Doubtless the main difference between the novel and the romance is the way in which they view reality. The novel renders reality c...losely and in comprehensive detail. It takes a group of people and sets them going about the business of life. We come to see these people in their real complexity of temperament and motive. Character is more important than action or plot, and probably the tragic or comic actions of the narrative will have the primary purpose of enhancing our knowledge of and feeling for an important character, a group of characters, or a way of life.... By contrast the romance, following distantly the medieval example, feels free to render reality in less volume and detail. It tends to prefer action to character, and action will be freer in a romance than in a novel, encountering, as it were, less resistance from reality.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Here is one of the fundamental defects of American fiction--perhaps the one character that sets it off sharply from all other know...n kinds of contemporary fiction. It habitually exhibits, not a man of delicate organization in revolt against the inexplicable tragedy of existence, but a man of low sensibilities and elemental desires yielding himself gladly to his environment, and so achieving what, under a third-rate civilization, passes for success. To get on: this is the aim. To weigh and reflect, to doubt and rebel: this is the thing to be avoided.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The novelist sets forth his characters in two ways, by direct comment upon them, or indirectly by reporting their actions and beha...vior and letting the report speak for itself. The portraitist uses the latter method only, translating everything into purely visual and self-sufficient terms. His problem is to fuse into a single unambiguous statement what he sees of a man and what he understands of him. The greater his selective faculty and power of communication the keener will be his portrait. Facial expressions and body gestures are a living language which we all have learned to read as a clue to, and use as a revelation, of character. A keen portraitist has a flair for this wordless language of the face, and simply by reporting the visible quantity of the body-soul equation he can give us insight into the hidden psychological quality.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
New England likes to think it has a civilization based on character. The South likes to think it has a character based on civiliza...tion. A big difference.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
By all those, who are not much acquainted with him, he was considered infinitely below his level; he put no price upon himself, an...d consequently went at an undervalue; for the world is complaisant or dupe enough, to give every man the price he sets upon himself, provided it be not insolently and overbearingly demanded. It turns upon the manner of asking.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
For, when men shall meet as they ought, each a benefactor, a shower of stars, clothed with thoughts, with deeds, with accomplishme...nts, it should be the festival of nature which all things announce. Of such friendship, love in the sexes is the first symbol, as all other things are symbols of love. Those relations to the best men, which, at one time, we reckoned the romances of youth, become, in the progress of character, the most solid enjoyment.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Character wants room; must not be crowded on by persons, nor be judged from glimpses got in the press of affairs, or on few occasi...ons. It needs perspective, as a great building.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »