Читать книгу American Romances - Rebecca Brown - Страница 6

When a writer calls his work a romance, it need hardly be observed that he wishes to claim certain latitude, both as to its fashion and material, which he would not have felt himself entitled to assume had he professed to be writing a novel. The latter form of composition is presumed to aim at a very minute fidelity, not merely to the possible, but to the probable and ordinary course of man’s experience. The former—while, as a work of art, it must rigidly subject itself to laws, and while it sins unpardonably so far as it may swerve aside from the truth of the human heart—has fairly a right to present that truth under circumstances, to a great extent, of the writer’s own choosing or creation.

—Nathaniel Hawthorne, Preface toThe House of the Seven Gables

There is something in this native land business and you cannot get away from it.

—Gertrude Stein, Wars I Have Seen