THE MODERN NOVEL

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 37, 14 February 1933, Page 14

THE MODERN NOVEL

A NEW VALUATION

THE SUBJECTIVE SIDE

CHANGING METHODS

Ii is very -wrong, of course, but an Indolent reviewer may sometimes wish "that the Americans were not quite so thorough. Hero is a book on "The Twentieth-century Novel" which runs to 569 pages, and it is devoted particularly to techinque. Tho author is Mr. J. W. Beach, who is a critic o£ high ■rank and of untiring industry; a dozen articles could scarcely do justice to his "book, with its infinity of distinctions, modifications, exceptions. He. brings to the subject a liberal culture, wide learning, the comprehensive view. Yet he indicates the limitations of his subject. ,This is not a book of general criticism; "it is meant for a study in the evolution of novelisti'c technique,"-and this is "a useful preparation for the business, of criticism, as well as an interesting thing in itself, writes Allan MonkJiouse in the "Manchester Guardian." This is true, and it might be thought a danger that the critic of technique would remain cold, preoccupied with mles, incapable of free acceptance or even the ecstasy which informs some of the best criticism and sweeps aside eccentricities or eTrorsJ But though it is impossible for such a critic as Mr. Beach to remain merely a technician when he is dealing with masterpieces, •we may be grateful for the cool brain ■which can examine source's, evolution, intention. His conception is not a narrow one: there is a "primary and mysterious correspondence between Nature and art that lies at the heart of all our pleasure in technique." STRAINING- WRITERS. Like M. Jourdain, who was gratified to know that lie was speaking prose, most of our novelists are unconscious technicians. Perhaps some of them had better not read much of Mr. Beach; it might be pleasanter to rely ■upon the genial sense of youth. - There is now, doubtless, a good deal of experiment, and perhaps criticism is apt to recognise ingenuities and innovations rather than to feel the impact of forces. It is a strenuous time, and writers of talent are straining for sensations as well as for pioneering triumphs. There is even inducement to choose a technique or a subject that gives opportunity for implicit advertisement. The "great still books" may come back in the shape of reactionary imitation. Mr. Beach traces the tendency from tho discursive novel to what he calls tho well-made one, taking care to remind us that wellmade is not a synonym for greatness. It is here *a convenient term for the 'dominant work between 1895 and 1925. Ho sees this—doubtless with many exception's and qualifications—as "a survey of humanity from the standpoint of genteel good taste." The revolt against this, it seems,. is strongest id tho United States, where "Mr. Dreiser goes back to Balzac or Zola; but Mr. Dreiser does not contribute anything specific to the novelist technique. .Of course we have to remember that the greatest and most original of novels may have a primitive technique, that change is not necessarily, advance, that even "the disappearance of the author," as he mani-' f csts himself in Fielding, _ Scott, and Thackeray, must not be regarded sim-i ply. as the abolition of a nuisance. I suppose that Mr. Beach, like thexest of us, sees the present age as exceptionally experimental and unsettled. There is no best way of doing things. You may '-write' in tho first person or the third, as a student or one 'gifted ■with miraculous knowledge; with or •without regard for time and space; in continuity or alternation; as an impressionist, an expressionist; casting yourself on the "stream of consciousness" or seeking, like Landor, with care, difficulty, and moroseness the word that fits the thing. It is a curious point that Miv Beach thinks it "probable that the moving has had a very strong influence on the stream-of-con-sciousness technique.' FATH.TS AND SPLENDOUR. There is much of interest in the disfcussions -of particular writers. ; Mr. Beach is troubled a little by Meredith, and suffers, perhaps, from the waning ■enthusiasm, that is common. Meredith, it may be granted, is vulnerable- in matters of technique. To me he is, Hke Shakespeare, a genius whosefaults are overwhelmed by the splendour of 3iis creations; "but splendours hardly £omo -within the scope of Mr. Beach's inquiry,; A curious analogy is drawn .between/ Victor Hugo the romantic humanitarian and H. G. Wells the pamphleteer. The appreciation of Ana,tole Prance is something very near depreciation, delicately hinting at limitaftionsy but Thomas Mann "is perhaps In our day the novelist most conscious n* those spiritual essences which our ,' mathematicians and physicists are la- v fcouring to bring back .to a mechanical iand materialistic world." Dickens is the master-entertainer, the teller of ;fairy_ stories for grown-up children, and the interesting technical point in his -york _is the principle of alternation. This is contrasted with the severe simplification, the constant quest, of the "realist ideal," examples of which may ibe seen in Turgenev's Bazarov and in Mr. Moore's "Esther "Waters." Mr. Beach is sensitive-to the greatness of Hardy, which, in his view, lies mainly in associating events with their setting. Examples of ".tho dramatic present" are taken from Dickens, Thackeray, and the Russians. : HENRY JAMES. This hasty sketch cannot do justice ■to Mr. Beach's distinctions. The "subgeetive drama" is represented by Henry James, who occupies "a pivotal position {' in the development of the twen-tieth-century novel. From the James of "The American" to the James of "The Ambassadors"' or "The Golden Bowl" is a great range, and the values are admirably distinguished by Mr. Beach. Of Arnold Bennett he says that he "has realised one of the capita] truths of human existence—that our emotion is not commensurate with the material circumstances which call it forth; it is not the circumstances but our own hearts that make life existing and significant." "With Mr. Galsworthy he is not much in sympathy, but Conxad is cited as the great experimentalist of his day, and the technique device of the nanrator Marlow is discussed. We are to understand that the new psychologists found the novelists' world done up into neat patterns and made the discovery that the soul of man is not amenable to law. The more difficult Ms subject the more decidedly Mr. Beach attacks it, and he has much to say of the .parts played respectively by Lawrence, Mr. James Joyce, Mrs. ."WQolf, and Miss Richardson; Joyce is a genius but '/the classical example of that disposition among the modernists to pursue technique beyond the point where it can. serve the ends of art.'» Perhaps the old-fashioned or transitional reader may feel that the novelist is parting company with conduct, that life ia to be taken as unrelated brainwork, a chaos of flitting ideas; that personality is to yield ultimately to what is called group consciousness or to a kind of comprehensive soliloquy. A NEW PLANE. It seems that the novel-reader who tvouia fain be in the swim has <•?. difficult time before him. He must realise,

for one thing, that science is to put fiction on another plane and that obscenity is a term unknown to science; perhaps he will appeal for a sense of proportion as a preservative from excess of lust and horror. He might ask, too, whether criticism is devoting itself too much to method, to technique; whether extra marks are to be giveh. to experiment, however wild, or to tho minimum of meaning yielded from obscurity. Mr. Beach is patient where many of us might be impatient; his appreciations, often so full and ingenious, seem sometimes to givo values in excess of deserts. He does not shrink from detail and can tell you that in "Vanity Fair" digression is about 6 per cent. Perhaps some of us make too much of the consideration that, as iv the caso of tho railway companies, there is a movement to abolish the second class; to bo highly superior and recondite or frankly on the popular side. The difficulty with the modern experimentalists is that instead of gripping us we have to grip them. But if their world is devoid of comfort and fun perhaps they will givo us occasional ecstasy.