Truth and beauty

Wednesday, February 28th., Cadogan Square, London.

Ten days ago, walking up Sloane Street, I was suddenly visited by an idea for a play. But as I have sworn that nothing will ever induce me to write another play I dismissed it with thanks. Today that idea for a play re-visited me, again in Sloane Street. It had grown. I dismissed it again. I have this strange feeling it will return. I have broken oaths before!

Of course, for a lot of people who know of me at all, I am thought of as a playwriight, or a newspaper columnist, rather than a novelist. Although I have continued to write novels, my heyday, as it were, was decades ago. I think of myself though as a novelist first and foremost. Interesting the relationship between novels and plays. I have rather walked the tightrope between the two for most of my career.

A few good novels and many bad ones have been turned into bad plays; and one or two good novels have been turned into fair plays. Many bad plays have been turned into worse novels. But a good novel adapted from a good play is a rarity. In the realm of 'goodness', other things being equal, a novel will be more convincing, more truthful, than a play. The medium of the stage is so clumsy, so limited, and so absurdly difficult to control, that it puts authors at a terrible disadvantage in the effective conveyance of truth and beauty, a disadvantage for which no possible compensating advantages can fully atone. If Shakespeare had lived in a novel-writing age he would have written novels far greater than "Hamlet" is great as a play. He was obviously worried by the resrictions of the stage, but though he tried to break through them, they were often too much for him.

All modern authors, myself included, who habitually produce both plays and novels produce better novels than plays. What play of Galsworthy's can rank with "A Man of Property"? Somerset Maugham's "Of Human Bondage" is simply a different class from even the best of his plays. That said, I have been thinking about cinema. I have had some experience myself of writing for the cinema. At the moment it is even more clumsy than the theatre but what if  'talking' pictures progress successfully? It occurs to me that then the producer will have much greater control of the material and thus, potentially, the means to reliably convey truth and beauty. The motion picture may become a real alternative to the novel for those who have not the time or inclination to read.