Read the passage.
On the Art of Fiction
by Willa Cather
One is sometimes asked about the "obstacles" that confront
young writers who are trying to do good work. I should say the
greatest obstacles that writers today have to get over, are the
dazzling journalistic successes of twenty years ago, stories that
surprised and delighted by their sharp photographic detail and
that were really nothing more than lively pieces of reporting. The
whole aim of that school of writing was novelty-never a very
important thing in art. They gave us, altogether, poor standards-
taught us to multiply our ideas instead of to condense them.
They tried to make a story out of every theme that occurred to
them and to get returns on every situation that suggested itself.
They got returns, of a kind. But their work, when one looks back
on it, now that the novelty upon which they counted so much is
gone, is journalistic and thin. The especial merit of a good
reportorial story is that it shall be intensely interesting and
pertinent today and shall have lost its point by tomorrow.
Which key details should be included in an effective summary of
"On the Art of Fiction" by Willa Cather?
Select Yes or No for each detail.
Detail
The artist Millet drew hundreds of
sketches before painting the spirit
of them all into one picture.
The higher artistic process is
knowing which conventions of
form to eliminate yet preserve the
spirit of the whole.
Cather believes that art should
simplify, which is the whole of the
higher artistic process.
Lively pieces of reporting are a
novelty that set up poor standards
Yes
No
O
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