Novel Writing and Novel-Reading

W. D. Howells
Background Information
William Dean Howells was the most influential American literary critic during the late 19th century and is regarded as
the father of American Realism.
Howells produced several volumes of short fiction, among them A Fearful Responsibility, and Other Stories(1881)
and Christmas Every Day, and Other Stories Told for Children (1893). He also wrote more than thirty dramas,
including The Parlor Car (pb. 1876), The Mouse-Trap, and Other Farces (pb. 1889), and Parting Friends (pb. 1911),
which generally were designed to be read aloud rather than performed.
He is remembered today as an early exponent of Realism in fiction. Reacting against the highly sentimental novels of
his day, Howellsboth in his own fiction and in his criticismadvocated less reliance on love-oriented stories with
formulaic plots and characters, and more interest in emphasizing real people, situations, and behavior.
William Dean Howells succeeded in formulating a theory of Realism for the America of his time precisely because he
emphasized the difference of his views from those of the French and drew support instead from the masters of Realism
in Russia, Italy, and Spain. His little book of rather random reflections,Criticism and Fiction (1891), is usually considered
the manifesto of American realism, but it was actually only a skirmish (=disputa,discutie aprinsa) in a long campaign for
his doctrines.
Among the issues he addressed is the dual purpose of literature as he sees it. In Novel-Writing and
Novel-Reading, Howells makes two claims about the duties and possibilities of literature that at
first blush seem hard to reconcile. In discussing the realist element of fiction, Howells claims,
The novel I take to be the sincere and conscientious endeavour to picture life just as it is, to deal
with character as we witness it in living people, and to record the incidents that grow out of
character.
His famous definition of the function of a writer indicates his limitations as a Realist writer and of Realism as he
conceived of it: "Our novelists, therefore, concern themselves with the more smiling aspects of life, which are the more
American, and seek the universal in the individual rather than the social interests."

Novel- Writing and Novel Reading Main Ideas (Quotes)

The reader who is not an author considers what the book is; the author who is a reader, considers, will he, nill he, how
the book has been done.
So I make truth the prime test of a novel. If I do not find that it is like life, then it does not exist for me as art.
For the reader, whether he is an author too, or not, the only test of a novel's truth is his own
knowledge of life. Is it like what he has seen or felt?

Readers are not so bad, I should like to say to my brother novelists; they are really very good, and at any rate we could
not get on without them. I myself think they are better in the small towns, where the excitements and the distractions are
few, than in the cities where there are many. I have said before, somewhere, that in the cities people do not read books,
they read about them; and I believe that it is far from these nervous centres, that the author finds his closest, truest,
loveliest appreciation.
To tell the truth, I do not think it would be well for the author to aim at the good opinion of the
Reader [] .That cannot be trusted to keep the author's literary or moral
conscience clean and that is the main thing with him. His affair is to do the best he can with the
material he has chosen, to make the truest possible picture of life [].
We start in our novels with something we have known of life, that is, with life itself; and then we go on and imitate
what we have known of life. If we are very skilful and very patient we can hide the joint. But the joint is always there, and
on one side of it are real ground and real grass, and on the other are the painted images of ground and grass.
In fiction you cannot, if you would, strike twice in the same place, and you certainly had better
not, if you could. It is interesting to note how, if you carry a character from one story to another,
it can scarcely be important in both.
The novel is easily first among books that people read willingly, and it is rightfully first. It has
known how to keep the charm of the story, and to add to it the attraction of almost every interest. []
As to the outward shape of the inward life of the novel, which must invariably be truth, there is
some choice, but mainly between three sorts; the autobiographical, the biographical and the
historical.
It is the novelists function to help you be kinder to your fellows, juster to yourself, truer to all.