can most certainly
+reach the ear of the public by the medium of a story.  So we have novels
+for children; novels religious, scientific, historical, archaeological,
+psychological, pathological, total-abstinence; novels of travel, of
+adventure and exploration; novels domestic, and the perpetual spawn of
+books called novels of society.  Not only is everything turned into a
+story, real or so called, but there must be a story in everything.  The
+stump-speaker holds his audience by well-worn stories; the preacher wakes
+up his congregation by a graphic narrative; and the Sunday-school teacher
+leads his children into all goodness by the entertaining path of romance;
+we even had a President who governed the country nearly by anecdotes.
+The result of this universal demand for fiction is necessarily an
+enormous supply, and as everybody writes, without reference to gifts, the
+product is mainly trash, and trash of a deleterious sort; for bad art in
+literature is bad morals.  I am not sure but the so-called domestic, the
+diluted, the "goody," namby-pamby, unrobust stories, which are so largely
+read by school-girls, young ladies, and women, do more harm than the
+"knowing," audacious, wicked ones,--also, it is reported, read by them,
+and written largely by their own sex.  For minds enfeebled and relaxed by
+stories lacking even intellectual fibre are in a poor condition to meet
+the perils of life.  This is not the place for discussing the stories
+written for the young and for the Sunday-school.  It seems impossible to
+check the flow of them, now that so much capital is invested in this
+industry; but I think that healthy public sentiment is beginning to
+recognize the truth that the excessive reading of this class of
+literature by the young is weakening to the mind, besides being a serious
+hindrance to study and to attention to the literature that has substance.
+
+In his account of the Romantic School in Germany, Heine says, "In the
+breast of a nation's authors there always lies the image of its future,
+and the critic who, with a knife of sufficient keenness, dissects a new
+poet can easily prophesy, as from the entrails of a sacrificial animal,
+what shape matters will assume in Germany."  Now if all the poets and
+novelists of England and America today were cut up into little pieces
+(and we might sacrifice a few for the sake of the experiment), there is
+no inspecting augur who could divine therefrom our literary future.
+The diverse indications would puzzle the most acute dissector.  Lost in
+the variety, the multiplicity of minute details, the refinements of
+analysis and introspection, he would miss any leading indications.  For
+with all its variety, it seems to me that one characteristic of recent
+fiction is its narrowness--narrowness of vision and of treatment.  It
+deals with lives rather than with life.  Lacking ideality, it fails of
+broad perception.  We are accustomed to think that with the advent of the
+genuine novel of society, in the first part of this century, a great step
+forward was taken in fiction.  And so there was.  If the artist did not
+use a big canvas, he adopted a broad treatment.  But the tendency now is
+to push analysis of individual peculiarities to an extreme, and to
+substitute a study of traits for a representation of human life.
+
+It scarcely need be said that it is not multitude of figures on a
+literary canvas that secures breadth of treatment.  The novel may be
+narrow, though it swarms with a hundred personages.  It may be as wide as
+life, as high as imagination can lift itself; it may image to us a whole
+social state, though it pats in motion no more persons than we made the
+acquaintance of in one of the romances of Hawthorne.  Consider for a
+moment how Thackeray produced his marvelous results.  We follow with him,
+in one of his novels of society, the fortunes of a very few people.  They
+are so vividly portrayed that we are convinced the author must have known
+them in that great world with which he was so familiar; we should not be
+surprised to meet any of them in the streets of London.  When we visit
+the Charterhouse School, and see the old forms where the boys sat nearly
+a century ago, we have in our minds Colonel Newcome as really as we have
+Charles Lamb and Coleridge and De Quincey.  We are absorbed, as we read,
+in the evolution of the characters of perhaps only half a dozen people;
+and yet all the world, all great, roaring, struggling London, is in the
+story, and Clive, and Philip, and Ethel, and Becky Sharpe, and Captain
+Costigan are a part of life.  It is the flowery month of May; the scent
+of the hawthorn is in the air, and the tender flush of the new spring
+suffuses the Park, where the tide of fashion and pleasure and idleness
+surges up and down-the sauntering throng, the splendid equipages, the
+endless cavalcade in Rotten Row, in which Clive descries afar off the
+white plume of his ladylove dancing on the waves of an unattainable
+society; the club windows are all occupied; Parliament is in session,
+with its nightly echoes of imperial politics; the thronged streets roar
+with life from morn till nearly morn again; the drawing-rooms hum and
+sparkle in the crush of a London season; as you walk the midnight
+pavement, through the swinging doors of the cider-cellars comes the burst
+of bacchanalian song.  Here is the world of the press and of letters;
+here are institutions, an army, a navy, commerce, glimpses of great ships
+going to and fro on distant seas, of India, of Australia.  This one book
+is an epitome of English life, almost of the empire itself.  We are
+conscious of all this, so much breadth and atmosphere has the artist
+given his little history of half a dozen people in this struggling world.
+
+But this background of a great city, of an empire, is not essential to
+the breadth of treatment upon which we insist in fiction, to broad
+characterization, to the play of imagination about common things which
+transfigures them into the immortal beauty of artistic creations.  What a
+simple idyl in itself is Goethe's "Hermann and Dorothea"!  It is the
+creation of a few master-touches, using only common material.  Yet it has
+in it the breadth of life itself, the depth and passion of all our human
+struggle in the world-a little story with a vast horizon.
+
+It is constantly said that the conditions in America are unfavorable to
+the higher fiction; that our society is unformed, without centre, without
+the definition of classes, which give the light and shade that Heine
+speaks of in "Don Quixote"; that it lacks types and customs that can be
+widely recognized and accepted as national and characteristic; that we
+have no past; that we want both romantic and historic background; that we
+are in a shifting, flowing, forming period which fiction cannot seize on;
+that we are in diversity and confusion that baffle artistic treatment; in
+short, that American life is too vast, varied, and crude for the purpose
+of the novelist.
+
+These excuses might be accepted as fully accounting for our failure--or
+shall we say our delay? --if it were not for two or three of our literary
+performances.  It is true that no novel has been written, and we dare say
+no novel will be written, that is, or will be, an epitome of the manifold
+diversities of American life, unless it be in the form of one of Walt
+Whitman's catalogues.  But we are not without peculiar types; not without
+characters, not without incidents, stories, heroisms, inequalities; not
+without the charms of nature in infinite variety; and human nature is the
+same here that it is in Spain, France, and England.  Out of these
+materials Cooper wrote romances, narratives stamped with the distinct
+characteristics of American life and scenery, that were and are eagerly
+read by all civilized peoples, and which secured the universal verdict
+which only breadth of treatment commands.  Out of these materials, also,
+Hawthorne, child-endowed with a creative imagination, wove those
+tragedies of interior life, those novels of our provincial New England,
+which rank among the great masterpieces of the novelist's art.  The
+master artist can idealize even our crude material, and make it serve.
+These exceptions to a rule do not go to prove the general assertion of a
+poverty of material for fiction here; the simple truth probably is that,
+for reasons incident to the development of a new region of the earth,
+creative genius has been turned in other directions than that of
+fictitious literature.  Nor do I think that we need to take shelter
+behind the wellworn and convenient observation, the truth of which stands
+in much doubt, that literature is the final flower of a nation's
+civilization.
+
+However, this is somewhat a digression.  We are speaking of the tendency
+of recent fiction, very much the same everywhere that novels are written,
+which we have imperfectly sketched.  It is probably of no more use to
+protest against it than it is to protest against the vulgar realism in
+pictorial art, which holds ugliness and beauty in equal esteem; or
+against aestheticism gone to seed in languid affectations; or against the
+enthusiasm of a social life which wreaks its religion on the color of a
+vestment, or sighs out its divine soul over an ancient pewter mug.  Most
+of our fiction, in its extreme analysis, introspection and self-
+consciousness, in its devotion to details, in its disregard of the ideal,
+in its selection as well as in its treatment of nature, is simply of a
+piece with a good deal else that passes for genuine art.  Much of it is
+admirable in workmanship, and exhibits a cleverness in details and a
+subtlety in the observation of traits which many great novels lack.  But
+I should be sorry to think that the historian will judge our social life
+by it, and I doubt not that most of us are ready for a more ideal, that
+is to say, a more artistic, view of our performances in this bright and
+pathetic world.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext Modern Fiction, by Charles Dudley Warner
+
diff --git a/old/cwmft10.zip b/old/cwmft10.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9098df7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/cwmft10.zip
diff --git a/old/cwmft11.txt b/old/cwmft11.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b7bb80f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/cwmft11.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,983 @@
+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Modern Fiction by Charles Dudley Warner
+#24 in our series by Charles Dudley Warner
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check
+the laws for your country before redistributing these files!!!!!
+
+Please take a look at the important information in this header.
+We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an
+electronic path open for the next readers.
+
+Please do not remove this.
+
+This should be the first thing seen when anyone opens the book.
+Do not change or edit it without written permission. The words
+are carefully chosen to provide users with the information they
+need about what they can legally do with the texts.
+
+
+**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
+
+**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
+
+*****These Etexts Are Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
+
+Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get Etexts, and
+further information is included below, including for donations.
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a 501(c)(3)
+organization with EIN [Employee Identification Number] 64-6221541
+
+
+
+Title: Modern Fiction
+
+Author: Charles Dudley Warner
+
+Release Date: March, 2002  [Etext #3120]
+[Yes, we are about one year ahead of schedule]
+[The actual date this file first posted = 01/16/01]
+[Last modified date = 11/26/01]
+
+Edition: 11
+
+Language: English
+
+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Modern Fiction by Charles D. Warner
+*******This file should be named cwmft11.txt or cwmft11.zip*******
+
+Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, cwmft12.txt
+VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, cwmft11a.txt
+
+This etext was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
+
+Project Gutenberg Etexts are usually created from multiple editions,
+all of which are in the Public Domain in the United States, unless a
+copyright notice is included. Therefore, we usually do NOT keep any
+of these books in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+We are now trying to release all our books one year in advance
+of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing.
+Please be encouraged to send us error messages even years after
+the official publication date.
+
+Please note neither this listing nor its contents are final til
+midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement.
+The official release date of all Project Gutenberg Etexts is at
+Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month. A
+preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment
+and editing by those who wish to do so.
+
+Most people start at our sites at:
+http://gutenberg.net
+http://promo.net/pg
+
+
+Those of you who want to download any Etext before announcement
+can surf to them as follows, and just download by date; this is
+also a good way to get them instantly upon announcement, as the
+indexes our cataloguers produce obviously take a while after an
+announcement goes out in the Project Gutenberg Newsletter.
+
+http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext03
+or
+ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext03
+
+Or /etext02, 01, 00, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90
+
+Just search by the first five letters of the filename you want,
+as it appears in our Newsletters.
+
+
+Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)
+
+We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. The
+time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours
+to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright
+searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. This
+projected audience is one hundred million readers. If our value
+per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2
+million dollars per hour this year as we release fifty new Etext
+files per month, or 500 more Etexts in 2000 for a total of 3000+
+If they reach just 1-2% of the world's population then the total
+should reach over 300 billion Etexts given away by year's end.
+
+The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away One Trillion Etext
+Files by December 31, 2001. [10,000 x 100,000,000 = 1 Trillion]
+This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers,
+which is only about 4% of the present number of computer users.
+
+At our revised rates of production, we will reach only one-third
+of that goal by the end of 2001, or about 4,000 Etexts unless we
+manage to get some real funding.
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been created
+to secure a future for Project Gutenberg into the next millennium.
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+As of 10/28/01 contributions are only being solicited from people in:
+Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho,
+Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan,
+Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico,
+New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania,
+Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont,
+Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming
+
+We have filed in about 45 states now, but these are the only ones
+that have responded.
+
+As the requirements for other states are met,
+additions to this list will be made and fund raising
+will begin in the additional states. Please feel
+free to ask to check the status of your state.
+
+In answer to various questions we have received on this:
+
+We are constantly working on finishing the paperwork
+to legally request donations in all 50 states. If
+your state is not listed and you would like to know
+if we have added it since the list you have, just ask.
+
+While we cannot solicit donations from people in
+states where we are not yet registered, we know
+of no prohibition against accepting donations
+from donors in these states who approach us with
+an offer to donate.
+
+
+International donations are accepted,
+but we don't know ANYTHING about how
+to make them tax-deductible, or
+even if they CAN be made deductible,
+and don't have the staff to handle it
+even if there are ways.
+
+All donations should be made to:
+
+Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+PMB 113
+1739 University Ave.
+Oxford, MS 38655-4109
+
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a 501(c)(3)
+organization with EIN [Employee Identification Number] 64-6221541,
+and has been approved as a 501(c)(3) organization by the US Internal
+Revenue Service (IRS). Donations are tax-deductible to the maximum
+extent permitted by law. As the requirements for other states are met,
+additions to this list will be made and fund raising will begin in the
+additional states.
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+You can get up to date donation information at:
+
+http://www.gutenberg.net/donation.html
+
+
+***
+
+If you can't reach Project Gutenberg,
+you can always email directly to:
+
+Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com>
+
+hart@pobox.com forwards to hart@prairienet.org and archive.org
+if your mail bounces from archive.org, I will still see it, if
+it bounces from prairienet.org, better resend later on. . . .
+
+Prof. Hart will answer or forward your message.
+
+We would prefer to send you information by email.
+
+
+***
+
+
+Example command-line FTP session:
+
+ftp ftp.ibiblio.org
+login: anonymous
+password: your@login
+cd pub/docs/books/gutenberg
+cd etext90 through etext99 or etext00 through etext02, etc.
+dir [to see files]
+get or mget [to get files. . .set bin for zip files]
+GET GUTINDEX.?? [to get a year's listing of books, e.g., GUTINDEX.99]
+GET GUTINDEX.ALL [to get a listing of ALL books]
+
+
+**The Legal Small Print**
+
+
+(Three Pages)
+
+***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS**START***
+Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers.
+They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with
+your copy of this etext, even if you got it for free from
+someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our
+fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement
+disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how
+you may distribute copies of this etext if you want to.
+
+*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS ETEXT
+By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
+etext, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept
+this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive
+a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this etext by
+sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person
+you got it from. If you received this etext on a physical
+medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request.
+
+ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM ETEXTS
+This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etexts,
+is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor Michael S. Hart
+through the Project Gutenberg Association (the "Project").
+Among other things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright
+on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and
+distribute it in the United States without permission and
+without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth
+below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this etext
+under the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.
+
+Please do not use the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark to market
+any commercial products without permission.
+
+To create these etexts, the Project expends considerable
+efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain
+works. Despite these efforts, the Project's etexts and any
+medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other
+things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
+intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged
+disk or other etext medium, a computer virus, or computer
+codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.
+
+LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES
+But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below,
+[1] Michael Hart and the Foundation (and any other party you may
+receive this etext from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext) disclaims
+all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including
+legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR
+UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT,
+INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE
+OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE
+POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
+
+If you discover a Defect in this etext within 90 days of
+receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any)
+you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that
+time to the person you received it from. If you received it
+on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and
+such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement
+copy. If you received it electronically, such person may
+choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to
+receive it electronically.
+
+THIS ETEXT IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS
+TO THE ETEXT OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT
+LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
+PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
+
+Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or
+the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the
+above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you
+may have other legal rights.
+
+INDEMNITY
+You will indemnify and hold Michael Hart, the Foundation,
+and its trustees and agents, and any volunteers associated
+with the production and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm
+texts harmless, from all liability, cost and expense, including
+legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the
+following that you do or cause:  [1] distribution of this etext,
+[2] alteration, modification, or addition to the etext,
+or [3] any Defect.
+
+DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm"
+You may distribute copies of this etext electronically, or by
+disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this
+"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg,
+or:
+
+[1]  Only give exact copies of it.  Among other things, this
+     requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the
+     etext or this "small print!" statement.  You may however,
+     if you wish, distribute this etext in machine readable
+     binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form,
+     including any form resulting from conversion by word
+     processing or hypertext software, but only so long as
+     *EITHER*:
+
+     [*]  The etext, when displayed, is clearly readable, and
+          does *not* contain characters other than those
+          intended by the author of the work, although tilde
+          (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may
+          be used to convey punctuation intended by the
+          author, and additional characters may be used to
+          indicate hypertext links; OR
+
+     [*]  The etext may be readily converted by the reader at
+          no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent
+          form by the program that displays the etext (as is
+          the case, for instance, with most word processors);
+          OR
+
+     [*]  You provide, or agree to also provide on request at
+          no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the
+          etext in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC
+          or other equivalent proprietary form).
+
+[2]  Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this
+     "Small Print!" statement.
+
+[3]  Pay a trademark license fee to the Foundation of 20% of the
+     gross profits you derive calculated using the method you
+     already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  If you
+     don't derive profits, no royalty is due.  Royalties are
+     payable to "Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation"
+     the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were
+     legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent
+     periodic) tax return.  Please contact us beforehand to
+     let us know your plans and to work out the details.
+
+WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?
+Project Gutenberg is dedicated to increasing the number of
+public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed
+in machine readable form.
+
+The Project gratefully accepts contributions of money, time,
+public domain materials, or royalty free copyright licenses.
+Money should be paid to the:
+"Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+If you are interested in contributing scanning equipment or
+software or other items, please contact Michael Hart at:
+hart@pobox.com
+
+[Portions of this header are copyright (C) 2001 by Michael S. Hart
+and may be reprinted only when these Etexts are free of all fees.]
+[Project Gutenberg is a TradeMark and may not be used in any sales
+of Project Gutenberg Etexts or other materials be they hardware or
+software or any other related product without express permission.]
+
+*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.10/04/01*END*
+
+
+
+
+
+This etext was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
+
+
+
+
+
+MODERN FICTION
+
+By Charles Dudley Warner
+
+
+
+One of the worst characteristics of modern fiction is its so-called truth
+to nature.  For fiction is an art, as painting is, as sculpture is, as
+acting is.  A photograph of a natural object is not art; nor is the
+plaster cast of a man's face, nor is the bare setting on the stage of an
+actual occurrence.  Art requires an idealization of nature.  The amateur,
+though she may be a lady, who attempts to represent upon the stage the
+lady of the drawing-room, usually fails to convey to the spectators the
+impression of a lady.  She lacks the art by which the trained actress,
+who may not be a lady, succeeds.  The actual transfer to the stage of the
+drawing-room and its occupants, with the behavior common in well-bred
+society, would no doubt fail of the intended dramatic effect, and the
+spectators would declare the representation unnatural.
+
+However our jargon of criticism may confound terms, we do not need to be
+reminded that art and nature are distinct; that art, though dependent on
+nature, is a separate creation; that art is selection and idealization,
+with a view to impressing the mind with human, or even higher than human,
+sentiments and ideas.  We may not agree whether the perfect man and woman
+ever existed, but we do know that the highest representations of them in
+form--that in the old Greek sculptures--were the result of artistic
+selection of parts of many living figures.
+
+When we praise our recent fiction for its photographic fidelity to nature
+we condemn it, for we deny to it the art which would give it value.
+We forget that the creation of the novel should be, to a certain extent,
+a synthetic process, and impart to human actions that ideal quality which
+we demand in painting.  Heine regards Cervantes as the originator of the
+modern novel.  The older novels sprang from the poetry of the Middle
+Ages; their themes were knightly adventure, their personages were the
+nobility; the common people did not figure in them.  These romances,
+which had degenerated into absurdities, Cervantes overthrew by "Don
+Quixote."  But in putting an end to the old romances he created a new
+school of fiction, called the modern novel, by introducing into his
+romance of pseudo-knighthood a faithful description of the lower classes,
+and intermingling the phases of popular life.  But he had no one-sided
+tendency to portray the vulgar only; he brought together the higher and
+the lower in society, to serve as light and shade, and the aristocratic
+element was as prominent as the popular.  This noble and chivalrous
+element disappears in the novels of the English who imitated Cervantes.
+"These English novelists since Richardson's reign," says Heine, "are
+prosaic natures; to the prudish spirit of their time even pithy
+descriptions of the life of the common people are repugnant, and we see
+on yonder side of the Channel those bourgeoisie novels arise, wherein the
+petty humdrum life of the middle classes is depicted."  But Scott
+appeared, and effected a restoration of the balance in fiction.  As
+Cervantes had introduced the democratic element into romances, so Scott
+replaced the aristocratic element, when it had disappeared, and only a
+prosaic, bourgeoisie fiction existed.  He restored to romances the
+symmetry which we admire in "Don Quixote."  The characteristic feature of
+Scott's historical romances, in the opinion of the great German critic,
+is the harmony between the artistocratic and democratic elements.
+
+This is true, but is it the last analysis of the subject?  Is it a
+sufficient account of the genius of Cervantes and Scott that they
+combined in their romances a representation of the higher and lower
+classes?  Is it not of more importance how they represented them?  It is
+only a part of the achievement of Cervantes that he introduced the common
+people into fiction; it is his higher glory that he idealized his
+material; and it is Scott's distinction also that he elevated into
+artistic creations both nobility and commonalty.  In short, the essential
+of fiction is not diversity of social life, but artistic treatment of
+whatever is depicted.  The novel may deal wholly with an aristocracy,
+or wholly with another class, but it must idealize the nature it touches
+into art.  The fault of the bourgeoisie novels, of which Heine complains,
+is not that they treated of one class only, and excluded a higher social
+range, but that they treated it without art and without ideality.  In
+nature there is nothing vulgar to the poet, and in human life there is
+nothing uninteresting to the artist; but nature and human life, for the
+purposes of fiction, need a creative genius.  The importation into the
+novel of the vulgar, sordid, and ignoble in life is always unbearable,
+unless genius first fuses the raw material in its alembic.
+
+When, therefore, we say that one of the worst characteristics of modern
+fiction is its so-called truth to nature, we mean that it disregards the
+higher laws of art, and attempts to give us unidealized pictures of life.
+The failure is not that vulgar themes are treated, but that the treatment
+is vulgar; not that common life is treated, but that the treatment is
+common; not that care is taken with details, but that no selection is
+made, and everything is photographed regardless of its artistic value.
+I am sure that no one ever felt any repugnance on being introduced by
+Cervantes to the muleteers, contrabandistas, servants and serving-maids,
+and idle vagabonds of Spain, any more than to an acquaintance with the
+beggar-boys and street gamins on the canvases of Murillo.  And I believe
+that the philosophic reason of the disgust of Heine and of every critic
+with the English bourgeoisie novels, describing the petty, humdrum life
+of the middle classes, was simply the want of art in the writers; the
+failure on their part to see that a literal transcript of nature is poor
+stuff in literature.  We do not need to go back to Richardson's time for
+illustrations of that truth.  Every week the English press--which is even
+a greater sinner in this respect than the American--turns out a score of
+novels which are mediocre, not from their subjects, but from their utter
+lack of the artistic quality.  It matters not whether they treat of
+middle-class life, of low, slum life, or of drawing-room life and lords
+and ladies; they are equally flat and dreary.  Perhaps the most inane
+thing ever put forth in the name of literature is the so-called domestic
+novel, an indigestible, culinary sort of product, that might be named the
+doughnut of fiction.  The usual apology for it is that it depicts family
+life with fidelity.  Its characters are supposed to act and talk as
+people act and talk at home and in society.  I trust this is a libel,
+but, for the sake of the argument, suppose they do.  Was ever produced so
+insipid a result?  They are called moral; in the higher sense they are
+immoral, for they tend to lower the moral tone and stamina of every
+reader.  It needs genius to import into literature ordinary conversation,
+petty domestic details, and the commonplace and vulgar phases of life.
+A report of ordinary talk, which appears as dialogue in domestic novels,
+may be true to nature; if it is, it is not worth writing or worth
+reading.  I cannot see that it serves any good purpose whatever.
+Fortunately, we have in our day illustrations of a different treatment of
+the vulgar.  I do not know any more truly realistic pictures of certain
+aspects of New England life than are to be found in Judd's "Margaret,"
+wherein are depicted exceedingly pinched and ignoble social conditions.
+Yet the characters and the life are drawn with the artistic purity of
+Flaxman's illustrations of Homer.  Another example is Thomas Hardy's "Far
+from the Madding Crowd."  Every character in it is of the lower class in
+England.  But what an exquisite creation it is!  You have to turn back to
+Shakespeare for any talk of peasants and clowns and shepherds to compare
+with the conversations in this novel, so racy are they of the soil, and
+yet so touched with the finest art, the enduring art.  Here is not the
+realism of the photograph, but of the artist; that is to say, it is
+nature idealized.
+
+When we criticise our recent fiction it is obvious that we ought to
+remember that it only conforms to the tendencies of our social life, our
+prevailing ethics, and to the art conditions of our time.  Literature is
+never in any age an isolated product.  It is closely related to the
+development or retrogression of the time in all departments of life.
+The literary production of our day seems, and no doubt is, more various
+than that of any other, and it is not easy to fix upon its leading
+tendency.  It is claimed for its fiction, however, that it is analytic
+and realistic, and that much of it has certain other qualities that make
+it a new school in art.  These aspects of it I wish to consider in this
+paper.
+
+It is scarcely possible to touch upon our recent fiction, any more than
+upon our recent poetry, without taking into account what is called the
+Esthetic movement--a movement more prominent in England than elsewhere.
+A slight contemplation of this reveals its resemblance to the Romantic
+movement in Germany, of which the brothers Schlegel were apostles, in the
+latter part of the last century.  The movements are alike in this: that
+they both sought inspiration in mediaevalism, in feudalism, in the
+symbols of a Christianity that ran to mysticism, in the quaint, strictly
+pre-Raphael art which was supposed to be the result of a simple faith.
+In the one case, the artless and childlike remains of old German pictures
+and statuary were exhumed and set up as worthy of imitation; in the
+other, we have carried out in art, in costume, and in domestic life,
+so far as possible, what has been wittily and accurately described as
+"stained-glass attitudes."  With all its peculiar vagaries, the English
+school is essentially a copy of the German, in its return to
+mediaevalism.  The two movements have a further likeness, in that they
+are found accompanied by a highly symbolized religious revival.  English
+aestheticism would probably disown any religious intention, although it
+has been accused of a refined interest in Pan and Venus; but in all its
+feudal sympathies it goes along with the religious art and vestment
+revival, the return to symbolic ceremonies, monastic vigils, and
+sisterhoods.  Years ago, an acute writer in the Catholic World claimed
+Dante Gabriel Rossetti as a Catholic writer, from the internal evidence
+of his poems.  The German Romanticism, which was fostered by the Romish
+priesthood, ended, or its disciples ended, in the bosom of the Roman
+Catholic Church.  It will be interesting to note in what ritualistic
+harbor the aestheticism of our day will finally moor.  That two similar
+revivals should come so near together in time makes us feel that the
+world moves onward--if it does move onward--in circular figures of very
+short radii.  There seems to be only one thing certain in our Christian
+era, and that is a periodic return to classic models; the only stable
+standards of resort seem to be Greek art and literature.
+
+The characteristics which are prominent, when we think of our recent
+fiction, are a wholly unidealized view of human society, which has got
+the name of realism; a delight in representing the worst phases of social
+life; an extreme analysis of persons and motives; the sacrifice of action
+to psychological study; the substitution of studies of character for
+anything like a story; a notion that it is not artistic, and that it is
+untrue to nature, to bring any novel to a definite consummation, and
+especially to end it happily; and a despondent tone about society,
+politics, and the whole drift of modern life.  Judged by our fiction, we
+are in an irredeemably bad way.  There is little beauty, joy, or light-
+heartedness in living; the spontaneity and charm of life are analyzed out
+of existence; sweet girls, made to love and be loved, are extinct;
+melancholy Jaques never meets a Rosalind in the forest of Arden, and if
+he sees her in the drawing-room he poisons his pleasure with the thought
+that she is scheming and artificial; there are no happy marriages--
+indeed, marriage itself is almost too inartistic to be permitted by our
+novelists, unless it can be supplemented by a divorce, and art is
+supposed to deny any happy consummation of true love.  In short, modern
+society is going to the dogs, notwithstanding money is only three and a
+half per cent.  It is a gloomy business life, at the best.  Two learned
+but despondent university professors met, not long ago, at an afternoon
+"coffee," and drew sympathetically together in a corner.  "What a world
+this would be," said one, "without coffee!"  "Yes," replied the other,
+stirring the fragrant cup in a dejected aspect "yes; but what a hell of a
+world it is with coffee!"
+
+The analytic method in fiction is interesting, when used by a master of
+dissection, but it has this fatal defect in a novel--it destroys
+illusion.  We want to think that the characters in a story are real
+persons.  We cannot do this if we see the author set them up as if they
+were marionettes, and take them to pieces every few pages, and show their
+interior structure, and the machinery by which they are moved.  Not only
+is the illusion gone, but the movement of the story, if there is a story,
+is retarded, till the reader loses all enjoyment in impatience and
+weariness.  You find yourself saying, perhaps, What a very clever fellow
+the author is!  What an ingenious creation this character is!  How
+brightly the author makes his people talk!  This is high praise, but by
+no means the highest, and when we reflect we see how immeasurably
+inferior, in fiction, the analytic method is to the dramatic.  In the
+dramatic method the characters appear, and show what they are by what
+they do and say; the reader studies their motives, and a part of his
+enjoyment is in analyzing them, and his vanity is flattered by the trust
+reposed in his perspicacity.  We realize how unnecessary minute analysis
+of character and long descriptions are in reading a drama by Shakespeare,
+in which the characters are so vividly presented to us in action and
+speech, without the least interference of the author in description, that
+we regard them as persons with whom we might have real relations, and not
+as bundles of traits and qualities.  True, the conditions of dramatic art
+and the art of the novel are different, in that the drama can dispense
+with delineations, for its characters are intended to be presented to the
+eye; but all the same, a good drama will explain itself without the aid
+of actors, and there is no doubt that it is the higher art in the novel,
+when once the characters are introduced, to treat them dramatically, and
+let them work out their own destiny according to their characters.  It is
+a truism to say that when the reader perceives that the author can compel
+his characters to do what he pleases all interest in them as real persons
+is gone.  In a novel of mere action and adventure, a lower order of
+fiction, where all the interest centres in the unraveling of a plot, of
+course this does not so much matter.
+
+Not long ago, in Edinburgh, I amused myself in looking up some of the
+localities made famous in Scott's romances, which are as real in the mind
+as any historical places.  Afterwards I read "The Heart of Midlothian."
+I was surprised to find that, as a work of art, it was inferior to my
+recollection of it.  Its style is open to the charge of prolixity, and
+even of slovenliness in some parts; and it does not move on with
+increasing momentum and concentration to a climax, as many of Scott's
+novels do; the story drags along in the disposition of one character
+after another.  Yet, when I had finished the book and put it away, a
+singular thing happened.  It suddenly came to me that in reading it I had
+not once thought of Scott as the maker; it had never occurred to me that
+he had created the people in whose fortunes I had been so intensely
+absorbed; and I never once had felt how clever the novelist was in the
+naturally dramatic dialogues of the characters.  In short, it had not
+entered my mind to doubt the existence of Jeanie and Effie Deans, and
+their father, and Reuben Butler, and the others, who seem as real as
+historical persons in Scotch history.  And when I came to think of it
+afterwards, reflecting upon the assumptions of the modern realistic
+school, I found that some scenes, notably the night attack on the old
+Tolbooth, were as real to me as if I had read them in a police report of
+a newspaper of the day.  Was Scott, then, only a reporter?  Far from it,
+as you would speedily see if he had thrown into the novel a police report
+of the occurrences at the Tolbooth before art had shorn it of its
+irrelevancies, magnified its effective and salient points, given events
+their proper perspective, and the whole picture due light and shade.
+
+The sacrifice of action to some extent to psychological evolution in
+modern fiction may be an advance in the art as an intellectual
+entertainment, if the writer does not make that evolution his end, and
+does not forget that the indispensable thing in a novel is the story.
+The novel of mere adventure or mere plot, it need not be urged, is of a
+lower order than that in which the evolution of characters and their
+interaction make the story.  The highest fiction is that which embodies
+both; that is, the story in which action is the result of mental and
+spiritual forces in play.  And we protest against the notion that the
+novel of the future is to be, or should be, merely a study of, or an
+essay or a series of analytic essays on, certain phases of social life.
+
+It is not true that civilization or cultivation has bred out of the world
+the liking for a story.  In this the most highly educated Londoner and
+the Egyptian fellah meet on common human ground.  The passion for a story
+has no more died out than curiosity, or than the passion of love.  The
+truth is not that stories are not demanded, but that the born raconteur
+and story-teller is a rare person.  The faculty of telling a story is a
+much rarer gift than the ability to analyze character and even than the
+ability truly to draw character.  It may be a higher or a lower power,
+but it is rarer.  It is a natural gift, and it seems that no amount of
+culture can attain it, any more than learning can make a poet.  Nor is
+the complaint well founded that the stories have all been told, the
+possible plots all been used, and the combinations of circumstances
+exhausted.  It is no doubt our individual experience that we hear almost
+every day--and we hear nothing so eagerly--some new story, better or
+worse, but new in its exhibition of human character, and in the
+combination of events.  And the strange, eventful histories of human life
+will no more be exhausted than the possible arrangements of mathematical
+numbers.  We might as well say that there are no more good pictures to be
+painted as that there are no more good stories to be told.
+
+Equally baseless is the assumption that it is inartistic and untrue to
+nature to bring a novel to a definite consummation, and especially to end
+it happily.  Life, we are told, is full of incompletion, of broken
+destinies, of failures, of romances that begin but do not end, of
+ambitions and purposes frustrated, of love crossed, of unhappy issues, or
+a resultless play of influences.  Well, but life is full, also, of
+endings, of the results in concrete action of character, of completed
+dramas.  And we expect and give, in the stories we hear and tell in
+ordinary intercourse, some point, some outcome, an end of some sort.
+If you interest me in the preparations of two persons who are starting on
+a journey, and expend all your ingenuity in describing their outfit and
+their characters, and do not tell me where they went or what befell them
+afterwards, I do not call that a story.  Nor am I any better satisfied
+when yon describe two persons whom you know, whose characters are
+interesting, and who become involved in all manner of entanglements, and
+then stop your narration; and when I ask, say you have not the least idea
+whether they got out of their difficulties, or what became of them.
+In real life we do not call that a story where everything is left
+unconcluded and in the air.  In point of fact, romances are daily
+beginning and daily ending, well or otherwise, under our observation.
+
+Should they always end well in the novel?  I am very far from saying
+that.  Tragedy and the pathos of failure have their places in literature
+as well as in life.  I only say that, artistically, a good ending is as
+proper as a bad ending.  Yet the main object of the novel is to
+entertain, and the best entertainment is that which lifts the imagination
+and quickens the spirit; to lighten the burdens of life by taking us for
+a time out of our humdrum and perhaps sordid conditions, so that we can
+see familiar life somewhat idealized, and probably see it all the more
+truly from an artistic point of view.  For the majority of the race, in
+its hard lines, fiction is an inestimable boon.  Incidentally the novel
+may teach, encourage, refine, elevate.  Even for these purposes, that
+novel is the best which shows us the best possibilities of our lives--the
+novel which gives hope and cheer instead of discouragement and gloom.
+Familiarity with vice and sordidness in fiction is a low entertainment,
+and of doubtful moral value, and their introduction is unbearable if it
+is not done with the idealizing touch of the artist.
+
+Do not misunderstand me to mean that common and low life are not fit
+subjects of fiction, or that vice is not to be lashed by the satirist,
+or that the evils of a social state are never to be exposed in the novel.
+For this, also, is an office of the novel, as it is of the drama, to hold
+the mirror up to nature, and to human nature as it exhibits itself.  But
+when the mirror shows nothing but vice and social disorder, leaving out
+the saving qualities that keep society on the whole, and family life as a
+rule, as sweet and good as they are, the mirror is not held up to nature,
+but more likely reflects a morbid mind.  Still it must be added that the
+study of unfortunate social conditions is a legitimate one for the author
+to make; and that we may be in no state to judge justly of his exposure
+while the punishment is being inflicted, or while the irritation is
+fresh.  For, no doubt, the reader winces often because the novel reveals
+to himself certain possible baseness, selfishness, and meanness.  Of
+this, however, I (speaking for myself) may be sure: that the artist who
+so represents vulgar life that I am more in love with my kind, the
+satirist who so depicts vice and villainy that I am strengthened in my
+moral fibre, has vindicated his choice of material.  On the contrary,
+those novelists are not justified whose forte it seems to be to so set
+forth goodness as to make it unattractive.
+
+But we come back to the general proposition that the indispensable
+condition of the novel is that it shall entertain.  And for this purpose
+the world is not ashamed to own that it wants, and always will want,
+a story--a story that has an ending; and if not a good ending, then one
+that in noble tragedy lifts up our nature into a high plane of sacrifice
+and pathos.  In proof of this we have only to refer to the masterpieces
+of fiction which the world cherishes and loves to recur to.
+
+I confess that I am harassed with the incomplete romances, that leave me,
+when the book is closed, as one might be on a waste plain at midnight,
+abandoned by his conductor, and without a lantern.  I am tired of
+accompanying people for hours through disaster and perplexity and
+misunderstanding, only to see them lost in a thick mist at last.  I am
+weary of going to funerals, which are not my funerals, however chatty and
+amusing the undertaker may be.  I confess that I should like to see again
+the lovely heroine, the sweet woman, capable of a great passion and a
+great sacrifice; and I do not object if the novelist tries her to the
+verge of endurance, in agonies of mind and in perils, subjecting her to
+wasting sicknesses even, if he only brings her out at the end in a
+blissful compensation of her troubles, and endued with a new and sweeter
+charm.  No doubt it is better for us all, and better art, that in the
+novel of society the destiny should be decided by character.  What an
+artistic and righteous consummation it is when we meet the shrewd and
+wicked old Baroness Bernstein at Continental gaming-tables, and feel that
+there was no other logical end for the worldly and fascinating Beatrix of
+Henry Esmond!  It is one of the great privileges of fiction to right the
+wrongs of life, to do justice to the deserving and the vicious.  It is
+wholesome for us to contemplate the justice, even if we do not often see
+it in society.  It is true that hypocrisy and vulgar self-seeking often
+succeed in life, occupying high places, and make their exit in the
+pageantry of honored obsequies.  Yet always the man is conscious of the
+hollowness of his triumph, and the world takes a pretty accurate measure
+of it.  It is the privilege of the novelist, without introducing into
+such a career what is called disaster, to satisfy our innate love of
+justice by letting us see the true nature of such prosperity.  The
+unscrupulous man amasses wealth, lives in luxury and splendor, and dies
+in the odor of respectability.  His poor and honest neighbor, whom he has
+wronged and defrauded, lives in misery, and dies in disappointment and
+penury.  The novelist cannot reverse the facts without such a shock to
+our experience as shall destroy for us the artistic value of his fiction,
+and bring upon his work the deserved reproach of indiscriminately
+"rewarding the good and punishing the bad."  But we have a right to ask
+that he shall reveal the real heart and character of this passing show of
+life; for not to do this, to content himself merely with exterior
+appearances, is for the majority of his readers to efface the lines
+between virtue and vice.  And we ask this not for the sake of the moral
+lesson, but because not to do it is, to our deep consciousness,
+inartistic and untrue to our judgment of life as it goes on.  Thackeray
+used to say that all his talent was in his eyes; meaning that he was only
+an observer and reporter of what he saw, and not a Providence to rectify
+human affairs.  The great artist undervalued his genius.  He reported
+what he saw as Raphael and Murillo reported what they saw.  With his
+touch of genius he assigned to everything its true value, moving us to
+tenderness, to pity, to scorn, to righteous indignation, to sympathy with
+humanity.  I find in him the highest art, and not that indifference to
+the great facts and deep currents and destinies of human life, that want
+of enthusiasm and sympathy, which has got the name of "art for art's
+sake."  Literary fiction is a barren product if it wants sympathy and
+love for men.  "Art for art's sake" is a good and defensible phrase, if
+our definition of art includes the ideal, and not otherwise.
+
+I do not know how it has come about that in so large a proportion of
+recent fiction it is held to be artistic to look almost altogether upon
+the shady and the seamy side of life, giving to this view the name of
+"realism"; to select the disagreeable, the vicious, the unwholesome;
+to give us for our companions, in our hours of leisure and relaxation,
+only the silly and the weak-minded woman, the fast and slangy girl, the
+intrigante and the "shady"--to borrow the language of the society she
+seeks--the hero of irresolution, the prig, the vulgar, and the vicious;
+to serve us only with the foibles of the fashionable, the low tone of the
+gay, the gilded riffraff of our social state; to drag us forever along
+the.  dizzy, half-fractured precipice of the seventh commandment; to
+bring us into relations only with the sordid and the common; to force us
+to sup with unwholesome company on misery and sensuousness, in tales so
+utterly unpleasant that we are ready to welcome any disaster as a relief;
+and then--the latest and finest touch of modern art--to leave the whole
+weltering mass in a chaos, without conclusion and without possible issue.
+And this is called a picture of real life!  Heavens!  Is it true that in
+England, where a great proportion of the fiction we describe and loathe
+is produced; is it true that in our New England society there is nothing
+but frivolity, sordidness, decay of purity and faith, ignoble ambition
+and ignoble living?  Is there no charm in social life--no self-sacrifice,
+devotion, courage to stem materialistic conditions, and live above them?
+Are there no noble women, sensible, beautiful, winning, with the grace
+that all the world loves, albeit with the feminine weaknesses that make
+all the world hope?  Is there no manliness left?  Are there no homes
+where the tempter does not live with the tempted in a mush of sentimental
+affinity?  Or is it, in fact, more artistic to ignore all these, and
+paint only the feeble and the repulsive in our social state?  The feeble,
+the sordid, and the repulsive in our social state nobody denies, nor does
+anybody deny the exceeding cleverness with which our social disorders are
+reproduced in fiction by a few masters of their art; but is it not time
+that it should be considered good art to show something of the clean and
+bright side?
+
+This is pre-eminently the age of the novel.  The development of variety
+of fiction since the days of Scott and Cooper is prodigious.  The
+prejudice against novel-reading is quite broken down, since fiction has
+taken all fields for its province; everybody reads novels.  Three-
+quarters of the books taken from the circulating library are stories;
+they make up half the library of the Sunday-schools.  If a writer has
+anything to say, or thinks he has, he knows that he can most certainly
+reach the ear of the public by the medium of a story.  So we have novels
+for children; novels religious, scientific, historical, archaeological,
+psychological, pathological, total-abstinence; novels of travel, of
+adventure and exploration; novels domestic, and the perpetual spawn of
+books called novels of society.  Not only is everything turned into a
+story, real or so called, but there must be a story in everything.  The
+stump-speaker holds his audience by well-worn stories; the preacher wakes
+up his congregation by a graphic narrative; and the Sunday-school teacher
+leads his children into all goodness by the entertaining path of romance;
+we even had a President who governed the country nearly by anecdotes.
+The result of this universal demand for fiction is necessarily an
+enormous supply, and as everybody writes, without reference to gifts, the
+product is mainly trash, and trash of a deleterious sort; for bad art in
+literature is bad morals.  I am not sure but the so-called domestic, the
+diluted, the "goody," namby-pamby, unrobust stories, which are so largely
+read by school-girls, young ladies, and women, do more harm than the
+"knowing," audacious, wicked ones,--also, it is reported, read by them,
+and written largely by their own sex.  For minds enfeebled and relaxed by
+stories lacking even intellectual fibre are in a poor condition to meet
+the perils of life.  This is not the place for discussing the stories
+written for the young and for the Sunday-school.  It seems impossible to
+check the flow of them, now that so much capital is invested in this
+industry; but I think that healthy public sentiment is beginning to
+recognize the truth that the excessive reading of this class of
+literature by the young is weakening to the mind, besides being a serious
+hindrance to study and to attention to the literature that has substance.
+
+In his account of the Romantic School in Germany, Heine says, "In the
+breast of a nation's authors there always lies the image of its future,
+and the critic who, with a knife of sufficient keenness, dissects a new
+poet can easily prophesy, as from the entrails of a sacrificial animal,
+what shape matters will assume in Germany."  Now if all the poets and
+novelists of England and America today were cut up into little pieces
+(and we might sacrifice a few for the sake of the experiment), there is
+no inspecting augur who could divine therefrom our literary future.
+The diverse indications would puzzle the most acute dissector.  Lost in
+the variety, the multiplicity of minute details, the refinements of
+analysis and introspection, he would miss any leading indications.  For
+with all its variety, it seems to me that one characteristic of recent
+fiction is its narrowness--narrowness of vision and of treatment.  It
+deals with lives rather than with life.  Lacking ideality, it fails of
+broad perception.  We are accustomed to think that with the advent of the
+genuine novel of society, in the first part of this century, a great step
+forward was taken in fiction.  And so there was.  If the artist did not
+use a big canvas, he adopted a broad treatment.  But the tendency now is
+to push analysis of individual peculiarities to an extreme, and to
+substitute a study of traits for a representation of human life.
+
+It scarcely need be said that it is not multitude of figures on a
+literary canvas that secures breadth of treatment.  The novel may be
+narrow, though it swarms with a hundred personages.  It may be as wide as
+life, as high as imagination can lift itself; it may image to us a whole
+social state, though it pats in motion no more persons than we made the
+acquaintance of in one of the romances of Hawthorne.  Consider for a
+moment how Thackeray produced his marvelous results.  We follow with him,
+in one of his novels of society, the fortunes of a very few people.  They
+are so vividly portrayed that we are convinced the author must have known
+them in that great world with which he was so familiar; we should not be
+surprised to meet any of them in the streets of London.  When we visit
+the Charterhouse School, and see the old forms where the boys sat nearly
+a century ago, we have in our minds Colonel Newcome as really as we have
+Charles Lamb and Coleridge and De Quincey.  We are absorbed, as we read,
+in the evolution of the characters of perhaps only half a dozen people;
+and yet all the world, all great, roaring, struggling London, is in the
+story, and Clive, and Philip, and Ethel, and Becky Sharpe, and Captain
+Costigan are a part of life.  It is the flowery month of May; the scent
+of the hawthorn is in the air, and the tender flush of the new spring
+suffuses the Park, where the tide of fashion and pleasure and idleness
+surges up and down-the sauntering throng, the splendid equipages, the
+endless cavalcade in Rotten Row, in which Clive descries afar off the
+white plume of his ladylove dancing on the waves of an unattainable
+society; the club windows are all occupied; Parliament is in session,
+with its nightly echoes of imperial politics; the thronged streets roar
+with life from morn till nearly morn again; the drawing-rooms hum and
+sparkle in the crush of a London season; as you walk the midnight
+pavement, through the swinging doors of the cider-cellars comes the burst
+of bacchanalian song.  Here is the world of the press and of letters;
+here are institutions, an army, a navy, commerce, glimpses of great ships
+going to and fro on distant seas, of India, of Australia.  This one book
+is an epitome of English life, almost of the empire itself.  We are
+conscious of all this, so much breadth and atmosphere has the artist
+given his little history of half a dozen people in this struggling world.
+
+But this background of a great city, of an empire, is not essential to
+the breadth of treatment upon which we insist in fiction, to broad
+characterization, to the play of imagination about common things which
+transfigures them into the immortal beauty of artistic creations.  What a
+simple idyl in itself is Goethe's "Hermann and Dorothea"!  It is the
+creation of a few master-touches, using only common material.  Yet it has
+in it the breadth of life itself, the depth and passion of all our human
+struggle in the world-a little story with a vast horizon.
+
+It is constantly said that the conditions in America are unfavorable to
+the higher fiction; that our society is unformed, without centre, without
+the definition of classes, which give the light and shade that Heine
+speaks of in "Don Quixote"; that it lacks types and customs that can be
+widely recognized and accepted as national and characteristic; that we
+have no past; that we want both romantic and historic background; that we
+are in a shifting, flowing, forming period which fiction cannot seize on;
+that we are in diversity and confusion that baffle artistic treatment; in
+short, that American life is too vast, varied, and crude for the purpose
+of the novelist.
+
+These excuses might be accepted as fully accounting for our failure--or
+shall we say our delay?--if it were not for two or three of our literary
+performances.  It is true that no novel has been written, and we dare say
+no novel will be written, that is, or will be, an epitome of the manifold
+diversities of American life, unless it be in the form of one of Walt
+Whitman's catalogues.  But we are not without peculiar types; not without
+characters, not without incidents, stories, heroisms, inequalities; not
+without the charms of nature in infinite variety; and human nature is the
+same here that it is in Spain, France, and England.  Out of these
+materials Cooper wrote romances, narratives stamped with the distinct
+characteristics of American life and scenery, that were and are eagerly
+read by all civilized peoples, and which secured the universal verdict
+which only breadth of treatment commands.  Out of these materials, also,
+Hawthorne, child-endowed with a creative imagination, wove those
+tragedies of interior life, those novels of our provincial New England,
+which rank among the great masterpieces of the novelist's art.  The
+master artist can idealize even our crude material, and make it serve.
+These exceptions to a rule do not go to prove the general assertion of a
+poverty of material for fiction here; the simple truth probably is that,
+for reasons incident to the development of a new region of the earth,
+creative genius has been turned in other directions than that of
+fictitious literature.  Nor do I think that we need to take shelter
+behind the wellworn and convenient observation, the truth of which stands
+in much doubt, that literature is the final flower of a nation's
+civilization.
+
+However, this is somewhat a digression.  We are speaking of the tendency
+of recent fiction, very much the same everywhere that novels are written,
+which we have imperfectly sketched.  It is probably of no more use to
+protest against it than it is to protest against the vulgar realism in
+pictorial art, which holds ugliness and beauty in equal esteem; or
+against aestheticism gone to seed in languid affectations; or against the
+enthusiasm of a social life which wreaks its religion on the color of a
+vestment, or sighs out its divine soul over an ancient pewter mug.  Most
+of our fiction, in its extreme analysis, introspection and self-
+consciousness, in its devotion to details, in its disregard of the ideal,
+in its selection as well as in its treatment of nature, is simply of a
+piece with a good deal else that passes for genuine art.  Much of it is
+admirable in workmanship, and exhibits a cleverness in details and a
+subtlety in the observation of traits which many great novels lack.  But
+I should be sorry to think that the historian will judge our social life
+by it, and I doubt not that most of us are ready for a more ideal, that
+is to say, a more artistic, view of our performances in this bright and
+pathetic world.
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Modern Fiction
+by Charles Dudley Warner
+
diff --git a/old/cwmft11.zip b/old/cwmft11.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7d7573f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/cwmft11.zip