THE AUTHOR'S PURPOSE
out being aware that there is anything wrong with it. But wait until someone happens to ask such a reader what the book he chances to be reading is about. If the answer is crisp and concise you may know without reading it yourself that the book has something in it that is worth while; if, on the contrary, the answer comes uncertainly and long-drawn out, something to the effect that "It is about a man and a girl and they are talking together and a lot of things have happened," and so on indefinitely, you may be pretty sure that the book has no central idea at all.
Now the one way of bringing home to a young writer the necessity of having a definite purpose is to make him form the habit of literary criticism which was urged in the preceding chapter. After we have once learned to ask ourselves regarding each new poem or essay or novel that comes our way: Did the author know what he
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