Page 39 - 1930 October - To Dragma

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without a stop. And it did have suspense, especially on a second reading.

And as for characterization I honestly believed it possessed one
of the best means of characterization—that of contrast in motive.

Twice I read it aloud in my quiet kitchen while the kettle boiled
for rinsing the silver. As I read, I visualized every movement of each
of the characters, and listened acutely to what each said, for I knew
that my voice would detect for me errors which silent reading would
miss. Then, after the silver was dried and put away, I copied "Sales-
manship" and sent it out on the next post. That is all.

Such an account is what I have been asked to give, and I have
given it as honestly as I can. To some writers it will be disappointing for
it does not have to do with conception or much with execution. But
I can not go into detail about such things for I was not particularly
conscious of them. I tried only to tell the story, which is in itself
tragic and heart-breaking and, therefore, demands few trimmings, as
simply as I could; that is, I was conscious only of telling a story,
not my story, but a story which should be objective.

To this day I have only Pictorial Review's affirmation that I have told
it as it should be told. But if I have done so, then any ability which
I may have must come from the study through many years of
story-tellers insuperably greater than I . I believe and always shall
that an acquaintance with the works of the greatest writers the world
has known is an incomparable preparation for writing of any kind.
The swing of Greek hexameters, the beautifully rounded vowels of
Vergil, the clear, perfect prose of Seneca and Pliny—what substitute
can there be for such as these? And how could hours be better spent
by high school and college students who long to write than in the
attempt to put into the best of English prose the thoughts and the
incidents which these chronicle? Stories of situation? Petronius, who
died in 66 A.D., wrote one that has never been surpassed, "The Matron
of Ephesus"; Lucius Apuleius wrote many. And what of Ovid and
of Vergil himself, whose two thousandth anniversary we celebrate this
very year?

I t is after all no far cry from a Pictorial Review contest in 1930
to those who wrote at and before the beginning of the Christian era.
For art is art in whatever century it flourishes just as human nature
is human nature—from Isaac and Rebekah at the well even unto now.

So, to whoever is interested in the writing of stories of any kind
whatsoever, I would echo Stevenson and Hazlitt, his great model, and
say that the only way to learn to write is to learn to read—to read
the best of every century since writing began, to learn from such
reading to interpret the thousands of circumstances and incidents which
nudge us on every side, and then to follow on in the footsteps and,
as nearly as may be, after the manner of the most gifted of every age,
from Homer to Thomas Hardy.