Abstract

What is Happening to Our Fiction?

That principle of acceleration by which writer Henry Adams explained so many phenomena of modern society is nowhere more in evidence than in contemporary writing, especially in the novel, which being the most fluid form of expression is nearer the popular mind than any other. Literary generations with their fashions and their discoveries and their personalities pass in kaleidoscopic rapidity, and as they usually leave behind them survivals the confusion of diverse impulses increases. In such a whirlpool of "movements" and "influences" as the present exhibits it is difficult to make any exact diagnosis or prophecy: every generalization is immediately confronted by a contradiction. Nevertheless it is a seasonal diversion as well as a teasing temptation to chart some of the more obvious gyrations of the voluble whirlpool.