terature, and should ask himself whether his projected
tale is interesting, whether it is capable of being cast in literary
form, and whether it is worth while. If the idea meets all these
requirements, any failure in the completed work will be due to defective
execution, not to deficiency in the conception. If the idea fails to
meet the test as to form and worth, it may yet be worth while to write
the story, for it may sell; if the idea is not interesting, it should be
rejected without remorse. The first and highest function of a story is
to interest and entertain; indeed, artistic form is but a means to that
end, as is essential worth; and the dull, uninteresting story--a
contradiction in terms--is the most woebegone literary failure under the
stars.

The writer who allows any discussion of the art of fiction or the
content of fiction to cloud for him the basic fact that fiction must be
interesting is on the highroad to failure. It would be better for him
had he never opened a book, except of frank adventure. Nine tenths of
the ponderous and silly comment on fiction past and fiction present is
written by critics and professors who first kick up a great dust over a
work in order to display their insight in seeing through it, and nine
tenths of that nine tenths--written purely from a reader's and not from
a writer's standpoint--consists in appraising character by conventional
ethical standards and in attributing to the writer whose work is under
examination intentions and philosophies of which he never dreamed. It is
at once very dull and very amusing, but the young writer whose
eagerness for all information about his craft leads him to take such
matter too seriously is in grave danger.

The writer of good fiction and the reader of good fiction are alike in
that they both realize that the chief end of fiction is to entertain and
interest, that perfection of form is desirable simply because it
heightens the illusion of a story, and that worth of matter is necessary
if the story is to be true literature because the cultured mind cannot
find interest in the trivial. Culture has been finely defined as "the
quality of a mind instinct with purpose, conscious of a tendency and
direction in human affairs, able and industrious in distinguishing the
great from the trivial." If this definition is valid--it bears its
credentials on its face--great fiction may be defined as fiction which
interests the cultured mind. The quality of