Rush to Judgement . . . HJ "The Art of Fiction" Authors must be Free to Fall

[Campbel Morgan]

I'm not one to complan about missing Fanboys, even when they confuse an
already confused prose style such as the one Mr. Pynchon employs with
hysterical sentences that often add shopping lists to laundrey lists to FAQs
and how-do-you-dos I'm just getting my two sentences in before I'm
introduced as yet another character thickening the stew or is it the pot?
But, and I must admit this first, while I applaud the freedom of fiction, I
can not abide a tale that taxes me and disappoints me as well. This is,
for starters, my problem with Mr. Pynchon's California stories. They remind
me of the old pun:

"*Spanning the globe, to bring you the constant variety of sports...the
thrill of victory...and the agony of [the feet] *(cue, not the skier falling
off the ramp but the barefoot surfer dude high stepping across a boiling
blacktop parking lot as blisters bubble beneath the balls of his tender
toes)*...the human drama of athletic competition...THIS is 'ABC's Wide World
of Sports'!!!"*
The agony of Pynchon's prose is put up with when we span the globe, but when
we're stuck inside a pothead's paradise in a Pasadena parking lot, even
after a quick trip to Japan or Hawaii, it is a sort of pain up with which I
will not put.


from James's essay, "The Art of Fiction"
[We seems to err]  in attempting to say so definitely beforehand what sort
of an affair the good novel will be. To indicate the danger of such an error
as that has been the purpose of these few pages; to suggest that certain
traditions on the subject, applied a priori, have already had much to answer
for, and that the good health of an art which undertakes so immediately to
reproduce life must demand that it be perfectly free. It lives upon
exercise, and the very meaning of exercise is freedom. The only obligation
to which in advance we may hold a novel without incurring the accusation of
being arbitrary, is that it be interesting. That general responsibility
rests upon it, but it is the only one I can think of. The ways in which it
is at liberty to accomplish this result (of interesting us) strike me as
innumerable and such as can only suffer from being marked out, or fenced in,
by prescription. They are as various as the temperament of man, and they are
successful in proportion as they reveal a particular mind, different from
others. A novel is in its broadest definition a personal impression of life;
that, to begin with, constitutes its value, which is greater or less
according to the intensity of the impression. But there will be no intensity
at all, and therefore no value, unless there is freedom to feel and say. The
tracing of a line to be followed, of a tone to be taken, of a form to be
filled out, is a limitation of that freedom and a suppression of the very
thing that we are most curious about. The form, it seems to me, is to be
appreciated after the fact; then the author's choice has been made, his
standard has been indicated; then we can follow lines and directions and
compare tones. Then, in a word, we can enjoy one of the most charming of
pleasures, we can estimate quality, we can apply the test of execution. The
execution belongs to the author alone; it is what is most personal to him,
and we measure him by that. The advantage, the luxury, as well as the
torment and responsibility of the novelist, is that there is no limit to
what he may attempt as an executant--no limit to his possible experiments,
efforts, discoveries, successes. Here it is especially that he works, step
by step, like his brother of the brush, of whom we may always say that he
has painted his picture in a manner best known to himself. His manner is his
secret, not necessarily a deliberate one. He cannot disclose it, as a
general thing, if he would; he would be at a loss to teach it to others. I
say this with a due recollection of having insisted on the community of
method of the artist who paints a picture and the artist who writes a novel.
The painter is able to teach the rudiments of his practice, and it is
possible, from the study of good work (granted the aptitude), both to learn
how to paint and to learn how to write. Yet it remains true, without injury
to the rapprochement, that the literary artist would be obliged to say to
his pupil much more than the other, "Ah, well, you must do it as you can!"
It is a question of degree, a matter of delicacy. If there are exact
sciences there are also exact arts, and the grammar of painting is so much
more definite that it makes the difference.
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