Soul-Sleep and Modern Novels
Will Levington Comfort
AnAmerican novelist who wanted sales, and who was willing to sacrifice all but the core of his character to get sales, found himself recently in a challenging situation. As he expressed it:
“Along about page two hundred in the copy of the novel I am on, the woman’s soul wakes up.”
“A woman’s novel?” I asked.
“Meant to be,” said he. “Study of a woman all through. Begins as a little girl—different, you know—sensitive, does a whole lot of thinking that her family doesn’t follow. Tries to tell ’em at first, but finds herself in bad. Then keeps quiet for years—putting on power and beauty in the good old way of bumps and misunderstanding. She’s pure white fire presently—body and brain—something else asleep. She wants to be a mother, but the ghastly sordidness of the love stories of her sisters to this enactment, frightens her from men and marriage as the world conducts it——”
“I follow you,” said I.
“Well, I’m not going to do the novel here for you,” he added. “You wouldn’t think there was a ray of light in it from this kind of telling. A man who spends five months of his best hours of life in telling a story, can’t do it over in ten minutes and drive a machine at the same time——”
“We’re getting out of the crowd. What does the girl do?” I asked.
“Well, she wanted a little baby—was ready to die for it, but had her own ideas of what the father should be. A million married women have thought the same thing here in America—pricked the obscene sham of the whole business but too late. Moreover they’re the best women we’ve got. There are——”
He actually shook the hat off his head—back into the seat at this point.
“There are some young women coming up into maturity here in America—God bless ’em—who are almost brave enough to set out on the Quest for the Father of the baby that haunts them to be born.... That’s what she did.
“He was a young man doing his own kind of work—doctoring among the poor, let us say, mainly for nothing—killing himself among men and women and babies; living on next to nothing, but having a half-divine kind of madness to lift the world.... She saw him. You can picture that. They were two to make one—and a third. She knew. There was a gold light about his head for her eyes. Some of his poor had seen it. The young man himself didn’t know it, and the world missed it altogether.
“She went to him. It’s cruel to put it this way.... I’m not saying anything about the writing or about what happened, but the sceneas it came to me was the finest thing I ever saw. We always fall down in the handling, you know.... I did it the best I could.... No, I’m not going to tell you what happened. Only this: A little afterward—along about page two hundred of the copy—her soul woke up.”
“Why not, in God’s name?”
He glanced quickly at me as a man does from ahead, when his car is pressing the limit.
“Ever have a book fail?” he asked.
“Seven,” said I.
He cleared his throat and the kindest smile came into his eyes.
“They tell me at my publisher’s that I slowed up my last book badly—by taking a woman’s soul out for an airing—just a little invalid kind of a soul, too. Souls don’t wake up in American novels any more. You can’t do much more in print nowadays than you can do on canvas—I mean movie canvas. Of course, you can paint soul, but you can’t photograph it—that’s the point. The movies have put imagination to death. We have to compete. You can’t see a soul without imagination—or some sort of madness—and the good people who want imagination in their novels don’t buy ’em. They rent or borrow. It’s the crowds that go to the movies that have bright colored strings of American novels, as the product runs—on their shelves—little shiny varnished shelves—red carpets—painted birds on the lampshades and callers in the evenings....”
There was a good silence.
“Do you know,” he said presently, “I’ve about come to the conclusion that a novel must play altogether on sensuous tissue to catch the crowd? Look at the big movie pictures—the actors make love like painted animals.... I’m not humorous or ironical. It’s a big problem to me——”
“Why, you can’t touch the hem of the garment of a real love story until you are off the sensuous,” I offered. “The Quest only begins there. I’m not averse to that. It belongs in part. We are sensuous beings—in part. But I am averse to letting it contain all. Why, the real glow comes to a romance—when a woman’s soul wakes up. There’s a hotter fire than that which glows blood-red——”
“I know,” he said quickly. “I know. That blood-red stuff is the cheapest thing in the world, but that’s where the great thing called human interest lives.... I’m sure of this story until her soul wakes up. She stirs in her sleep, and I see a giantess ahead—the kind of woman who could whistle to me or to you—and we’d follow her out—dazed by the draw of her. They are in the world. I reckon souls do wake up—but I can feel the public dropping off every page after two hundred—like chilled bees—dropping off page by page—and the old familiar battle ahead. I can feel that tight look about the eyes again——”
“Are you going to put her soul back to sleep?” I asked, as we turned again into the crowd.
I wasn’t the least lordly in this question. I knew his struggle, and something of the market, too. I was thinking of tradesmen—how easy it is to be a tradesman; in fact, how difficult it is to be otherwise—when the very passion of the racial soul moves in the midst of trade.
“She’s beautiful—even asleep,” he said. “I’m afraid I’ll have to give her something. I’m building a house. She’s in the comprehension of the little varnished shelves—asleep.”
“Doesn’t a tight look come about the eyes—from much use of that sort of anæsthetic?” I asked.
“Let’s get a drink,” he answered.
A fairly widespread intellectual movement, though it be madness, has a profound and almost sacred significance. Primitive races believe that madmen are the voice of God. As much might be said of artists. Their madness is often wiser than the average wisdom.—Romain Rolland.
A fairly widespread intellectual movement, though it be madness, has a profound and almost sacred significance. Primitive races believe that madmen are the voice of God. As much might be said of artists. Their madness is often wiser than the average wisdom.—Romain Rolland.