Page:The Craftsmanship of Writing.djvu/151

This page has been validated.
THE TECHNIQUE OF FORM

ods when properly understood are full of illuminating suggestion. And the French are in this respect especially helpful, far more so than the Russians: Turgéneff himself is reported by Henry James to have confessed frankly in conversation that one fault of his own work was "que cela manque d'architecture. But," he added, "I would rather, I think, have too little architecture than too much,—when there is danger of its interfering with my measure of the truth. The French of course like more of it than I give,—having by their own genius such a hand for it; and indeed one must give all one can." There are probably no two novelists to whom the architecture, the underlying and hidden framework of the plot, means precisely the same thing, or who have anything like the same method of developing it. Each writer must learn by experience what method brings him individually the best re-

[137]