Library / Literature & Fiction
A Simpleton
- Pages
- about 474
- Category
- Literature & Fiction
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 8.7 h at 250 wpm
From the opening
It has lately been objected to me, in studiously courteous terms of
course, that I borrow from other books, and am a plagiarist. To this
I reply that I borrow facts from every accessible source, and am not a
plagiarist. The plagiarist is one who borrows from a homogeneous work:
for such a man borrows not ideas only, but their treatment. He who
borrows only from heterogeneous works is not a plagiarist. All fiction,
worth a button, is founded on facts; and it does not matter one straw
whether the facts are taken from personal experience, hearsay, or
printed books; only those books must not be works of fiction.
Ask your common sense why a man writes better fiction at forty than he
can at twenty. It is simply because he has gathered more facts from each
of these three sources,--experience, hearsay, print.
To those who have science enough to appreciate the above distinction,
I am very willing to admit that in all my tales I use a vast deal of
heterogeneous material, which in a life of study I have gathered from
men, journals, blue-books, histories, biographies, law reports, etc. And
if I could, I would gladly specify all the various printed sources to
which I am indebted. But my memory is not equal to such a feat. I can
only say that I rarely write a novel without milking about two hundred
heterogeneous cows into my pail, and that “A Simpleton” is no exception
to my general method; that method is the true method, and the best, and
if on that method I do not write prime novels, it is the fault of the
man, and not of the method.
A young lady sat pricking a framed canvas in the drawing-room of Kent
Villa, a mile from Gravesend; she was making, at a cost of time and
tinted wool, a chair cover, admirably unfit to be sat upon--except by
some severe artist, bent on obliterating discordant colors.
A short sample. Read the whole book
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