442
PARTISAN
REVIEW
bewildered or insensitive to the rich suhject-m,atter about him, the
politicoes, the robber barons, Henry Adams like C()riolanus waiting
to
he
asked to hold office and tortured by a like pride, or Grant, a
pathetic simple man who said long hef()re
that
all he wanted of life
was a small place in the country, and later, that he hoped his mili–
tary successes would enable him to get the main street of his home
town improved.
Ano.ther part of the explanation is the new international span of
culture: the new tycoons were able to purchase Old Masters instead-of
seeking native art. And this in turn reminds one that in an industrial
society, the rich have no full relationship to the life upon which their
'weal.th is based, so that they feel no sympathy for or necessity for the
representation of that life. But lastly, the f()llowing hypothesis sug·
gests itself: the rate of social change in an industrial society is of. such
speed that the artist and especially the author no sooner makes his
stand
qua
artist, to the character of his age than a. new period arrives,
his stand or poise is outmoded, and the attitudes upon which he has
based his art have the period quality of millinery ten years old. They
have no relevance to his perceptions in the new present. Perhaps
this is one reason, in our time, for many a Proteus, Picasso, Stravinsky,
Eliot, and Auden, who come forward with a new style every five years,
or use several styles at the same time.
At any rate, this is not the least of the virtues of Wilson's anthol·
ogy, that it forces upon us speculations about the whole nature of
literature, and especially literature in America.
DELM:ORE ScHwARTZ
ILLUSIONS OF OUR TIME
REFLECTIONS ON THE REVOLUTION OF OUR TIME.
By
Harold
J.
Laski. The Viking Press. $3.50.
When Tobruk fell to Rommel, Harold Laski
is
reported t() have
said that the British defeat marked not only the fall ()f a city but the
bankruptcy of a social and economic order. What Laski said wht>n
Rommel was driven into the Mediterranean has not been reported.
The economic simplism of Laski's passing remark might he over·
looked if it were an isolated judgment. But it reappears as the basic
premise of his latest and most ambitious work. Without ceasing to
be
vague, Laski has now become doctrinaire. This is apparent not
in
his
conclusions, many of which are true. but in the way he reaches
them,
in his failure to face difficulties and objections crucial to his position,
and in his blithe disregard of the many inconsistencies in his thinking.
In a distinguished style, one notch above Max Lerner's, Laski
atteJii pts to show, among other things, that capitalism is doomed,
that
Fascism is counter-revolutionary, that capitalism must g() fascist
if
not
