Finally, I will state abstractly the conditions from which result the artistic, not the physical necessity that the novelist confine himself in each book to a single story-idea.
The aim to interest is the aim of fiction, long and short, and the body of a writer's resources to accomplish the aim make up the body of fiction technique. But the aim of the writer of plotted fiction is not simply to interest; it is to interest through a story, a course of events functioning together in that they embody some sort of problem. Leaving aside the matter of executive artistry, and premising that the writer will realize to the full the possibilities of his story, it is accurate to state that the interest a story will arouse will be in accordance with the human significance of the problem it embodies. Adequate fictional treatment of the problem to win love or to make a living will be more interesting than adequate fictional treatment of the problem to escape payment of an income tax. And the possibilities of any problem of life to arouse a reader's interest can be realized to the full only by setting out that problem and nothing else. Only by showing the thing in isolation and high relief can the writer reveal to, and force home upon a reader its ultimate significance. If anything unrelated to the story or problem is brought out, something of the power of the story as such will be lost. Likewise, if two or more stories or problems are each completely developed in one book, neither will have that singleness of appeal to a reader which is essential if each is to have maximum effect.
In other words, a novel does not function as a mere physical spectacle; being a story, it must have a motive, an artistic purpose; and if it has more than one it will be at cross purposes as a work of art. That is not a mere "artistic" defect. It is a practical defect in that motive, purpose, and story will not have extreme effect. Nor is it to say that the novel may not be very complicated as to any or all of its three elements of people, events, and setting. "Anna Karenina" is complicated enough, in all conscience, but every item of the novel has relation to its one story either in that it serves directly to develop the horrible tragedy of Anna's life or in that it forwards the presentment of the society which she renounced.
The painter cannot put two different pictures side by side on the same canvas without hampering the effect of each; still less can he commingle the two. The architect cannot build on two designs at once. Nor can the novelist—if he would have each story realize to the full its inherent capacity to interest—combine different stories in the same book. He can develop personality in great detail; he can follow by-paths of action; he can involve his minor characters in subplots; but the main course of the story must be single, not duplicate or triplicate, that the whole may have point and significance.
The reader will observe that this book lays absolutely no restrictions on the conceptive faculty. It preaches that the way to write fiction is to look for a story, and, when it is found, to write it so as to give it full effect. It may be a short story; it may be a novel. It may have its genesis in a dream, in a life, in a situation, in a society. But, whatever its nature, whatever its length, its effect on, its interest for, a reader, can result only from itself. The story as such cannot be fortified by the introduction of foreign matter, although the interest of the writer's text as a mere sequence of words may be heightened thereby. But the aim of the writer of novel or short story is to interest through his story as such, not merely to interest. A newspaper is interesting, yet a newspaper is not a story, however much fiction it may embody.
The novel or long story is apt to have a strong social emphasis simply because the interplay of society and the conflict of its members supply much more material for stories than the more isolated phases of human life. The novelist is under no obligation to reproduce a social spectacle in each book, but more often than not he will find that he must do so to bring out the full value of his conception. It follows that he will do well to go about with an observant eye, for it is the little details of the novel of manners that lend verisimilitude to the whole. And such matters cannot be invented; they must have been observed; for a reader knows them whether or not the writer does too.
CHAPTER XIV
CONCLUSION
Story and Tale—Realism the Method—Realism the Dogma—Philosophy of Fiction—Interest—Power of the Real Problems of Life—Test of Merit—Aim of Executive Artistry—Verisimilitude—Ultimate Artistic Significance of Plot.
The purpose of this book has been to shed a little light on the essential technical processes of the art of fiction; to state a general philosophy of fiction has not been my aim. Accordingly, the text touches only incidentally upon the fundamental types of fiction and a writer's fundamental purposes in adopting any one of them as a medium for expression of himself or his conceptions. Partly to justify some of the text, and partly because it may prove of practical service, I shall state briefly a general theory or philosophy of fiction-not my theory, merely, nor that of anyone else, but simply the theory which is implied in the content and aim of the art itself.