In order to keep this, he must
continue to employ the direct method of description of person and
action, and report of conversation. How far the analytic method may
be carried and at the same time the sense of personality kept intact,
may be inferred from the work of Henry James, who, nevertheless, seems
at times to fail to bring the out-going threads of his thought back
into the web which he is weaving.
Again, in order to reach the social, historical, and metaphysical
background of life--the milieu, the method of thought is the only
available one. For the milieu is not anything that can be seen or heard
or touched; it does not manifest itself to perception, but has to be
constructed by a process of inference and synthesis. Much of it, to
be sure, can be divined from the acts and conversations, from the dress
and manners of the characters, but there is always more that has to
be directly expounded. The writer cannot rely upon the reader's
perspicacity to make the right inferences, or upon his knowledge to
supply sufficient data; nor can he make his characters tell all that
he may want told about their past and the life of the world in which
they live, and through the influence of which they have become what
they are. The novelist must construct for the reader the _mise en
scene_ of his story. Yet this must be held in complete subordination
to the story. The intellectual background must lie behind, not athwart
the story; it must be created for the sake of the story, not the story
for its sake.
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