ALetter to the Editors
I
HAVE BEEN SHOWN
the text of a lecture
by
Mr. VanWyck Brooks
on "Primary Literature and Coterie Literature" and invited to
comment upon it. As for Mr. Brooks' judgements on particular
authors I am impressed by the catholicity of his distaste: hut I have
~o
comment to make except that his description of Dr.
I.
A. Rich–
ards as "a neurological psychologist who lives in England" does
not suggest a very intimate knowledge of that author's work. It is
not in Mr. Brooks's literary appreciations hut in the social implica–
tions of his point of view that I am interested: and in these for the
reason that I detect a similarity with a point of view which has
recently been expressed on this side of the water also. It is a point
of. view which may he called reactionary, so long as we remember
that reaction may move in' more than one direction and to different
distances; to a more, or to a less civilized condition than that of
contemporary society. I hope I am not influenced by the newspaper
rumour that my own writings have been condemned by the Vichy
Government, as well as by Mr. Brooks: I mention this so that the
reader may not suspect that I have any concealed grievances.
The similarity that I find is between Mr. Brooks's point of
view and that of a leading article in
The Times
of London on the
25th March, 1941. This article is entitled "The Eclipse of the
Highbrow." It has, like that of Mr. Brooks, a warmth of feeling
puzzling to those who come under its condemnation, and goes
farther than Mr. Brooks in its disapproval of the morals of con·
temporary writers and artists, whom it characterizes as "often
impatient, self-indulgent, intolerant and touchy," as well as pos·
sessed of "a weak and arrogant contempt for the common man."
(The "common man" of a paper like
The Times
can hardly mean
the proletarian-it must mean the man of the educated upper
classes.)
The Times
article complains that modern literature is
ne of "clever triviality," that art is brought down to "the level of
teric parlour games," and it draws the now familiar comparison
f
modern poetry to the cross-word puzzle. Though it does not use
e term, it holds up exactly the same picture of "coterie" art as
oes Mr. Brooks.
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