REAL LIFE AND FICTION.

Shannon News, 23 May 1924, Page 1

REAL LIFE AND FICTION.

REAL LIFE TOO "IMPROBABLE."

Mr. W. L. Courtney presided at the London* School of Economics, Aldwyeh, at the weekly meeting in aid of the King Edward's Hospital Fund, when 'airs. Relloc Lowndes and Mr. Travers Humphreys delivered adresses on the subjeeb "Is Truth Stranger than Fiction?"

airs. Lowndes contended that truth was stranger than fiction, and instanced a number of surprising things which had actually occurred. No novelist, site said, would dare to use the following true incident. A gentleman who was in India suddenly made an offer of marriage to a girl in England. So he cabled, "Will you?" The reply came back promptly, "Won't 1?" Real love stories, she said, were very often offered to novelists. People said: I can> tell you something of the most extraordinary nature, and I don't mind if you make use of it." In nine-ty-nine cases out of a hundred the story could not be used far the simple reason that tvo reader " could believe the tale and the novelist'would be dis. credited Wis foolish. Every novelist had to be very careful to keep within the strict bounds not only of possibility but of probability. In the Ilford murder trial it was stretching the bounds of probability that Bywaters should have kept Mrs. Thompson's letters despite her instructions that he should destroy them.

Mr Travers Humphreys, opposing, said thati the best answer to the question "Is truth stranger than fiction?" was this. The best novels were not differentiated from real life at all. Their main plot was a rule founded on facts which had actually happened and the nearer to real life the novels got the. better they were as novels. If they wanted to construct a noveLtho way to do it was not to go to the novelist for the plot, but to a policeman, and they would probably get from iiim a story which happened every day.