And these writers also are wasteful, in proportion to
their strength.
They waste especially their imagination. Books like "The Three
Soldiers" spill over in all directions--spill into poetry,
philosophy, into endless conversation, and into everything
describable. Books like "The Beginning of Wisdom" are still more
wasteful. Here is the poignant biography of a boy who loves his
environment even when it slays him, plus a collection of prose
idylls, plus a group of poems, plus a good piece of special
reporting, plus an assortment of brilliant letters; and imbedded
in the mass, like a thread of gold in a tangle of yarn, as fresh
and exquisite a love-story as we have had in recent English. Of
course I do not mean that all these elements cannot be woven into,
made relevant to, a theme, a story. Stendhal, himself a romantic,
as these men are romantics, could do it. But our romantics do not
so weave them; they fling them out as contributions to life's
evidence, they fail to relate them to a single interpretation of
living, and half of the best incidents are waste, and clog the
slow-rolling wheels of the story.
They waste their energy also.
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