| | 1 | Author: | Howells, W. D. | Add | | | Title: | "Mr. Charles W. Chesnutt's Stories."  | | | | Published: | 1995 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | THE critical reader of the story called The Wife of his Youth,
which appeared in these pages two years ago, must have noticed
uncommon traits in what was altogether a remarkable piece of work.
The first was the novelty of the material; for the writer dealt not
only with people who were not white, but with people who were not
black enough to contrast grotesquely with white people,—who in
fact were of that near approach to the ordinary American in race
and color which leaves, at the last degree, every one but the
connoisseur in doubt whether they are Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-African.
Quite as striking as this novelty of the material was the author's
thorough mastery of it, and his unerring knowledge of the life he
had chosen in its peculiar racial characteristics. But above all,
the story was notable for the passionless handling of a phase of
our common life which is tense with potential tragedy; for the
attitude, almost ironical, in which the artist observes the play of
contesting emotions in the drama under his eyes; and for his
apparently reluctant, apparently helpless consent to let the
spectator know his real feeling in the matter. Any one accustomed
to study methods in fiction, to distinguish between good and bad
art, to feel the joy which the delicate skill possible only from a
love of truth can give, must have known a high pleasure in the
quiet self-restraint of the performance; and such a reader would
probably have decided that the social situation in the piece was
studied wholly from the outside, by an observer with special
opportunities for knowing it, who was, as it were, surprised into
final sympathy. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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