The Great Auk by Blanche Colton Williams — Read

SETTING. The locale is New York City; the most important scene, in the Scudder Theater. The time is the present.

One of Irvin Cobb's most remarkable powers is that of picturing so vividly a setting that the reader cannot but read and cannot but remember. What is the explanation of this astonishing success? First of all, Mr. Cobb is a keen observer. When he is out with his wife, according to her he sees ten times more than she does, yet she thinks she is seeing all there is to see. "When he was writing ‘The County Trot' Mrs. Cobb marveled at his life-like pictures of the Kentucky characters, all of whom he had really known. She asked him how it was possible for him to remember their faces and mannerisms after the lapse of so many years. He said: ‘Why, I can close my eyes and see the knotholes that were in the fence around that fairground. " This quotation indicates a second requisite -- accurate memory. The third requisite is hard work, a condition through which Mr. Cobb believes all success must come. "When writing a story his object is to draw sharp pictures that will never leave the reader. To do this, he thinks out the minutest details of that picture, not that he will use those details, but that he himself may really see the picture as he writes. " The fact that he will not "use all those details" which observation and memory have supplied means that he has the ability to select. And, finally, he knows how to handle an ample vocabulary.