ing else. The practical
implications of a work of art must be mere implications, resting in
inference, or the work will be feeble and misshapen.

The novelist can indulge in personal comment and yet present the whole
of his story, for his space is practically unlimited. The writer of the
short story must sacrifice either the comment or the story. The result
is that the typical novel is more incoherent than the typical short
story. The finer the book as a whole, the easier it is to forgive or
overlook the defect, for defect it is. One can forgive Thackeray his
rambling asides and his diffidence in approaching his story, for in all
of his books the story is present and in each it is a fine thing. But
"Vanity Fair," for instance, is too significant a fiction to suffer
constant interruption without causing a reader to become impatient. If a
story is essentially weak, interpolating personal comment and unrelated
matter generally will make it weaker; if it is essentially fine and
significant, passages without bearing on the story will irritate the
reader.

Whatever the art, whoever the artist, his task is to hold pen or chisel
or brush true to the outlines of his conception. If his hand leave its
proper course, whether of set purpose or through inaptitude, his work
must suffer. The art of fiction is so infinitely difficult that the
practitioner should welcome rather than bewail his obligation to hew to
the line, for by concentrating upon the story and nothing else he will
be led to leave no gaps in his presentment. A work of art is a thing of
significant simplicity. Just because the novelist works in words, just
because his materials have some significance for a reader in
themselves--unlike the clay and marble of the sculptor, the stone of the
architect, and the pigments of the painter, which, unwrought upon, have
no message for an observer--the novelist is not at liberty to throw
words together without some set purpose. The inherent significance of
each word must have just relation to the whole, if the whole is to have
the direction and significant simplicity of a work of art. The real
condition is that the novelist, unlike the writer of the short story,
may tell his story adequately and do something else, but the artistic
quality of his work will suffer, that is, its power over a reader will
be diminished, if he interpolates foreign matter. Artistry is simply the
faculty to realize to the utmost the inherent power of one's