The Situation in American Writing
Seven Questions
WE
ARE PUBLISHING
below the replies to a questionnaire
submitted to a representative list of American writers. A second
group of answers, received too late for publication in this issue,
will be printed in the Fall number. Contributors will include Sher–
wood Anderson, Louise Bogan, Horace Gregory,
R.
P. Blackmur,
William Troy, Lionel Trilling, Robert Penn Warren, James Agee,
and
Robert Fitzgerald. The questionnaire follows:
I.
Are you conscious, zn your own writing, of the existence of a
"usable past"? Is this mostly American? What figures would
you designate as elements in it? Would you say, for example,
that
Henry ]ames's work is more relevant to the present
and
future of American writing than Walt Whitman's?
2.
Do you think of yourself as writing for a 'definite audience?
If so, how would you describe this audience? Would you say
that the audience for serious American writing has grown or
contracted in the last ten years?
3.
Do you place much value on the criticism your work has re–
ceived? Would you agree that the corruption of the literary
supplements by advertising-in the case of the newspapers–
and
political pressures-in the case of the liberal weeklies–
has
made serious literary criticism an isolated cult?
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