That is a
larger and more complex form, one that it is much more difficult to
think of as a rounded thing. A novel, as we say, opens a new world to
the imagination; and it is pleasant to discover that sometimes, in a
few novels, it is a world which "creates an illusion"--so pleasant
that we are content to be lost in it. When that happens there is no
chance of our finding, perceiving, recreating, the form of the book.
So far from losing ourselves in the world of the novel, we must hold
it away from us, see it all in detachment, and use the whole of it to
make the image we seek, the book itself.
It is difficult to treat a large and stirring piece of fiction in
this way. The landscape opens out and surrounds us, and we proceed to
create what is in effect a novel within the novel which the author
wrote. When, for example, I try to consider closely the remnant that
exists in my memory of a book read and admired years ago--of such a
book as Clarissa Harlowe--I well understand that in reading it I was
unconsciously making a selection of my own, choosing a little of the
story here and there, to form a durable image, and that my selection
only included such things as I could easily work into shape. The girl
herself, first of all--if she, though so much of her story has faded
away, is still visibly present, it is because nothing is simpler than
to create for oneself the idea of a human being, a figure and a
character, from a series of glimpses and anecdotes.
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