Page:Instigations of Ezra Pound.djvu/174

160 surprise that Henry James has left us some sort of treatise on novel-writing—no surprise, that is, to the discriminating reader who is not, for the most part, a writer of English novels. Various reviewers have hinted obscurely that some such treatise is either adumbrated or concealed in the Notes for "The Ivory Tower" and for "The Sense of the Past"; they have said, indeed, that novelists will "profit greatly," etc., but no one has set forth the gist or the generalities which are to be found in these notes.

Divested of its fine verbiage, of its clichés, of its provincialisms of American phrase, and of the special details relating to the particular book in his mind, the formula for building a novel (any novel, not merely any "psychological" novel); the things to have clearly in mind before starting to write it are enumerated in "The Ivory Tower" notes somewhat as follows:

1. Choice of names for characters; names that will "fit" their owners, and that will not "joggle" or be cacophonic when in juxtaposition on the page.

2. Exposition of one group of characters and of the "situation." (In "The Ivory Tower" this was to be done in three subdivisions. "Book I" was to give the "Immediate Facts.")

3. One character at least is hitched to his "characteristic." We are to have one character's impression on another.

4. (Book III.) Various reactions and interactions of characters.

5. The character, i.e., the main character, is "faced with the situation."

6. For "The Ivory Tower" and probably for any novel, there is now need to show clearly and definitely the "antecedents," i.e., anything that had happened before