In his hour of disillusionment
he recalled the anonymous critic who had treated "The Improbable
Marquis" with such scant respect, and he wrote to him asking him to
expand his judgment. He was prepared to be wounded by the answer,
but the form it took surprised him. In reply to his temperate and
courteous letter the critic sent a postcard bearing only five short
words--"Why did you write it?"
This was bad manners, but the author was sensible enough to see that
it might be good criticism, especially as he found some difficulty in
answering the question. Why had he written a book? Not for money, or
for fame, or to express a personality of which he saw no reason to be
proud. All his friends had said that he ought to write a novel, and
he had thought that he could write a better one than the average. But
he had to admit that such motives seemed to him insufficient. There
was, perhaps, some mysterious force that drove men to create works of
art, and the critic had seen that his book had lacked this necessary
impulse. In the light of this new theory the author was roused by a
sense of injustice. He felt that it should be possible for anyone to
write a good book if they took sufficient pains, and he set himself
to work again with a savage and unproductive energy.
It seemed to him that in spite of his effort to bear in mind that the
whole should be greater than any part, his chapters broke up into
sentences and his sentences into forlorn and ungregarious words.
Pages:
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117