Narration by Thornton Wilder, Gertrude Stein, Liesl M. Olson

newspapers you like to know the answer in crime stories in reading crime and in written crime stories knowing the answer spoils it. After all in the written thing the answer is a let down from the interest and that is so every time that is what spoils most crime stories unless another mystery crops up during the crime and that mystery remains.
     
    And then there is another very peculiar thing in the newspaper thing it is the crime in the story it is the detective that is the thing.
     
    Now do you begin to see the difference between the inside and the outside.
     
    In the newspaper thing it is the crime it is the criminal that is interesting, in the story it is the story about the crime that is interesting. Now think, you will perfectly realize that the newspaper practically never tells anything about detecting, a little in the case of Dillinger, a little in the case of Hauptmann but still really very little and in lesser crimes not at all the emphasis is entirely upon the crime and not upon the detecting and in the written story it is impossible to hold the attention by telling about the crime you can only hold the attention by telling about detecting. All this is very interestingmost most interesting and has to do with what the newspaper has to say and what it has not to say and the fact that in the long run one might say practicaIly any day the newspaper is not reaIly exciting.
     
    I have said that the business of the artist is to be exciting and it is his business and if he is an artist whatever he does reaIly does is reaIly exciting. By exciting I mean it really does something to you really inside you.
     
    Now is it the business of the newspapers is it the business of an historian to be exciting weIl I do not think so that is I do not think that it is the business of the newspaper to be exciting and I think in their hearts they reaIly know this thing they know it is not their business to be exciting.
     
    About the historian, the biographer and the autobiographer that is another matter and pretty soon later we will have to go into that.
     
    What is it that is exciting, and how can exciting be soothing if it looks like excitement and is therefore soothing or if it is exciting and is therefore soothing or if it is as if it were exciting and is therefore soothing or not soothing, all these things have to be a great deal thought about if you are to understand anything if I am to understand anything about newspaper writing about any writing about anything being or not being written.
     
    It is a very curious thing that a story told by anyone about anything that has not reaIly been exciting is exciting and a story told about anything that reaIly has been exciting is not exciting.
     
    It is a very curious thing this thing.
     
    In thinking about plays I came to the conclusion that in real life the climax of a really exciting scene is completion and the climax of a made up exciting thing a written exciting thing is a relief and that it is not really possible to remember the climax of a real scene because you can not remember completion but you can remember relief.
     
    Now the same thing is true when the newspaper tells about any real thing, the real thing having happened it is completed and being completed can not be remembered because the thing in its essence being completed there is no emotion in remembering it, it is a fact like any other and having been done it is for the purposes of memory a thing having no vitality. While anything which is a relief and in a made up situation as it gets more and more exciting when the exciting rises to being really exciting then it is a relief then it is a thing that has emotion when that thing is a remembered thing.
     
    Now you must see how true this is about the crime story and the actual crime. The actual crime is a crime that is a fact and it having been done that in itself is a completion and so for purposes of memory with very rare exceptions where a personality connected with