Typhoon - Page 2

extremely
difficult to believe) I can also assure my readers that he is perfectly
authentic. I may venture to assert the same of every aspect of the
story, while I confess that the particular typhoon of the tale was not a
typhoon of my actual experience.

At its first appearance "Typhoon," the story, was classed by some
critics as a deliberately intended storm-piece. Others picked out
MacWhirr, in whom they perceived a definite symbolic intention. Neither
was exclusively my intention. Both the typhoon and Captain MacWhirr
presented themselves to me as the necessities of the deep conviction
with which I approached the subject of the story. It was their
opportunity. It was also my opportunity, and it would be vain to
discourse about what I made of it in a handful of pages, since the
pages themselves are here, between the covers of this volume, to speak
for themselves.

This is a belated reflection. If it had occurred to me before it would
have perhaps done away with the existence of this Author's Note; for,
indeed, the same remark applies to every story in this volume. None of
them are stories of experience in the absolute sense of the word.
Experience in them is but the canvas of the attempted picture. Each of
them has its more than one intention. With each the question is what the
writer has done with his opportunity; and each answers the question for
itself in words which, if I may say so without undue solemnity, were
written with a conscientious regard for the truth of my own sensations.
And each of those stories, to mean something, must justify itself in its
own way to the conscience of each successive reader.

Falk--the second story in the volume--offended the delicacy of one
critic at least by certain peculiarities of its subject. But what is the
subject of Falk? I personally do not feel so very certain about it. He
who reads must find out for himself. My intention in writing Falk was
not to shock anybody. As in most of my writings I insist not on the
events but on their effect upon the persons in the tale. But in
everything I have written there is always one invariable intention, and
that is to capture the reader's attention, by securing his interest and
enlisting his sympathies for the matter in hand, whatever it may be,
within the limits of the visible world and within the boundaries of
human emotions.

I may safely say that Falk is absolutely true to my experience of
certain straightforward characters combining a perfectly natural
ruthlessness with a certain amount of moral delicacy. Falk obeys the law
of self-preservation without the slightest misgivings as to right, but
at a crucial turn of that ruthlessly preserved life he will not
condescend to dodge the truth.