SEVEN QUESTIONS
49
own, and whose influence is or will become dominant. Into this lively
soluble mass he drops his own work, with the hope that it will cause a
coagulation of taste and thought. . . . The number of people who under·
atand the lnternational·American rhetoric is definitely growing. This, as
noted above, also increases the rewards for, and consequently the chances
of, vulgarization, which has started to drain the meaning out of the
movement.
3. The newspapers and liberal weeklies have never been serious about
literature; seriousness has been confined to the reviews and "little maga·
zines". It is easy to see why: these publications, orienting themselves on
"American interests", have assumed a smug proprietorial defense of "our
literature"; while all serious efforts in American letters have been directed
more or less humbly towards the European·American equation. More
directly, however, liberalism assumes that all questions can he solved
through "moderation"--even lies and vulgarity must he treated mod·
erately; and there is here a definite hatred and fear of ideas and acts
carried
through to their conclusion. Whereas literature tends, especially in
modem times, towards exaggeration and finality {its moderation, too, is
eu~~;gerated),
and this has been congenitally distasteful to the liberals. In
eddition there is outright individual dishonesty and log·rolling constantly
at
work
in
that "social·minded" atmosphere. When the liberal weeklies are
moderately hospitable to experimental critics like Burke or Schapiro or
to
poets like Williams or Fearing, at the same time surrounding their con·
tributions with those of all sorts of publishers' bootlickers and editors'
boys,
they show even less concern for values than the reactionary supple·
llellts
who attack a thing merely because it is new. Thus whatever is good
ia
The Naticn
or
The
New Republic,
and there have been many good
pieces
and
excellent writers presented there, has been forced to cling with
D teeth to a slippery intellectual surface.
4.
Sure, there's a place for literature as a
profession.
In fact, it's one of
6e
few professions that has a future-along with military aviation, dema·
NJ,
patriotic preaching, spying, etc. The worse society gets the more
pofeuional literature becomes, and the greater the demand for this type
tl
intimate service.
i.
See
my review elsewhere in this issue.
.. See
above.
7.
In
time of war the writer has at least the obligation
not
to
find
the
•poe~
side" of
it.
