of questions which a young writer should have constantly before him, in all his reading: Why is a certain chapter tedious and a certain other chapter tingling with an almost painful suspense? And did the author mean to achieve these results, or has he simply failed in what he tried to do? Take, for example, two passages from Kip-
Awkward Age that I shall obviously have had to brace myself in order to make. . . . My private inspiration had been in the Gyp plan (artfully dissimulated, for dear life, and applied with the very subtlest consistency, but none the less kept in secret view); yet I was to fail to make out in the event that the book succeeded in producing the impression of any plan on any person. No hint of that sort of success, or of any critical perception at all in relation to the business, has ever come my way. … I had meanwhile been absent in England, and it was not until my return, some time later, that I had from my publisher any news of our venture. But the news then met at a stroke all my curiosity: 'I am sorry to say the book has done nothing to speak of; I've never in all my experience seen one treated with more general and complete disrespect.'"
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