The Writing of Fiction by Edith Wharton — Read

The evening party with which "War and Peace" begins is one of the most triumphant examples in fiction of the difficult art of "situating" the chief actors in the opening chapter of what is to be an exceptionally crowded novel. No reader is likely to forget, or to confuse the one with the other, the successive arrivals at that dull and trivial St. Petersburg reception; Tolstoy with one mighty sweep gathers up all his principal characters and sets them before us in action. Very different-though so notable an achievement in its way-is the first chapter of "The Karamazoff Brothers" (in the English or German translation-for the current French translation inexplicably omits it). In this chapter Dostoievsky has hung a gallery of portraits against a blank wall. He describes all the members of the Karamazoff family, one after another, with merciless precision and infernal insight. But there they remain hanging-or standing. The reader is told all about them, but is not allowed to surprise them in action. The story about them begins afterward, whereas in "War and Peace" the first paragraph leads into the thick of the tale, and every phrase, every gesture, carries it on with that slow yet sweeping movement of which Tolstoy alone was capable.

Many thickly-peopled novels begin more gradually-like "Vanity Fair," for example-and introduce their characters in carefully-ordered succession. The process is obviously simpler, and in certain cases as effective. The morning stroll of M. and Mme. Reynal and their little boys, in the first chapter of "Le Rouge et le Noir," sounds a note sufficiently portentous; and so does Major Pendennis's solitary breakfast. In a general way there is much to be said for a quiet opening to a long and crowded novel; though the novelist might prefer to be able to fling all his characters on the boards at once, with Tolstoy's regal prodigality. There is no fixed rule about this, or about any other method; each, in the art of fiction, to justify itself has only to succeed. But to succeed, the method must first of all suit the subject, must find its account, as best it can, with the difficulties peculiar to each situation.