Spiritus Loci
GREAT OAKS. By Ben Ames Williams'10. E. P. Dutton & Co., New York City, 1930. Mr. Williams made a valuable contribution to American Literature a few years ago in a book called Splendor, a book noteworthy in itself, and quite superior to anything that the writer had done up to that time. He had had, and still has, I believe, an immense popularity with readers of such magazines as the Saturday Evening Post, and among the people who have written for the Post I believe that he has held a high place, both in cleverness of plot, and in lasting ability to entertain. However, I regard the Saturday EveningPost period as a period of training. Splendor came to us rather unexpectedly as we had not believed that Mr. Williams was interested in that type of book; in this new book GreatOaks, an excellent story and in no place dull or indifferent, I find a new experimentation with the most artistic form of the novel.
From a Williams manuscript turned over to me by Mr. Wellman of the Dartmouth faculty, I became aware a year or two ago, of the mental process which Mr. Williams went through when he wrote a novel about a rather unusual murder in a lonely mill in a lonely place by a man who made the reader think of an Owl. After a very interesting perusal of this manuscript which analyzed the situation and chronicled the various inspirations which seemed to come from the unfolding of little corners of the mind I read it to a class of men interested in writing, and, lo and behold, almost everyone in the class came and confided to me that they wanted to write novels. Now I have read other books by Mr. Williams, of a period earlier than Splendor in which there seemed to be none of this analytical method,—he seemed to have sacrificed method in those early days to the great God Entertainment. But I find him in Great Oaks working out a most interesting experiment. The book is indicative, I think, of the writer's progress along a constant upgrade.
He has used the Novel-in-a-Frame method if you can call it such. (I have myself blocked out a story between prologue and epilogue, making the outer extremes hedge the story in.) He has taken an island off the coast of Georgia,—and the whole action takes place on this island, giving a unity of impression which has a very strong effect in keeping the attention of the reader from wandering over too much ground. I think that novels which travel are likely to tire, unless there is terrific unity in someone character,—Mr. Pickwick, for example; and even then, Mr. Pickwick's world is not so wide after all. None of the characters are quite outside the range of his own personality,—if that can be explained by saying that none of the people are people that Mr. Pickwick couldn't be expected to meet. Mr. Williams uses the background with effect; the island becomes almost a living entity, possessed of human qualities, and exerts a great influence upon the lives and thoughts and desires and even destinies of the people who live there.
The great cry that goes up among critics is that people in a novel are always greater than scene! Perhaps. But scene can become powerful, and background can become powerful even to the extent of overshadowing the characters in the book. The critic says that Falstaff and Don Quixote couldn't be overshadowed; very well then, take the sea away from Joseph Conrad and the Russian city background from Dostoevsky, and London from Dickens,—or in a more modern sense take Cape Cod from Joseph Lincoln, or Maine from Holman Day,—what have you? And also take Spain with its barbers and windmills and odor of decayed chivalry from Don Quixote, and England with its Prince Hal away from the two parts of Henry Fourth and I ask again, what have you? Mr. Williams makes his book depend a great deal upon the scene, even to the map of the island on the covers. (And I wish too, that his books carried illustrations.)
But it is his method, and not his scene, or his vital men and lovely women that interests me. He uses the frame method as I said before, and he uses it subtly. The frame is a very slight incident of modern life,-—a visit to a modern country house on the old island which has its legends of Blackbeard, Jesuit Missioners, French Huguenots, slave-trade days, pirates, times of seccession and all,and the author is himself a part of the frame. Usually an author frames a book at the end and beginning, as Thackeray for example in Vanity Fair or Sturm in Immen-see. Here the modern plot, with only a slight interest, sets off the pictures which go into the chronological frame of the book's order of events. And the frame is nowhere sharp; its lines melt into the pictures with delicacy and ease, which marks the writer as possessed of a high artistic sense. The weaving of a story plot comes usually at moments of inspiration,the colors on the frame must blend with the colors of the picture. And to make the transition clear and convincing one needs high talent if not absolute genius,—who for example questions the reality of the scene in Dear Brutus where the present merges with the possible present by medium of a wood? Or who doubts the reality of the magic lands in the Blue Bird? The change comes with a thrill.
All in all, I am very much pleased with this book, and see in it a direct artistic experimentation that is far above mere cleverness. Cleverness is usually flashy, and there is nothing flashy about this story. It's a different book from Splendor and indeed just as different as Taras Bulba is from Dead Souls (both Gogol's) and while Gogol in the later book deserted realism for romance, Mr. Williams has chosen romance in place of realism, and I for one am very much interested in the effect, both in Great Oaks and in whatever Mr. Williams may next produce.
