Vol. 4 No. 3 1938 - page 28

28
PARTISAN REVIEW
current party policy. Writers were being exhorted to become political-
minded; but in this setting political-minded ness means no more than
unthinking adherence to Stalinism. There was an obscure paper by
Kenneth Burke and indignant reports on the suppression of artistic
freedom in the fascist countries; but literature in the Soviet Union
was reported on purely quantitatively, as a feat 'of publishing and
distributing "millions of books." The truth is that no genuine interest
in writing could ever express itself at these gatherings organized unper
totalitarian auspices. The glib denunciations of every doubt, the
smugness, the crawling before celebrities, the jargon of political up-
lift-what atmosphere could be more alien to creation, to indivi-
duality, to intellectual experience?
Nevertheless, some big pretensions were aired. The Call to the
Congress opened with the statement: "Today in America there are
signs of a literary revival that may resemble or surpass that of the
period of 1912-1916." Freeman saw "every indication that American
literature is about to enter a new period ... the best writers are now
armed with the knowledge and insight they formerly lacked." Mal-
colm Cowley declared that "American literature seems richer and
more vigorous than at any other time since Anderson, Sandburg,
Brooks, and Eliot....
" This unexpected renaissance seems to have
been manufactured for the express purpose of justifying the Stalinist
management of left-wing writing; an imaginary crop of master-
pieces was invoked to give the Congress its literary
raison d'elre.
Actually, of course, literature in America has seldom been so stagnant
as it is at present. The excitement of the early 30's has given way to
confusion and anemia. Fiction, these last few years, has been on a
lower level than that of the 20's. The young poets, including the
radicals, seem to be engaged in an endless metaphysical stammer; the
naturalistic reportage of the obvious has swallowed up the young
novelists; and most of the older writers, after the first few good books,
are petrified within their reputations. After expressing himself so
optimistically at the Congress, Cowley discovered a few months later
(New Republic,
Nov. 24, 1937) that there is, "this year, a curious
analogy between the dullness of the new books and the dull mood
that afflicts the literary world. Writers, like everybody else, are carry-
ing on mechanically while waiting for something to turn up, some
new hope to avert catastrophe." So much for the renaissance.
Cowley's talk of catastrophe will come as strange news to Gran-
ville. Hicks, who regards pessimism as the devil's brew. During the
discussions at the Congress a popular type was evolved, an ideal man
of whom Hicks is the very image. This exemplar of virtue can best
be described as the writer who, facing the future, does not look, in the
I...,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27 29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,...66
Powered by FlippingBook