Let us glance at two other examples of a shifting view point.
The eminent French writer, André Gide, has published a novel called Les Faux Monnayeurs —for all its modernity, this novel of Gide’s has one aspect in common with Bleak House : it is all to pieces logically. Sometimes the author is omniscient: he explains everything, he stands back, “ il juge ses personnages ”; at other times his omniscience is partial; yet again he is dramatic, and causes the story to be told through the diary of one of the characters. There is the same absence of view point, but whereas in Dickens it was instinctive, in Gide it is sophisticated; he expatiates too much about the jolts. The novelist who betrays too much interest in his own method can never be more than interesting; he has given up the creation of character and summoned us to help analyse his own mind, and a heavy drop in the emotional thermometer results. Les Faux Monnayeurs is among the more interesting of recent works: not among the vital: and greatly as we shall have to admire it as a fabric we cannot praise it unrestrictedly now.
For our second example we must again glance at War and Peace .