Literature and Life

Dean Howells William

Description

Writer and editor William Dean Howells was a towering figure in American literature. As a novelist, journalist and critic, he helped shape the American literary sensibility. This collection brings together some of Howells' best-known essays, sketches and reports.

Informations

• Publié par: The Floating Press
• Date de parution: 01 février 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781776675975
• Langue: English

Extrait

LITERATURE AND LIFE
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WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
 
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Literature and Life Epub ISBN 978-1-77667-597-5 Also available: PDF ISBN 978-1-77667-598-2 © 2015 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
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Bibliographical The Man of Letters as a Man of Business Confessions of a Summer Colonist The Editor's Relations with the Young Contributor Last Days in a Dutch Hotel Some Anomalies of the Short Story Spanish Prisoners of War American Literary Centres The Standard Household-Effect Company Staccato Notes of a Vanished Summer LITERATURE AND LIFE—SHORT STORIES AND ESSAYS Worries of a Winter Walk Summer Isles of Eden Wild Flowers of the Asphalt A Circus in the Suburbs A She Hamlet The Midnight Platoon The Beach at Rockaway Sawdust in the Arena At a Dime Museum American Literature in Exile The Horse Show The Problem of the Summer Aesthetic New York Fifty-Odd Years Ago From New York into New England The Art of the Adsmith The Psychology of Plagiarism Puritanism in American Fiction The What and the How in Art Politics of American Authors Storage "Floating down the River on the O-Hi-O" MY LITERARY PASSIONS Bibliographical I - The Bookcase at Home II - Goldsmith III - Cervantes IV - Irving V - First Fiction and Drama VI - Longfellow's "Spanish Student" VII - Scott VIII - Lighter Fancies IX - Pope X - Various Preferences XI - Uncle Tom's Cabin XII - Ossian XIII - Shakespeare XIV - Ik Marvel XV - Dickens XVI - Wordsworth, Lowell, Chaucer XVII - Macaulay XVIII - Critics and Reviews XIX - A Non-Literary Episode XX - Thackeray XXI - "Lazarillo de Tormes" XXII - Curtis, Longfellow, Schlegel XXIII - Tennyson XXIV - Heine XXV - De Quincey, Goethe, Longfellow XXVI - George Eliot, Hawthorne, Goethe, Heine XXVII - Charles Reade XXVIII - Dante XXIX - Goldoni, Manzoni, D'Azeglio XXX - "Pastor Fido," "Aminta," "Romola," "Yeast," "Paul Ferroll" XXXI - Erckmann-Chatrian, Bjorstjerne Bjornson XXXII - Tourguenief, Auerbach XXXIII - Certain Preferences and Experiences XXXIV - Valdes, Galdos, Verga, Zola, Trollope, Hardy XXXV - Tolstoy Criticism and Fiction
Bibliographical
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Perhaps the reader may not feel in these papers that inner solidaritywhich the writer is conscious of; and it is in this doubt that the writerwishes to offer a word of explanation. He owns, as he must, that theyhave every appearance of a group of desultory sketches and essays,without palpable relation to one another, or superficial allegiance toany central motive. Yet he ventures to hope that the reader who makeshis way through them will be aware, in the retrospect, of something likethis relation and this allegiance.
For my own part, if I am to identify myself with the writer who is hereon his defence, I have never been able to see much difference betweenwhat seemed to me Literature and what seemed to me Life. If I did notfind life in what professed to be literature, I disabled its profession,and possibly from this habit, now inveterate with me, I am never quitesure of life unless I find literature in it. Unless the thing seenreveals to me an intrinsic poetry, and puts on phrases that clothe itpleasingly to the imagination, I do not much care for it; but if it willdo this, I do not mind how poor or common or squalid it shows at firstglance: it challenges my curiosity and keeps my sympathy. Instantly Ilove it and wish to share my pleasure in it with some one else, or asmany ones else as I can get to look or listen. If the thing is somethingread, rather than seen, I am not anxious about the matter: if it is likelife, I know that it is poetry, and take it to my heart. There can be nooffence in it for which its truth will not make me amends.
Out of this way of thinking and feeling about these two great things,about Literature and Life, there may have arisen a confusion as to whichis which. But I do not wish to part them, and in their union I havefound, since I learned my letters, a joy in them both which I hope willlast till I forget my letters.
"So was it when my life began; So is it, now I am a man; So be it when I shall grow old."
It is the rainbow in the sky for me; and I have seldom seen a sky withoutsome bit of rainbow in it. Sometimes I can make others see it, sometimesnot; but I always like to try, and if I fail I harbor no worse thought ofthem than that they have not had their eyes examined and fitted withglasses which would at least have helped their vision.
As to the where and when of the different papers, in which I supposetheir bibliography properly lies, I need not be very exact. "The Man ofLetters as a Man of Business" was written in a hotel at Lakewood in theMay of 1892 or 1893, and pretty promptly printed in Scribner's Magazine;"Confessions of a Summer Colonist" was done at York Harbor in the fall of1898 for the Atlantic Monthly, and was a study of life at that pleasantresort as it was lived-in the idyllic times of the earlier settlement,long before motors and almost before private carriages; "AmericanLiterary Centres," "American Literature in Exile," "Puritanism inAmerican Fiction," "Politics of American Authors," were, with three orfour other papers, the endeavors of the American correspondent of theLondon Times's literary supplement, to enlighten the Britishunderstanding as to our ways of thinking and writing eleven years ago,and are here left to bear the defects of the qualities of their obsoleteactuality in the year 1899. Most of the studies and sketches are from anextinct department of "Life and Letters" which I invented for Harper'sWeekly, and operated for a year or so toward the close of the nineteenthcentury. Notable among these is the "Last Days in a Dutch Hotel," whichwas written at Paris in 1897; it is rather a favorite of mine, perhapsbecause I liked Holland so much; others, which more or less personallyrecognize effects of sojourn in New York or excursions into New England,are from the same department; several may be recalled by the longer-memoried reader as papers from the "Editor's Easy Chair" in Harper'sMonthly; "Wild Flowers of the Asphalt" is the review of an ever-delightful book which I printed in Harper's Bazar; "The Editor'sRelations with the Young Contributor" was my endeavor in Youth'sCompanion to shed a kindly light from my experience in both seats uponthe too-often and too needlessly embittered souls of literary beginners.
So it goes as to the motives and origins of the collection which maypersist in disintegrating under the reader's eye, in spite of my well-meant endeavors to establish a solidarity for it. The group at leastattests, even in this event, the wide, the wild, variety of my literaryproduction in time and space. From the beginning the journalist'sindependence of the scholar's solitude and seclusion has remained withme, and though I am fond enough of a bookish entourage, of the serriedvolumes of the library shelves, and the inviting breadth of the librarytable, I am not disabled by the hard conditions of a bedroom in a summerhotel, or the narrow possibilities of a candle-stand, without adictionary in the whole house, or a book of reference even in the runningbrooks outside. W. D. HOWELLS.
The Man of Letters as a Man of Business
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I think that every man ought to work for his living, without exception,and that, when he has once avouched his willingness to work, societyshould provide him with work and warrant him a living. I do not thinkany man ought to live by an art. A man's art should be his privilege,when he has proven his fitness to exercise it, and has otherwise earnedhis daily bread; and its results should be free to all. There is aninstinctive sense of this, even in the midst of the grotesque confusionof our economic being; people feel that there is something profane,something impious, in taking money for a picture, or a poem, or a statue.Most of all, the artist himself feels this. He puts on a bold front withthe world, to be sure, and brazens it out as Business; but he knows verywell that there is something false and vulgar in it; and that the workwhich cannot be truly priced in money cannot be truly paid in money.He can, of course, say that the priest takes money for reading themarriage service, for christening the new-born babe, and for saying thelast office for the dead; that the physician sells healing; that justiceitself is paid for; and that he is merely a party to the thing that isand must be. He can say that, as the thing is, unless he sells his arthe cannot live, that society will leave him to starve if he does not hitits fancy in a picture, or a poem, or a statue; and all this is bitterlytrue. He is, and he must be, only too glad if there is a market for hiswares. Without a market for his wares he must perish, or turn to makingsomething that will sell better than pictures, or poems, or statues.All the same, the sin and the shame remain, and the averted eye sees themstill, with its inward vision. Many will make believe otherwise, but Iwould rather not make believe otherwise; and in trying to write ofLiterature as Business I am tempted to begin by saying that Business isthe opprobrium of Literature.
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Literature is at once the most intimate and the most articulate of thearts. It cannot impart its effect through the senses or the nerves asthe other arts can; it is beautiful only through the intelligence; it isthe mind speaking to the mind; until it has been put into absolute terms,of an invariable significance, it does not exist at all. It cannotawa