These characters come directly from life, and to us, it seems that it has suddenly lost all its vitality, all the qualities it possesses. The only real person is the one who doesn't exist, and if a novelist depicts characters based on life, then he should at least pretend he's creating them, rather than bragging about them as identical replicas. The rationality of a fictional character is not what other people look like, but what the author himself is really like. Otherwise the novel would not be a work of art. These characters were taken directly from life. To us they seem to have suddenly lost all their vitality, all the few qualities they ever possessed. The only real people are the people who never existed, and if a novelist is base enough to go to life for his personages he should at least pretend that they are creations, and not boast of them as copies. The justification of a character in a novel is not that other persons are what they are,but that the author is what he is. Otherwise the novel is not a work of art.
