Sunday, February 28th., Midland Hotel, Manchester.
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.
A walk in town with Cochran. Good, solid Victorian buildings here. First night of "Cochran's 1928 Revue" at 7.30. Packed. Atmosphere of success. Glimpse of stage afterwards. Cochran gave a supper.
