42
PARTISAN REVIEW
future of American writing than the writing of Walt Whitman, or vice
versa? The only question of any relevance in either case is, Was that work
alive to its own day?
If
so then it is alive every day.
If
it was a palpable
denial of its own day then-if I can discover it as such-out with it. I
want to look in a work and see in it a day like my own, of altered shapes,
colors, but otherwise the same.
Tlwt
I can use to reinforce my senses and
my intelligence to go on discovering in my own day such things as those
old boys had the courage and intelligence to discover in theirs. Let's omit
the matter of art, the art, that is, to set down what they saw and experienced
and DIDN'T lie about-for any reason.
2. No, I don't think of myself as writing for any definite audience. I
write for a potential intelligence. I believe there's a bigger audience for
what I write than ever gets to hear that I exist. In that I have lived a few
years longer than formerly more people have come to read my stuff. There·
fore there is a larger audience for serious American writing than formerly.
I believe also that there is a larger audience in general for unofficial writ·
mg
than there was ten years ago. It isn't much larger but it is, I believe, a
little larger than formerly. This is due to a variety of things unrelated to
writing itself. The present administration in Washington has done a tre–
mendous work
in
illuminating the minds of men and women who will
think and who are capable of thought. There is, I believe, a slight edge of
people
in
my own suburb for instance who are beginning vaguely to
believe that a cubist, let us say, isn't for that a thief, a pervert and a dan·
gerous communist. They even surreptitiously go to the public library and
(when no one is looking) sneak my awful books out under their coats–
and, I am told, snicker and chortle to themselves in their closets over what
I have written saying, so I'm told, By God, that's true!
3. I place no value at all on the criticism my work has received
if
the
puerilities of public statement (which have to be such to be printed) are
in question. But I have receiveEYe'xtremely valuable criticisms by word of
mouth from the same gentlemen who write often so stalely of me in the
papers. Most criticism is first poised to praise or to injure before the man
thinks. We are all guilty. Few know what writing is about. Those that do,
find little or no audience for what they have to say. There ought to be a
guild-supported by the government!! Certainly the literary supplements
have been corrupted by the advertisers. Oh,.it isn't just a question of the
publisher and the advertiser sticking tongues out at each other over the
back fence, it's subtler than that. Take Williams College, for instance and
the controversies over what its President shall think and do. It's all very
polite but the virulence underneath is very thinly covered. A literary sup·
plement isn't there to teach. It's there to sell. To sell it's got to sell what
people want to buy. Also it has to sell a bale of literature every week.
That's infantile. There isn't that much literature produced in a century. So
by January 7 each year all the superlatives are exhausted. You've already
