THE MODERN NOVEL.

Shannon News, 26 June 1925, Page 4

THE MODERN NOVEL.

Discussing modern fiction, in a lecture at the American Women's Club in London, Mr. Philip Guedalla said a sinister sign is the age of the successful performers. "The best work at the present time, beyond all doubt, is the work' of persons over 50, though there are exceptions, of course," he said. "But if you look at English prose as it ic to-day there is a disproportionate balance of good achievement on the side of the old as against the young. In 1810 there Avere legions of young people, and younger people, doing work of real significance. Take Wells, Hardy, Conrad, George Moore. Bennett, and you find the scales are tremendously heavy in favour of older people, and when you come below the age of Mr. Galsworthy what do you find? The young men, who were, young men of promise in 1913 —Hugh Walpole, Compton Mackenzie, Gilbert Cannan —are still young men of promise; we* are still waiting for them to come on. Looking at modern fiction in a rough sort of way there are evident two depressing sets of symptoms —one is internal, the other is external. The internal, symptom is a horrible emptiness. There is nothing there. So much of what is called the 'modern significant fiction' of our time seems to be hopelessly empty, and there is in some cases a. rather dreary trickle of impropriety. As one who has spent a good part of his time as a lawyer, I am not squeamish, but much modern fiction is like the overflow from the gasworks, or like going for a walk with an interesting companion and being reminded, at intervals, that over the hill was a sewage farm."