Review: Edith Wharton's The Writing of Fiction

Of novels written by Wharton I have read only The House of Mirth, which I read for an undergraduate class, and it was one of the more pleasurable books I read for a class. I have recommended it more than twice. Though the book was published in 1905, it had for me a feel of the coming of literary modernism, and I was surprised later to hear it called grounded in realism. Perhaps I should not have been. The fifth and last chapter of The Writing of Fiction is a study of Marcel Proust (Swann's Way was published in 1913), and her first and most important effort in that study is to mark him, despite all his novelty, as a traditional author.

In that, you can find the heart of The Writing of Fiction. It was published in 1924, on the cusp of literary modernism in the novel, and yet is wholly grounded in what came before. Each of the four chapters on craft is begun with a short literary history of the themes she plans to present, and that history – which is far more English and French than it is U.S., and often of authors and works I have no knowledge of – puts her intent solidly in the post-Bovary, nineteenth-century novel. Such is the thought and philosophy that colors The Writing of Fiction. That must be kept in mind.

"Verisimilitude is the truth of art," she writes, "and any convention which hinders the illusion is obviously in the wrong place" (56). That is a very conservative idea, and not everyone post modernism agrees with it. Indeed, there are successful texts that speak against it.

Which is not to say the book is without value. This is a book written by a woman with a solid grasp – and solid historical grasp – on the theoretical elements of her craft. And perhaps the book is a little more about theory than about craft, but that is to its credit. But it is nineteenth-century theory. When she occasionally speaks, if glancingly, against what would be the trends of modernism, for example when she puts down contemporary stream of consciousness, you can sense in it an unwillingness – if not refusal – to recognize that modernism is creating new theory.

The four chapters on craft are: general topics, a chapter on the short story, a chapter on the novel, and then one on "character and situation." Again, this is a short book; take out the chapter on Proust and it is but ninety pages long, so she wanders neither broadly nor deeply. But the few ideas she touches on are important considerations in writing, often themes that run through her topics, things like maintaining the confidence of the reader, the importance of technique, that a novel has its natural length, and, of great importance, that the basis of all writing is selection: deciding what to put in, what to leave out. My favorite chapter was that on the short story, particularly the discussion about that a plot fitting to be told as a short story can only be successfully told as a short story, that a short story is not a novel condensed. A simple idea well stated.

I will admit, the language of the text gets difficult at times. She does not make efforts to ensure the reader understands. That counts against the book. And it may be that a person who has never thought about the subjects she broaches might find them difficult to parse, both because of the language and, as said, because she does not make efforts. She is not, to wit, a very good teacher. This is an interesting book, though, particularly in those elements that transcend the grounding in the nineteenth-century novel. Perhaps, though, this is more an advanced class than something for beginners. Nonetheless, the ideas presented are things that a person serious about writing should consider.

In sum, I would not recommend The Writing of Fiction to someone early in the learning curve. And even if saying give it a read I would still warn that it is at times difficult and she has an annoying habit of dropping lines without context, assuming the reader understands. As said, though, the ideas presented are worth talking about, worth thinking about, and there is something to be said for a more theoretic discussion of writing as opposed to straight craft.

Convention and Writing

"Convention is the first necessity of all art[.]"

This said by Edith Wharton in The Writing of Fiction. And just to be sure we are all on the same page, a convention is "a rule, method, or practice established by usage" (Dictionary.com). There are other definitions similar but different, but this one will stand as the general idea: people – or a person – have figured out a way to do things, and others, in following their example, have established it as a convention. And it is undeniable that art history (including literary history) can be traced through the run of conventions.

It is important to note that Wharton does not believe that simply because something is a convention it is necessarily a good convention. But even recognizing that, Wharton still says convention is the first necessity of art. She is saying that the writing of fiction necessitates writing it by and through convention; that the problems encountered in writing fiction are solved through convention; that a writer should learn to write not just by imitating but by copying that which came before.

And there is something to be said for that last. We learn, greatly, through imitation. One of Wharton's discussions is with the difficulty in a novel of how to present information that is beyond the viewpoint of the main character when the novel is told through that character's mind. She discusses the conventions by which it was solved in the past, their benefits and their flaws. But even rejecting them, she would still say the correct way to solve the problem will be found in what has come before.

But there are three related problems. First, conventions begin to be self-justifying. As time passes, it tends that the reason conventions are followed are because they are conventions, not because of once perceived value, if there ever was such value. Some conventions are born simply because people started, as a group, doing things a certain way; they replicate a technique because that technique gets them to an end that is valued because it is an end; they copy the method of a famous person simply because of their fame, irrespective of whether that way is the best way, or even a better way, or the best way for them. It is the way that person does it, so it becomes, through imitation, the way it is done.

Second, following the first, conventions tend to stagnate. The more a convention is established, the more it concretizes, until the art in question is no longer vibrant or living, but mere copies of copies. The art can look like a background established for the presentation of convention, not a creative – created – subject. (Recognize here genre.)

So, third, it must be recognized that just as the history of art can be written through the presence of convention, many would argue the history of True art lies not in the use of convention but where people break from it; that is, where the solutions to the problems of creation lie in the thing being created, not in outside conventions. Curiously, this idea can be found hiding in Wharton's book, and yet, convention as a necessity.

Which is where it applies to us. When you see how other texts handle events, do you see the why of it, or only the what? When you consider advice from other writers, or from people following other writers, or from people following teachers of writers, are you forcing solutions on your text, or is it something that is revealing the solutions that your own text suggest? When following advice, or a method, or a practice, are you forsaking creativity for writing by cookie-cutter?