30
PARTISAN REVIEW
variety. What I have already said under Question One comes in here. In
one phase, literary nationalism is only the sectionalism of the East and
Middle West trying to set up myths for the entire country. In another
phase, it can
he
either finance capitalism or communism cutting across the
profoundly regional differentiations
~f
the country as a whole. Literary
nationalism, as I see it, is the well-intended idealism of simpletons who
are preparing the way for totalitarianism·, capitalist or Marxist; I think
the former.
7. I have considered the question.
If
possible-that is, unless I am.bad–
gered out of silence-! will keep my mouth shut about the war, and if I
.can make a living I will continue to carry out my literary plans. The
writer,
as
writer, has no responsibility when war comes. The responsibility
that he may have as a citizen is a question that he must decide for himself.
The Popular Front is quite certain that a Marxist society would favor the
growth of a great literature; perhaps the perfect Marxist society would do
this-or it might do the exact opposite, by removing from social relations
the dramatic tensions that are necessary to the arts. I doubt
if
a Marxist
society would be any more favorable to literature than Nazism or finance
capitalism. Nobody knows what kind of society is best for literature; the
historical evidence seems to hint strongly that the societies of Dante and
Shakespeare were the best literary situations. But it would be absurd to
try to restore them for that reason, yet no more absurd than it is to try to
convert writers to communism or Nazism with the plea that under either
dispensation the arts would flourish. The ·committees and organizations
devoted to the "defense of Culture" ask us to fight Germany for that rea•
son; it may or may not be a good reason; but the real question involved is
simply that no committee or organization knows enough about the arts to
ask us to fight somebody in their behalf. It is my impression that these
well-meaning persons want to make the world safe for writers (not writ–
ing) ; nothing could be sillier than that.
James T. Farrell:
I.
The modern tradition of realism
~nd
naturalism. In my case, it has
been partially American, but also, French, Russian, and Anglo-Irish. I
might list among others, Dreiser, Lewis, Anderson, Hemingway, Lardner,
Masters, Sandburg, Proust and Joyce. The question concerning James and
Whitman seems to me to pose false alternatives. It is years since I have
read anything of James, and my memory of what I have read is insuf–
ficiently fresh for me to say much about him. I will hazard the guess that
he· is likely to have a healthy disciplinary influence and to be technically
