A Novelist on Novels

by Walter Lionel George

Reading made up exclusively of recent novels, good, well-written, thoughtful novels, not too startling in form or contents. I would begin on novels because anybody can read a novel, and because the first cleansing operation is to induce the subject to read good novels instead of bad ones. Here is a preliminary list:—

Tony-Bungay (Wells)
Kipps (Wells)
The Custom of the Country (Wharton)
The Old Wives' Tale (Bennett)
The Man of Property (Galsworthy)
Jude the Obscure (Hardy)
Tess of the D'Urbervilles (Hardy)
Sussex Gorse (Kaye-Smith)

and say twenty or thirty more of this type, all published in the last dozen years. It is, of course, assumed that interest would be maintained by conversation.

Second Period

After the subject (victim, if you like) had read say thirty of the best solid novels of the twentieth century, I think I should draw him to the more abstruse modern novels and stories. In the first period he would come in contact with a general criticism of life. In the second period he would read novels of a more iconoclastic and constructive kind, such as:—

The Island Pharisees (Galsworthy)
The New Machiavelli (Wells)
Sinister Street (Mackenzie)
The Celestial Omnibus (Forster)
The Longest Journey (Forster)
Sons and Lovers (Lawrence)
The White Peacock (Lawrence)
Ethan Frome (Wharton)
Round the Corner (Cannan)

Briefly, the more ambitious kind of novel, say thirty or forty altogether. At that time, I should induce the subject to browse occasionally in the Oxford Book of English Verse.

Third Period

Now only would I come to the older novels, because, by then, the mind should be supple enough to stand their congestion of detail, their tendency to caricature, their stilted phrasing, and yet recognise their qualities. Here are some:—

The Rise of Silas Lapham (Howells)
Vanity Fair (Thackeray)
The Vicar of Wakefield (Goldsmith)
The Way of All Flesh (Butler)
Quentin Durward (Scott)
Guy Mannering (Scott)