The Mentor: Makers of American Fiction, Vol. 6, Num. 14, Serial No. 162, September 1, 1918 — Inside the Classic

The Sculptor’s Chisel: Fiction as Craft

Maurice devotes his opening paragraphs to dismantling the assumption that good fiction comes naturally. He quotes Charles Lamb’s retort to a boastful amateur: “anyone could write plays as well as Shakespeare—if he had the mind to.” The analogy of sculpture recurs, emphasizing that the writer’s skill lies in knowing what to cut away. This insistence on craft appears throughout the profiles. For instance, Rupert Hughes is praised for a “range of knowledge of even the remote corners of the great city that has been painstakingly acquired” and used with “the sense of selection of the accomplished story-teller.” The phrase “double and re-doubled labor” captures Maurice’s view that polish requires revision.

The profiles themselves demonstrate this principle. Owen Johnson’s early novels “were read by a limited audience, mildly applauded, and then forgotten” until he turned to schoolboy memories and found success with characters like “The Prodigious Hickey” and “Dink Stover.” Maurice presents this shift not as luck but as a discovery of the right material—the sculptor finding the right block of marble.

Popularity and Its Discontents

Maurice does not shy away from the tension between literary merit and commercial success. He notes that Brand Whitlock’s political career as mayor and minister “obscured Brand Whitlock, novelist,” yet insists that Whitlock remains “at heart a man of letters.” The profile of Samuel Hopkins Adams highlights a novel “involving newspaper life and the sinister influence of the tainted money of patent medicine advertisers on the liberty of the press,” suggesting fiction can engage social issues without sacrificing readability.

Several authors are described as having found their footing only after false starts. Owen Johnson’s early works “were read by a limited audience, mildly applauded, and then forgotten” before his schoolboy stories brought national laughter. Edwin Lefevre is introduced with the caveat that “it is no disparagement of Edwin Lefevre as a workman to say” that his reputation rests on a narrow base. Maurice balances admiration for popular success with a critic’s eye for lasting quality.

The Geography of American Fiction

The issue’s profiles reveal a strong sense of place. Rupert Hughes’s novels are anchored in “modern Gotham: New York in the grip of the latest follies,” while Stewart Edward White’s collaboration with Adams produced “The Mystery” and “The Flying Death, a tale of Montauk Point.” Owen Johnson’s Lawrenceville stories inspired motorists to break their journey “for the purpose of visiting ‘The Jigger Shop,’ where Hungry Smeed established the Great Pancake record.”

Maurice also notes the international dimension: Basil King’s “The Inner Shrine” was published anonymously, with “a dozen different names” suggested before the secret broke. The profile of Brand Whitlock mentions his diplomatic service in Belgium, which “obscured” his fiction. These details suggest that American fiction in 1918 was both rooted in local landscapes and reaching beyond national borders, a tension Maurice captures without overstatement.

Readers approaching this issue should attend to Maurice’s method: he evaluates each author not by abstract standards but by the specific choices that made their work popular or distinctive. The profiles reward attention to the recurring contrast between early failure and later success, and to the way place and craft intertwine. The issue is best read as a series of case studies in how American fiction makers of the early twentieth century solved the problem of the marble block.

Flipping through that old 1918 Mentor, I found myself thinking about how those writers mastered effortless prose, each story a quiet door left ajar. It reminded me of evenings spent with The ghost of Charlotte Cray, and other stories — Reading Companion, where the same gentle craftsmanship lingers, unhurried, as if waiting for the reader to notice the shadows at their own pace.