Chapter XVI: Adaptation of Style to Material

If the theory suggested by the chapter head had not withstood the test of ten years and the judgment of a number of people whose judgment is worth having, I should not venture to present it here even in brief space, for if carried into practise it would more or less revolutionize the art of fiction. Perhaps, too, it has already been advanced, though I have never happened to run across it or to hear of it through others.

In an earlier chapter was the statement that the art process of fiction consists of three steps--Material, Artist and Reader and that the third step fails to get anything approaching due consideration in either theory or practise. This book is largely an attempt to emphasize this fact and a plea that the reader be given greater importance in the teaching of fiction writing.

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While working out and testing this theory of the reader's place in creative work I was testing out also another theory which seemed to have little connection with the first and, with my perspective ruined by specialization, it was only a year or two ago the almost self-evident fact dawned upon me that the two fitted neatly into each other and constituted a complete theory of the art process. Until then each had been locked away in its own little compartment, there being no intent of building up a rounded out whole.

While the first theory dealt with neglect of the reader in the general art process, the other centered on the neglect of material as an influence on style. In other words, writers seemed too concentrated on themselves, the Artists, in the creative process and too neglectful of the two other steps, Material and Reader.

_Rigidity of Style as to Material_.--To present the matter briefly, all that an author has to convey to you comes to you through a single medium which we call his style and which in practise is singularly inelastic in relation to the great variety of things that must pass through it. Take Maurice Hewlitt in {219} his earlier days when his accentuated and highly individualized style make him a good example. Through that one unchanging style had to come to you tragedy, comedy, pathos, contemplation, action, love, hate, patience, anger, romance, satire. All the gamut of human emotions in the material must be crushed into uniformity of expression before it could reach you, losing of its own essence in the process. All must be translated into the one inflexible rhythm and jingle of that one style--standardized, as it were, out of much of their individuality and strength. Such a loss is a calamity, and, I think, to a marked degree unnecessary.

In poetry the need of guarding against this loss is definitely recognized, if not as a broad principle, at least in adaptation of sound to sense and in selection of the metrical form best adapted to a given theme. Why should it not be at least equally guarded against in prose? Many of the distinguishing qualities of poetry as opposed to prose vary with different races and with the march of time. Of the universal, permanent distinguishing qualities are there any that should differentiate poetry from prose as to the importance {220} of the Material's influence on style in transmission of Material to Reader through Artist?

That there are already in our fiction occasional and sporadic cases of this adaptation of style to material shows the soundness of the theory, for these examples are evidently not for the most part the result of studied effort but instances in which the writer's art is sufficiently developed to break through his usual style and spontaneously adapt expression to the thing expressed.

There are even stray rules pointing in this direction, but chiefly for dialogue where a demand for adaptation makes itself felt through the need of making a character express his emotions as a real person would express them in real life. For example, the use of short sharp sentences and simple Anglo-Saxon words in most cases of emotional stress.

But if you wish an example of what adaptation of style to material is capable of accomplishing if used as a fixed and general principle of composition, turn to Shakespeare, forgetting the non-essential fact that he is a poet.

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_Style in Relation to Material_.--Style is the expression of material through the artist, of material as transmuted through his individuality. He is, if you like, a part of his material, but, on that basis, he divides cleanly into two parts, one of them, the artist, expressing the other, the material. What I object to is the attempt to express through a single, inelastic style _all_ of his material, _all_ of himself as material, or _all_ of himself as artist. There _is_ no one style that can even approximate perfect expression of all that is in the world.

Do tragedy, comedy, pathos, love, anger, excitement, calm speak the same language in real life? Must not human art at least approximate human life if only by a kind of symbolism? What writer, or any other human being, can approximate expression of all of himself through the intoning of any one single style? Does he go from cradle to grave in one single chord? Does he not respond to emotions, his own or other people's, as a harp to hand? And yet, God save the mark, when he comes to write he calmly tries to squeeze death and all living into a single monotone!

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Is literature merely the click of a telegraph key, crushing all juice from life to reduce all life to its own inflexible code and flat rhythm? Is an author merely a funnel through which all the juice of life must emerge at the small end in a single thin stream?

_Demands of Unity_.--Art's demand for unity is fundamental and not to be denied, but what has been our idea of unity of style? Merely to whistle one note and call it a satisfactory expression of the author and the universe. It can not be. And to attain this one note in a story we place no limit to the violence needed to make all human emotions give up their own individuality in order to be in key. It is well enough, as far as it goes, but it is only a first crude step. It is time we took a step beyond.

Can any artistic demand for unity be based on any elemental more fundamental and indisputable than the irreconcilable difference of opposite human emotions?

Let the author mold his material to his individuality, unify it through himself, express it through his individual style. Let him mold his material into unity around what single {223} thought or emotion he please before he passes it through his style. But let him make that style, not a single inflexible note, but a tune, a tune that sings high or low, loud or soft, in majors or minors, harmony or discord, fast or slow, expressing in delicate response the varying emotions of its song through the singer, itself a unity and an expression and in each of its parts a unity and expression of that part.

_Let Your Style Respond_.--If you are sincere in your work, if you really feel your material and if you are not so ridden and oppressed by rules that you can not be natural, your style will of its own accord tend to attune itself to what it expresses. Give it the chance, encourage it to do so. Let no rule of misinterpreted unity force it into one monotonous, inflexible note impervious to all the emotions of the material that strive to break through into expressions of themselves so that they themselves can reach the reader in something of the fulness and color of reality instead of in the shape of cold line drawings.

Let your tune follow the moods of what it sings about. If in your material comes tragedy after a grayness of every-day affairs, {224} will your song ripple on in unchanged measure? Why not let the tragedy come through into the song itself? Let each mood of your material come through into your song and to your reader. If there follows a relief scene of comedy, how much of comedy will fail to reach the reader if it fails to tinge even the medium of transmission?

If you are not musician enough to compose the various elements of material into your style-tune, at least you can approximate by the use of notes you know produce the general effect and are keyed to the mood you desire to reproduce in your reader--rhythm changed to smoothness or harshness, sentence-length changed to that generally used in real life for the expression of that mood, words chosen for slowness and weight or speed and lightness, skilful use of adaptation of sound to sense, few words for speed of action, many for waiting and suspense.

_The Need of Emphasizing the Relation of Style to Material_.--All these things are done--a little--by a few. These few are of the real artists. It is because they are real artists that their material finds expression in their style. It is not because responsiveness {225} of style to material is systematically taught. It should be, if American fictionists are to attain the development their natural advantages make possible to them. It is the art of artists that most deserves teaching so far as it can be taught, particularly if it is so potent that it pushes its way without encouragement and against heavy odds of hindering rules.

I have only outlined the need and the possibilities and, I fear, made a poor case of it. But some day some one else will give it full and convincing presentation--if, indeed, some one has not already done so outside my knowledge. In any case, there lies a line of development that sooner or later fiction is bound to follow.

Whether you believe it or not, give it slow consideration in your mind. Even if you decide against it in the end, the considering of it will teach you more concerning style than you are likely to get from the study of other people's rules.

Of _that_ I am very sure. In your case _you_ are the most important authority. Appeal to that authority and see that it gives judgment, judgment reasoned out, by _you_, from fundamentals. {226} Let no rules by other people impose themselves until you have reasoned out their worth. Keep and develop your own individuality.

And the one best way to learn to write is to--write.

I hereby absolve you from all rules in this book except such rules as warn against rules.

THE END

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