46
PARTISAN REVIEW
4. I have not found it possible to make a living by such writing as I can
do. Others have done so. There are no poets among them. At best, the
profession of letters under our present economic system is in the extreme
precarious. And no one, who can possibly avoid it, should adopt it.
5. I have always believed that literature should oppose to any system, no
matter how perfectly conceived, the "minute particulars of mankind". The
mind craves nothing so much as a closed system, and the writer's mind is
no exception; and yet he should, at whatever cost of violence, constantly
set against any system, which at the moment is approved, the spontaneity
and variety of life. In no other way can he bring his conscience to rest.
All authentic writing comes from an individual; but a final judgment
of it will depend, not on how much individuality it contains, but how
much of common humanity.
6. The political tendency of wntmg in America since 1930 has been
toward the left. But the tendency of political writing, from right to left,
has been toward a redefinition of democracy. I do not believe that Com·
monism iii a desirable or a possible aim. I do not believe that it is desir·
able for it still holds to the conception of the economic man, from which
most of the ills of Capitalism seem to me to rise. I do not believe it pos·
sihle, for I do not think that Communism is an aim at all. It is beginning,
not end.
It
is the original chaos out of which some social order or other
must rise. And since events since 1917 would seem to show that the order
which follows an attempt to establish Communism in the contemporary
world will conform in greater or less degree to Fascism, I am for contin·
uing our own experiment in democracy, rather than for clearing the ground
for a social experiment of another sort. I am not unaware of the difficul·
ties which at present confront our democracy, but I am convinced that they
are not insurmountable:- I share many of the misgivings as regards democ·
racy which were owned by those who designed our government; but they
do not seem to me important compared with the certainty that no other
society would do for us at all. Democracy is not a magic word, which we
have only to utter to have the rocks fall apart and the robbers' cave open
for us, filled with all imaginable riches. It is a way of life which
in
the
future, as
in
the past, will depend less upon its own virtue than upon ours.
An
American writer should find American material richer than any
other. But that does not mean it is richer for being American. It may
be,
in human terms, very poor indeed. The men and women along Tobacco
Road are as American as they can be. In Erskine Caldwell's hands, they
became excellent literary creatures. But even in his hands, they remain
u
men and women appalling in their poverty.
