| <trailer><p> <Westralian Worker,> <15 June 1917> 
| <pb n="2"> </p></trailer>
| <headline><p> <Our Bookshelf The Novel as a Propaganda> 
| <Agent.> </p></headline>
| <p> Narrative and conversation have ever been adopted, 
| by men who desire to deliver great messages to the 
| many, as the best literary vehicles for their 
| thoughts. Plato's <title rend="PRE lsquo POST rsquo">
| "Republic," </title> which is, in fact, a 
| treatise on communism, takes the latter form, and Sir 
| Thomas More's <title rend="PRE lsquo POST rsquo">
| "Utopia" </title> (No Place), in the former. 
| More relates the experiences of a traveller in a 
| country where production is carried on communal 
| lines. <title rend="PRE lsquo POST rsquo">
| "Republic" </title> was written more than 2000, 
| and <title rend="PRE lsquo POST rsquo">
| "Utopia" </title> 400 years ago. Neither work 
| should be overlooked by the Labor propagandist, who 
| would be well informed. Both are published in the 
| Everyman Library (1/9 from Perth booksellers). </p>
| <p> Neither however, meets the definition of a novel 
| <mdash>-</mdash> in fact, the novel is a 
| comparatively recent literary discovery. In 1740 
| Samuel Richardson, a country gentleman who is 
| described as a <q> </q> 
| wrote a series of model letters, for a <q> 
| </q> text-book. He conceived the plan 
| of stringing the letters together into a plot, a 
| story, and so produced the first novel. "Wowserish" 
| is the only name for the tale, and possibly the form 
| would not have survived had not Henry Fielding, who 
| was by no means a wowser, written a smart satire upon 
| Richardson's <title rend="PRE lsquo POST rsquo">
| "Pamela." </title> Pamela was a very good girl, 
| who met the inevitable very bad man, but whose virtue 
| proved unapproachable. Fielding's 
| <title rend="PRE lsquo POST rsquo"> 
| "Joseph Andrews" </title> tells of a 
| very good boy, of unassailable virtue, who survives 
| fearful temptations thrown in his way by ladies 
| smitten with passion for him. </p>
| <p> The pungent irony, screamingly comical situations, 
| and shrewd delineations of character that the 
| production displayed all combined to ensure an 
| immense success for the new literary form. Unless the 
| reader is prepared to stomach vulgarity capable of 
| bringing the rouge of shame to the cheek of Ezekiel, 
| one cannot recommend Fielding's novels, but their 
| importance in the history of English literature 
| commands attention. </p>
| <p> The fact that the novel deals with possible, or at 
| least feasible events, set in a background of 
| historic fact and real institutions, give it it's 
| great value as a propaganda medium. We students of 
| economic, social and sex problems desire to 
| understand certain views, aspects and phenomena of 
| society. Treatises such as Marx's 
| <title rend="PRE lsquo POST rsquo">
| "Capital". </title> Henry George's 
| <title rend="PRE lsquo POST rsquo"> "Progress and 
| Poverty," </title> or Edward Carpenter's 
| <title rend="PRE lsquo POST rsquo"> "Love's Coming of 
| Age," </title> are a brilliant achievement of abstract 
| reasoning and such work must form the basis of our 
| economic education. But if we end there, we become 
| mere academician, quoters of Marxian texts, learned 
| humbugs afflicted with mental ingrown toenails. On 
| the other hand to mistake mere novel reading for 
| study is to cultivate an inexact and lazy habit of 
| mind. </p>
| <p> It is possible, too, to fall under the moral 
| domination of a particular action-writer, or even of 
| a fictitious character, The soul has been defined as 
| a "complex of emotions," and an artificial complex of 
| emotions, created by a novelist, might well function 
| as a soul. </p>
| <p> <title rend="PRE lsquo POST rsquo"> "Hereward the 
| Wake," </title> <title rend="PRE lsquo POST rsquo">
| "Buffalo Bill," </title> and 
| <title rend="PRE lsquo POST rsquo">
| "Sexton Blake" </title> undoubtedly 
| exert an influence, akin to personality, upon boys, 
| while George Eliot's <title rend="PRE lsquo POST rsquo">
| Felix Holt </title>, Dickens's Sidney Carton 
| (in the <title rend="PRE lsquo POST rsquo"> "Tale of 
| Two Cities" </title>), and Bernard Shaw's 
| <title rend="PRE lsquo POST rsquo"> John Tanner </title> 
| and <title rend="PRE lsquo POST rsquo"> Candida </title> 
| must influence men and women in much the same way. 
| Nor can it be argued that the personality is entirely 
| that of the author, for authors themselves frequently 
| fall under the domination of their own creations. </p>
| <p> This may seem like a digression, but it helps our 
| inquiry by showing the immense power for convincing 
| wielded by the novelist. </p>
| <p> To resume: <mdash>-</mdash> The treatise is an 
| effort of abstract logic. It is theoretic. The novel 
| is an attempt to prove by experiment. In studying 
| physiology we form a theory concerning say, nerve 
| machinery. We proceed to verify by obtaining a human 
| body no longer required by its owner. We painfully 
| unravel the nerve system. We use chemical stimulants, 
| and electric current. We obtain certain results, and 
| eventually uphold, modify, or abandon our tentative 
| theory. In social science, we form a theory 
| concerning say, sex relations. No way of 
| experimenting is possible save by watching the 
| problem develop for the next hundred years. But the 
| novelist adopts a subterfuge. We cannot take a real 
| person and examine his "complex of emotions." We have 
| no units to measure by, no instruments capable of 
| gauging the quantity, no reagents to reveal the 
| quality of the various emotions that make up the 
| "complex". But we can create a fictitious complex, 
| and watch it develop. </p> 
| <p> Thus H.G. Wells created a complex called 
| <title rend="PRE lsquo POST rsquo"> Ann Veronica </title>.
| He puts it together piece by piece in the first few 
| chapters. Both he and the reader become thoroughly 
| familiar with it <mdash>-</mdash> know just what it 
| thinks and feels, what it may be expected to do. In 
| fact, we lose our own personality and become this new 
| creation, <title rend="PRE lsquo POST rsquo"> Ann 
| Veronica. </title> We are given a set of surroundings 
| including other complexes less detailed in character. 
| The breath of life is breathed into Ann's mouth, and 
| off she and we go. </p>
| <p> But, you object, is Ann an impossible complex? Has 
| Wells created a real woman, or has his over-fertile 
| brain spawned a psychological monster? The answer 
| cannot be absolute. You may disapprove of Ann, but if 
| she drags you with her <mdash>-</mdash> if you become 
| Ann <mdash>-</mdash> then her complex is not 
| impossible <mdash>-</mdash> to you. Under given 
| circumstances you would, in reality, become Ann. Some 
| others may find the psychological strain too great. 
| Wells' solution of the puzzle will not do for 
| them. </p>
| <p> The power of the novelist rests, not so much in 
| his literary ability as in his knowledge of man, his 
| analytic faculties, his insight into motives and 
| emotions. Dickens was neither so scholarly nor so 
| fine a writer as Thackerary, but he was a greater 
| novelist, because, to take the common expression, his 
| characters "lived". Everyone knows Peckaniff and 
| Micawber. The terrible Madam Detrage can be 
| visualised by everyone of us, nodding, counting, 
| knitting, as one by the one the bloody trophies of 
| Terror fall from the guillotine. </p>
| <p> But, be not led astray. The novelist cannot be 
| held excused from the obligation to write good 
| English. Novel readers, unfortunately, are often 
| satisfied if the 'moral,' or the story is there. 
| Generally speaking, your novel writer who can't write 
| English isn't to be trusted in his presentation of 
| facts and indeed, his sentiment is usually of the 
| gabby goody-goody order. Mistrust him. </p>
| <p> Well, I set out to say something about novels of 
| interest to the workers and I've hardly commenced. To 
| tell truth, my muse of late has been away flirting 
| with someone else. Tonight, she won't stop whispering 
| to me, tho she knows her column's full. </p>
| <p> So, despite her, we must be content with a prosy 
| catalogue (mainly for beginners) of a few worth-while 
| propagandist novels. H.G. Wells, in 
| <title rend="PRE lsquo POST rsquo"> 
| "Tono Bungay," </title> deals with 
| the career of a patent-medicine humbug. His 
| <title rend="PRE lsquo POST rsquo"> "World Set Free" </title> 
| combines in a remarkable way criticism of the social 
| structure, and the scientific-magic factor so common 
| in his earlier works.  <title rend="PRE lsquo POST rsquo">
| "Ann Veronica" </title> should be compared with 
| Grant Allen's <title rend="PRE lsquo POST rsquo">
| "Woman Who Did," </title> and Bernard Shaw's 
| <title rend="PRE lsquo POST rsquo"> "Unsocial 
| Socialist." </title> But in fairness to Shaw read also 
| his <title rend="PRE lsquo POST rsquo"> "Sanity of 
| Art," </title> (an essay) before firing your revolver 
| at a statute of Apollo. To 
| <title rend="PRE lsquo POST rsquo">
| "Felix Holt" </title> and Kingsley's 
| <title rend="PRE lsquo POST rsquo"> "Alton 
| Locke," </title> both stories of radical leaders, may 
| be added. <title rend="PRE lsquo POST rsquo"> "The 
| Conflict" </title> by Graham Philips. Jack London's 
| <title rend="PRE lsquo POST rsquo"> "Iron Heel,"
| </title> Bellamy's <title rend="PRE lsquo POST rsquo">
| "Looking Backward," </title> and Well's 
| <title rend="PRE lsquo POST rsquo"> "Sleeper 
| Awakens," </title> are three attempts at forecast of 
| the future ~~ pessimistic, optimistic and fantastic, 
| respectively. </p>
| <p> Upton's Sinclair's <title rend="PRE lsquo POST rsquo">
| "Jungle" </title> comes very nearly under the 
| ban on the count of indifferent literary value, but 
| <title rend="PRE lsquo POST rsquo"> "The 
| Metropolis" </title> is much freer from blemish. But 
| remember, <mdash>-</mdash> young propagandists, and 
| recruits to the movement <mdash>-</mdash> one of the 
| books you should make up your minds to read is 
| Carlyle's <title rend="PRE lsquo POST rsquo"> "French 
| Revolution" </title>. Carlyle understood better than 
| anyone at his time, how much bread had to do with 
| sentiment, and sentiment with revolution. Dickens' 
| <title rend="PRE lsquo POST rsquo"> "Tale of Two 
| Cities," </title> may be read as a light introduction 
| to the subject. </p>