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COLLEGE AND THE FUTURE

PART I

I

LEARNING TO WRITE

RICHARD RICE, JR.

I. The Nature of Literary Art and Its Technique

Why is learning to write so difficult? The simplest and also the deepest reason is because all writing is done in the shadow of infinite possibilities-those of the writer's unknown powers for thought and those of the fine art of literature. But if this is the reason why learning to write is difficult, it is also the reason why it is inspiring. Literary art is not inaccessible. It is not the achievement of professionals alone. It is part of the same energy which any man displays when he writes a good letter or converses well of an evening. It is a thing more and more understood as one observes life, profits by experience, and learns to know himself. It is the art with which we all inevitably grow more and more intimate all our lives. It may be called the technique of life.

Learning to write is difficult for the same reason that it is difficult for a boy to think like a man. It can be done. Little by little it is done. But to do it outright is rare. All this means that learning to write is but part of learning to grow up. For writing is thinking.

I

Undoubtedly there is something ironical in the fact that at the very time when the world shines in the most glowing colors to our eyes and calls most interestingly to our imaginations, we should find ourselves incapable of giving any correspondingly vivid and poignant account of it. It is curious to note that one can hardly find a prose record of the feelings and opinions of youth made on the hour, with whatever degree of technical skill, which does not lack, paradoxically, the vital energy that inspired it, which does not shortly appear both to youth and to time thin and unsatisfying.

But this aspect of the old truth that what youthful genius lacks is an art, the combining of a wisdom and a technique which requires time to effect, forms a hopeful consideration for the student who is still continually baffled by the difficulties of "mere self-expression." The fact that the art of writing is acquired only after much practise means also that it can be acquired to a great extent by every one who practises. The fact that without an ever-maturing power of thought technical facility has no lasting products means also that such experience and wisdom as may come to any man are at the basis of literary power. The inspiring conditions which determine how we should go about learning to write are, then, the possibility of definite improvement through acquiring technical knowledge and the impossibility of power without maturing one's energy as a thinker.

A great many counsellors have told us that the only way to learn to write is to write. This advice emphasizes the fact that literary art has a fairly definite body of technique which must be mastered by practise before skill and facility can be hoped for. Another set of counsellors has said that the way to learn to write is to read, to see life, to enlarge

general knowledge and experience as much as possible. This advice often seems to a beginner less definite and satisfactory than the first, because it emphasizes the fact that the art of composition is the art of thinking and of growing up; and the beginner always hopes that by the time he is perfect in the A B C's he will somehow have a supply of thoughts. But the truth is that whichever advice he inclines to pay chief attention to will show the beginner, before very long, the necessity and value of also following the other; for the two conditions for literary prowess here laid down are so interdependent that they are really one comprehensive condition.

In the practise of any art, thinking and acquired technical skill must constantly support each other, ideas at once fashioning their technique, and technique helping in the formation of ideas. In their final effects these two elements may scarcely be separated. It is hence unwise to separate them to begin with in the process of learning to write.

Obviously, it is convenient to have a body of special advice about writing all together in one book of grammar and rhetoric. But this should not give to grammar and rhetoric a particle of the false dignity of isolation; for, in any comprehensive view, the technique of correct. English, which one may apparently study by itself in a hand-book, is really nothing but a practical method of thinking. Without thinking you say: "I see a black object under the smoke which grows larger as it approaches." Technique bids you think more clearly. You must think: "Under the smoke I see a black object which grows larger as it approaches.' Without thinking you say: "Be sure that your sentences end with words that deserve the distinction you give them." Technique bids you apply the very principle you have wished to express, and think as

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follows: "End with words that deserve distinction." If you say, "In the process of civilization I expect that man will find woman to be the last thing he can improve," it is a trifle ambiguous and certainly a rather weak statement. Sir Austin Feverel, whatever the truth of the sentiment, at least knew sharply what he thought: "I expect that Woman will be the last thing civilized by Man." What you say and what you think are really the same thing, since any slight change in speech represents a slight change in thought. Thus what you say (or write) is simply the shape of what you think, and the study of technique is the study of representative convenient and effective shapes for thought from which the principles of correctness and of structure are to be deduced.

Now the reason why learning to write is so difficult, even when the principles of correctness and structure are well in mind, is because the immature will does not easily effect a junction between powers of thinking and the knowledge, facility, and taste which have been acquired by technical study. "I know what I mean, but I can't say it," is one way of describing our common perplexity, which nearly always should be: "I could say it, if I could only think it." But however you look at the matter, what is here described is a lack of co-ordination between the various faculties of the mind. In youth, what the mind chiefly lacks is a multiplicity of contacts. Liberal education, or the art of growing up, may be said to be the process of bringing the various faculties of the mind closer and closer together, of supplying contacts; and maturity in any person is expressed in terms of the energy generated by the extent of these contacts. Maturity means that the various faculties are thoroughly contributive to each other, and that they are thus one comprehensive faculty, the art of thinking. My

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