Novel-Writing and Novel-Reading:

An Impersonal Explanation.
William D. Howells

William D. Howells is the most important representative writer

and defender of Realism.

He defended that truth and therefore, reality, which is the real

beauty, is what must be described through art. For him, the novel is the
supreme literary form, when it is very close to reality. In this sense, when
writing, he cant create, he can only compose.

It is important to highlight that a real event that has happened in reality

but that is not very likely to happen cannot be used for writing a novel,
according to Howells.

He criticises the Romantic writers, he says they were victims of

their period, since he doesnt conceive literature if it doesnt represent reality.
He doesnt like Edith Wharton, as well.

Howells considers he has a superior knowledge of reality and therefore,

his own novels are a feedback; he can teach the reader and also learn from them,
reading them over and over again. They provide the experience he needs in a
new situation or difficult place.

Writers as well as actors are completely devoted to their art, even when
they have a free day they cannot disconnect.
He differences between writer and reader; according to him, the author is the
best of all possible critics of his own work of art. He defends that
construction and criticism go hand in hand, which means criticism is already
implicit in writing.

For Howells, beauty is truth, and therefore, false art (the one which is not
close to reality), is ugly and immoral. Art must be truth to human
experience. In fact, imagination can only work with the stuff of experience. It
can absolutely create nothing; it can only compose.
Truth is the prime test of a novel. It must be true to life in whatever form,
it must be like life to be wholly true. If the novel shows what the reader has ever
felt or seen, then it is true, and therefore, beautiful.

If he could, he would subdue all novels to the principles that govern an

honest man so that no falsehood could be represented.

Howells admits there are several ways of regarding life in fiction,

but he distinguishes three forms in the order of their greatness:

- The novel: It is the sincere and conscientious attempt to portrait life

as it is, with characters that resemble real living people we can
observe in real life and which shows situations that arise around
them. So it is the sublime form of art.

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 - The romance: It has the same purity of intention of the novel but it
deals with life allegorically, not representatively, it has types rather
than characters and studies them in the ideal form rather than in the
real. It handles passions broadly. So, it is a lower type of writing.

- The romanticistic novel: It tries to portray real life but adds an

excess of drawing and colouring (which is false to nature). It
attributes motives to people which do not govern real life and the
characters are almost like types because they are heroic (either good
or bad). So, this is the lowest type of writing, even though these
inferior romantics are still the most popular novelists.

Howells also makes a distinction between readers:

- The unliterary readers who read without caring and who do not know
about how novels come to be.

- The readers who confuse the author with somebody else (who were
useful to cure him of vanity).

- The readers who seize the author with intelligence asking him about
his lightest and slightest intentions of a book.

Despite his criticism against them, he say readers are very good,
especially those less sophisticated living in small towns, where
excitements and distractions are few. He defends that in the city, people dont
read books; they read about them.
Moreover, women are the best readers. Although it has been said that
young people were the chief readers of fiction, Howells asserts that the novels
fortune and prosperity lies in the favour of women of all ages. They are the most
devoted novel-readers and the most influential as well. They read, like the
novelist, with sympathy for the way the thing is done, aware of the shades of the
character, the distribution of motives, the management of the intrigue and not
merely interested in the story or in the psychological or ethical aspects of it.

Among the functions of the author, we find:

- He shouldnt have the aim to please or to instruct, as the

pleasure and the instruction will derive from such measure of truth
both the author and the reader have in them.
- The novel should have an effect or influence in the reader, but
not conceiving it as an explicit purpose or object from the part of the
author but as an underlying personal consequence. The novel must
teach but only painting life truly. If it succeeds, every good effect will
come from it: delight use, wisdom.
- The author cannot transport life reality into his story, but he
cannot rest until he has made his story as similar as life as he can. He
must be loyal to his work. A picture of life cannot be fundamentally or
structurally false.

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 - This short of scrutiny goes on perpetually in the novelists mind. He
cannot disconnect from his novel at any time until he has
written the end. The preoccupation with work that constantly
makes references to life, makes life constantly interesting.
- Authors start with something they have known of life (so with
life itself) and then they imitate that which they have not
known. A skilful writer is able to hide the joint between the two
things.
- The novelist has the function to help the readers through the
novel to be kinder to their fellows, faithful to theirselves,
true to all. Tolstoy is the only one who really succeeded in this.

Howells recommend to American writers to reject English glasses

and look at the American life with their American eyes.

Talking about the process of writing, Howells defends it is an

unintentional and involuntary process. The novel has a law on its won, its own
peculiar temperament and quality which seems to create for itself and which the
author must respect. As Howells points out the novel can teach, and for
shames sake, it must teach, but only by painting life truly.
Infinitive patience is necessary in this process, since a novel grows slowly.

It is important to highlight that characters are more important than

plot of action in novels, according to Howells.
Howells states that love-making is usually taken for granted in the novels, but
that love is a passion that novelist should delicately handle.
To win the loved one, the lover doesnt have to do anything extraordinary (as
it happens in real life). A simple and convenient sort of conquest is what the
writer should show in his novels.

Howells defends that there is nothing more real than autobiography,

so it is the most perfect literary form after drama. But the restriction of
this genre is that the writer cannot go outside of his own observation and
experience, in other words, he cannot write something he has not seen or known
to happen.

Biographical novel is that in which the author chooses a central figure

(which must be very paramount to justify the form) and refers to it and reports
from it all the facts and feelings involved. So, it is also a very good form of
writing but he prefers historical novels.

With historical novel Howells refers to historical form in novel writing,

(not the historical novel as a genre which would be written in either the
autobiographical, biographical or historical form). The materials are treated as
if they were real history, but this involves contradictions and impossibilities as
the novelist has no proof from the fact he is presenting but his word alone for
them. Yet, it is the only form which can fully represent any passage of life in its
inner and outer integrity. It leaves nothing untouched or unsearched. As a
premise, the reader has to believe that the author knows all about things that no
other man could know.