"Norma
I"
said the old man. "Listen to what
John's sayin' to you there
I"
"Bran' new," said John.
"See there," said the old man.
John got up and took Norma's arm, and she stood
up suddenly, jerking her body from the step.
"Well," said John to the old man, still holding
Norma's arm, "we'll get on now and go down town
and pick out that new dress in the windows."
The old man moved back and forth, sliding on the
step. He took his h<+toff and put it back on again.
He clapped his hands together and spat into the
street.
All Quiet on the
Literary Front
ALAN CALMER
BACK IN
1930,
when Mike Gold mowed down·
Thornton Wilder in the pages of the
New Republic,
he sounded the first shot in the literary battle of the
decade. Almost at once the front~line critics of the
right and the left trained their artillery at each
other. In two or three years the bombardment be-
came so heavy it was hard to find a single magazine
that did not take a crack at revolutionary criticism
and proletarian literature. The anti-Marxians direct-
ed a steady fire at the "artists in uniform," while the
pro-Marxians countered with a fusillade at the
"critics in mufti."
To continue these military analogies, so popular
in early Marxist criticism, most of the shooting went
wild. The
antis
succeeded only in throwing duds at
their opponents; the
pros
usually caught these ex-
plosives and tossed them back.
This was apparent in the endless give-and-take
over the question of the social value of literature,
with one side crying
in
the night, "Propaganda is not
art," and the other side echoing back, "Art is propa-
ganda."
After a few more years the cannonade died down.
Most of the critics got tired of firing at false targets
and unseen enemies. Except for a few scattered but
notable hits, the gun-play was reduced to occasional
sniping. As one critic recently put it, a truce of
boredom was established, although none of the basic
issues had been settled; both sides simply got tired
of arguing so persistently at cross purposes.
During the last few months, however, there have
been signs of a resumption of hostilities. Apparent-
ly, a second offensive is under way, for a new general
staff of critics have moved up from the second-line
12
"Well," said John, "we'll be seein' you."
"Ah-hey
I"
said the old man, standing up.
John stopped, and still holding Norma's arm
reached into his pocket and drew out a dollar bill.
"You want to borrow that?" said John.
"Yes, sir," said the old man.
"So' long," said John.
He steered Norma down the street through the
mud. They walked around some kids that were build.
ing a mud cannery. John stepped on the drying shed,
and one of the kids set up a howl, but John didn't
pay any attention. He kept on steering Norma down
the street.
trenches to bombard the Marxian literary front.
This new offensive comes at a time when the
verbal fog around proletarian literature has cleared
up a little. It comes at a time when the Marxian
ranks are being rid of a certain amount of dogmat.
ism and intolerance; when some authors have fled
.from no-man's-land or have deserted the enemy to
join the proletarians; when the shifting of political
scenes has compelled writers to overlook the various
shadings in their beliefs and unite against extreme
reaction; when, as a result of a lot of unorganized
discussion, most of the Marxist critics do finally
agree about at least some of the basic principles of
their viewpoint, and when several sharp tendencies
are beginning to express themselves within MarXian
criticism.
In spite of all this, the new drive against Marx.
ism seems to be headed' in the same direction as the
first offensive, aiming at the same false targets, fir-
ing in the same aimless fashion, shooting high and
wide of the bull's-eye of the proletarian approach to
literature. On several sectors of the literary front-
chiefly in the quality and weekly review press-a
number of literary ladies and gents, including Mary
Colum, Mary McCarthy, Bernard de Voto, Ernest
Boyd, Albert Guerard,
et ai,
have recently raised the
same old ghosts and taken pot-shots at the same old
bogeys that their more intelligent predecessors slew
years ago.
It seems to me that by this time readers and writ.
ers must be thoroughly indignant at the endless reo
petition of these same attacks. As long as these old
. questions have to be answered over and over again,
Marxian criticism is likely to go round and round
without getting anywhere.
For the sake of those on both sides who want to
see a clean fight, something drastic ought to be done
about this situation. At the present time, while there
is a lull in hostilities, why can't we draw up some
kind of treaty or a series of articles of war, defining
the most elementary limits of the Marxian position,
and demanding, under the threat of severe literary
penalities, that these rules be strictly observed-in
MARCH,
193
6
