an individual or the
life of a society can serve to bind together the motley elements of a
very long novel, giving it some artistic coherence. "David Copperfield"
can be called one story in that it consists of Copperfield's life and
related matters, but "Our Mutual Friend" is in no sense a single story.
It is merely a number of stories devised to be told together and
therefore dovetailing to some extent.

It all comes down to this: if the novelist conceives a definite story,
he has only to tell it, but if he conceives a life or a society he has
yet to devise his story. And the matters which can have some relation to
a life or a society are much more varied than those which can have some
relation to a course of events. In other words, the conception of a
story as such limits the writer's choice of matter. If one starts with a
story, one can tell only the story. If one starts with a life or a
society, one can write pretty much at large.

In discussing the short story, it was possible to state that it must
embody one story-idea, for the physical brevity of the form prohibits
adequate development of more than a single story. But if I stated that
the novel must embody one story-idea, no more, no less, the statement
would be false, for the length of the form is practically unlimited. As
Dickens did in "Our Mutual Friend" and other books, the novelist can
tell together three or four unrelated stories if he so desires. He has
the space. The question is not whether he can but whether he should tell
more than one. The answer is that he should confine himself to one.
Perhaps a little supporting argument is called for.

The most obvious criticism of this limitation upon the novelist is that
it savors strongly of artificiality, rather than of art. The reader may
think of Dickens himself, his marvelous people, the world of delight in
his books. But Dickens, it may be said with all reverence, was no
story-teller. His is a fictional world turned upside down. His stories
are less than nothing; his major characters are less than nothing; but
his little people are gods. All his books are mere cardboard beside the
works of such a one as Dostoievsky, but in each book--with a few
exceptions--there is some stupendous Weller or Micawber, not a man, but
a god. One goes to Dickens almost as to vaudeville, and "Pickwick" is
his best book because it is no story. In it Weller and the others run
wild unrestrained by the necessities of any predete