the secrets of the writer's craft and I determined to go forth in the morning with a note-book, jotting down the names of every object I encountered.
I must have been somewhat bewildered for I repeated a question I had asked before:
Have you written anything yet?
Not yet. . . . I am collecting my materials. It may take me considerably longer to collect what I shall require for a very short book.
What is the book to be about?
Van Vechten, Van Vechten, you are not following me! he cried, and he again began to walk up and down the little room. What is the book to be about? Why, it is to be about the names of the things I have collected. It is to be about three hundred pages, he added triumphantly. That is what it is to be about, about three hundred pages, three hundred pages of colour and style and lists, lists of objects, all jumbled artfully. There isn't a moral, or an idea, or a plot, or even a character. There's to be no propaganda or preaching, or violence, or emotion, or even humour. I am not trying to imitate Dickens or Dostoevsky. They did not write books; they wrote newspapers. Art eliminates all such rubbish. Art has nothing to do with ideas. Art is abstract. When art becomes concrete it is no longer art. Thank God, I know what I want to do! Thank God, I haven't wasted my time admiring hack work! Thank God, I can start in at once constructing a masterpiece! Why
