SEVEN QUESTIONS
43
aaid this or that biography by this or that doctor or returned missionary is
the eat's meow. So what? It's the eat's meow and that's an end to it.
If
a
fine piece of work comes out (by purest accident} on January
14
you're
up chit creek. Nothing to say and no words left to say it in. It's the adver·
tisers, of course, but only because advertisers talk to the same brow beaten
audience that the writers and reviewers are approaching and driving into
a corner. The meek man who dares to say, I am dying of thirst in this
desert, must be a fool.
4. Make a living writing what I want? I should say not! It costs me
money. Yes, there is a place in our economic system for literature as a
profession but all the elevators are broken down. Nobody
c~
get up there.
h'a too high. One life is not long enough for a man to make the ascent in.
But maybe it's best so. Maybe th,e are no great writers today. As
if
I
didn't all the time think that if-tllat if only-1, I, I haven't it
in
me to be
u
great in literature as J, P. Morgan is
in
Wall Street and the .•. what
of it? I write.
5.
In
retrospect my writing reveals plenty of allegiances-to the gram·
mar school ideals of my public school bringing up. You know, no sooner
I
child is born than he begins to learn. I was early indoctrinated into the
png spirit of my 8 and. lO year old pals. I have never forgotten that
thrilling world with all its magnificent hopes and determinations. Me and
Dante loved at the age of-well, anyway she was about 9 at the time. I have
DeVer forgotten that, nor the meetings of the Star Athletic Club. That all
meant something. There were things I learned in my father's own Unitarian
Sunday School to which I owe the staunchest allegiance today. Then I have
been
tremendously impressed with the past of the United States. Tha(s
deep
in my blood. Nothing has displaced one bit of my emotion-the
regular 4th of July stuff! that I once felt so strongly. In my world there
are
DO
classes but the good guys and the bastards. No,
r
don't think of my
writing as the expression merely of an individual, never. Who the hell am
17 But I am passionately one, not of a writers' group, but with a potential
ript feeling and thinking man of the world, the kernel of all groups, the
lleat
one
in
all times and places, whom I conceive of as having patience,
tolerance, no prejudices whatever but a keen sense for values. I still
believe that such men can get along together in peace and work out a
livable world.
If
not, there's little meaning to the whole business. I can
lie
a savage too. Cut and dried schemes mean nothing to me. They lead
•ly to stupidity of action, to dullness and self deceit. I'm very little
iderested in what the other fellow "thinks". I believe in giving Russia a
keak-if it will use peaceable means to its ends. That's their business, not
lline.
It
may be mine tomorrow, if they do well.
6.
The political tendency of American writing as a whole since 1930 and
6irty
years before has been toward a discovery of the terms of a discus·
