Book Review: The Writing of Fiction, by Edith Wharton (1925)

 

Paperback of The Writing of Fiction, by Edith Wharton, 1925. (Photo by Mark C. Taylor)

Edith Wharton, one of the great American authors.

I’ve read several of Edith Wharton’s novels, and one book of her short stories, but I hadn’t heard of her 1925 book The Writing of Fiction until recently, as was looking through her bibliography. Wait, Edith Wharton wrote a book about writing? I need to get it!

The Writing of Fiction is a short read, only 125 pages in the paperback edition. The book contains Wharton’s thoughts and theories about fiction writing. There’s not much in the book about American authors, as most of the influences that Wharton discusses are French, English, or Russian—very typical for the time Wharton was writing. I had to look up a fair number of the authors and novels Wharton discusses as I read the book, and chances are you will too, unless you’re very well-versed in 19^th century European literature.

My favorite name that I had to look up was Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. I had to make sure that Edith Wharton wasn’t pulling my leg with that one. She wasn’t. Quiller-Couch published using the pseudonym Q, which seems to me a tragic waste of a fantastic name. I learned that Quiller-Couch was also a literary critic, and he coined the phrase, “Murder your darlings,” meaning sometimes you must sacrifice what you think is best in your art.

I liked Wharton’s quote about artistic inspiration: “Many people assume that the artist receives, at the outset of his career, the mysterious sealed orders known as ‘Inspiration,’ and has only to let that sovereign impulse carry him where it will.” (p.18) I think this is a common misconception about art: that you simply need to sit down at the pad of paper, typewriter, or computer, and you will be visited by the mysterious muse of artistic creation. Of course, it’s usually more complicated than that.

Throughout The Writing of Fiction, Wharton mentions authors she admires, such as Tolstoy, Stendhal, Jane Austen, and Balzac, to name a few. Wharton is generous with her praise and reserved in her criticism. Wharton mentions specific novels and short stories, but she doesn’t focus exclusively on one author until the last chapter of the book, when she does a deep dive on the work of Marcel Proust. She writes of Proust: “His endowment as a novelist…has probably never been surpassed.” (p.119) That’s high praise indeed.

When I finished reading The Writing of Fiction, it struck me that Wharton never tells the reader that she’s a novelist herself. I understand that Wharton came from a more restrained era, and she obviously didn’t write this book in order to blow her own horn about how great her own novels were. Nevertheless, what’s missing from The Writing of Fiction are any examples from Wharton’s own work as a writer. How did she come up with the marvelous beginning of The Age of Innocence, where Newland Archer surveys the crowd at the opera? How was she able to get inside the minds of characters like Newland, and Lily Bart in The House of Mirth? Wharton knew New York City society very well, but how did she also successfully write rural novels like Ethan Frome and Summer? I’d love to know the answers to those questions, but unfortunately Wharton doesn’t reveal anything about her own work in the book. For that reason, it’s hard not to feel a little disappointed by The Writing of Fiction.

Book Review: The Reckoning, by Edith Wharton (Originally published in 1902, Penguin Little Black Classics edition 2015)

The Penguin Little Black Classics edition of The Reckoning, by Edith Wharton. You can see my other Edith Wharton books in the background. (Photo by Mark C. Taylor)

Edith Wharton, 1862-1937.

Edith Wharton’s 1902 short story “The Reckoning” was re-issued as part of Penguin’s “Little Black Classics” series in 2015. (I reviewed Joseph Conrad’s “To-morrow,” another title in that series here.) “The Reckoning” is paired with Wharton’s first published short story “Mrs. Manstey’s View,” which appeared in 1891. Both stories highlight Wharton’s depth as a writer.

In “Mrs. Manstey’s View,” we follow an aged widow, the titular Mrs. Manstey, who derives all of her enjoyment in life from looking out of her window and noticing the changes that occur slowly, day by day. The story is a deft little character study, and already it’s clear that Wharton has a real talent for describing people. I especially enjoyed this sentence:

“She loved, at twilight, when the distant brown-stone spire seemed melting in the fluid yellow of the west, to lose herself in vague memories of a trip to Europe, made years ago, and now reduced in her mind’s eye to a pale phantasmagoria of indistinct steeples and dreamy skies.” (p.4) 

“The Reckoning” is the tale of Julia and Clement Westall, who have founded their marriage on the intellectual understanding that it is not a bond for life, it’s merely an arrangement made until it no longer suits one of them, at which time they can break it off. Needless to say, what sounds fine in theory might not work so well in practice. One of my favorite quotes from “The Reckoning” is when Julia is describing her drawing-room:

“The prints, the flowers, the subdued tones of the old porcelains, seemed to typify a superficial refinement which had no relation to the deeper significances of life.” (p.24)

Wharton is always superb when writing about marriage, and I thought this passage was marvelous:

“Her husband’s personality seemed to be closing gradually in on her, obscuring the sky and cutting off the air, till she felt herself shut up among the decaying bodies of her starved hopes. A sense of having been decoyed by some world-old conspiracy into this bondage of body and soul filled her with despair. If marriage was the slow life-long acquittal of a debt contracted in ignorance, then marriage was a crime against human nature.” (p.29-30)

“The Reckoning” is another excellent piece of writing from Edith Wharton.

Book Review: The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton (1905)

This cover of The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton uses John Singer Sargent's notorious painting Portrait of Madame X, which outraged people when it was shown in 1884.

Edith Wharton, 1862-1937.

The House of Mirth, published in 1905, was Edith Wharton’s second novel and the book that established her as one of America’s most talented writers. Often referred to as a “novel of manners,” The House of Mirth follows the travails of Lily Bart. As the novel opens, Lily is 29 years old and still unmarried, rare for New York high society of that era. Lily has some money, but she is dependent on her dull aunt for her housing and occasional gifts. Wharton describes Lily’s aunt thus: “It was impossible to believe that she had herself ever been a focus of activities.” (p.37) Unfortunately, Lily has very expensive tastes, and her inability to live within her means leads her to a risky financial arrangement with George Dorset, her best friend’s husband. 

Lily is looking for a rich husband, and at the beginning of the novel she seems to find easy prey in Percy Gryce, who is fabulously wealthy but dull as toast. Lily self-sabotages her flirtations with Gryce as she stands him up, instead spending time with Lawrence Selden, a handsome lawyer who unfortunately doesn’t earn enough money to really be husband material. 

There’s a marvelous passage at the beginning of the novel where Lily describes her plight, asking Selden if he would marry a wealthy woman. After Selden says no, Lily replies: 

“’Ah, there’s the difference—a girl must, a man may if he chooses.’ She surveyed him critically. ‘Your coat’s a little shabby—but who cares? It doesn’t keep people from asking you to dine. If I were shabby no one would have me: a woman is asked out as much for her clothes as for herself. The clothes are the background, the frame, if you like; they don’t make success, but they are a part of it. Who wants a dingy woman? We are expected to be pretty and well-dressed till we drop—and if we can’t keep it up alone, we have to go into partnership.’” (p.10) 

This is the world that Lily lives in, and it’s a social milieu that Edith Wharton knew very well from her own life. Lily’s options are limited, and as the book goes on her options keep shrinking. Throughout the novel, whenever Lily makes a decision, it turns out to invariably be the wrong one. 

Lily is a complicated character, at once sympathetic and frustrating. She can be a penetrating critic of her friends, as she thinks “Under the glitter of their opportunities she saw the poverty of their achievement.” (p.57) Lily also has great insight into her own foibles: “Since she had been brought up to be ornamental, she could hardly blame herself for failing to serve any practical purpose.” (p.315) 

Lily bemoans the fact that her wealthy friends are winning money at cards, while she has lost three hundred dollars, which she needs to pay her dressmaker and her jeweler: “A world in which such things could be seemed a miserable place to Lily Bart; but then she had never been able to understand the laws of a universe which was so ready to leave her out of its calculations.” (p.27) 

The House of Mirth is full of Wharton’s sharp observations about people and life. Some of my favorites are: “Mr. and Mrs. Wetherall’s circle was so large that God was included in their visiting-list.” (p.53) “The only way not to think about money is to have a great deal of it.” (p.71) “Miss Gertrude Farish, in fact, typified the mediocre and ineffectual.” (p.92) “It is less mortifying to believe one’s self unpopular than insignificant, and vanity prefers to assume that indifference is a latent form of unfriendliness.” (p.128) 

Wharton is highly critical of the characters she has created, writing of them: “The strident setting of the restaurant, in which their table seemed set apart in a special glare of publicity, and the presence at it of little Dabham of the ‘Riviera Notes’ emphasized the ideals of a world where conspicuousness passed for distinction and the society column had become the roll of fame.” (p.227)

Lily’s maid never has a name. This must have been a deliberate decision on Wharton’s part, as the servants in the book are largely invisible until they suddenly crop up for a sentence or two and we are reminded of their existence. This was probably analogous to the role they played in the lives of the wealthy. 

In her 1934 autobiography, A Backward Glance, Wharton explained that she wanted to write a novel about New York high society: “Fate had planted me in New York, and my instinct as a story-teller counselled me to use the material nearest to hand, and most familiarly my own.” (p.206) Wharton went on to rebut those critics who questioned the subject of her fiction, writing “There could be no greater critical ineptitude than to judge a novel according to what it ought to have been about.” (p.206) This is an excellent rule for critics. You have to meet the work of art on the ground where it stands, and try not to judge it according to your own Platonic ideal of what art should be about. 

In A Backward Glance, Wharton informs readers that The House of Mirth was somewhat rushed in its writing, as Edward Burlingame, the editor of Scribner’s Magazine, needed Wharton to begin serializing the book before she was finished writing it. Wharton knew what the ending of the book would be, but wasn’t entirely sure of the journey the characters would take on the way there. It would be interesting to know if Wharton made many changes or revisions to the book in between its serialization and the book publication. 

The House of Mirth is an excellent novel, and although it focuses on the lives of the wealthy in New York City in the early 20^th century, like all the best fiction, what it tells us about human behavior is not limited to the time and place of its setting.