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that mere words were supposed to have left in our consciousness. You
saw their faces, and these became the bitter underscoring of the text.
And then the text itself disappeared, sinking without trace into the
hollow cheeks and eyes, the holes of the clap-board cabins. This was
more or less the time that Miller pulled out for France. He has returned
to pick up a state of consciousness and a habit of mind more or less
where he left them.
Miller's America, his air-conditioned nightmare, is also a series of
images, without text. He has already said all that he has to say; has
caught the images, a few of them memorable, and has no more to catch.
His own peculiar kind of comment, the comically over-done, and per–
haps seriously under-felt, indignation, is already a dated and vacated
thing; and the images that stood out in it have been taken over by the
photographic slicks, either tamed and spruced up, or outdone in savagery
in the weekly spreads of
Life.
America of the glaring contrasts, of
riches and poverty and tons of food wasted has become a household no–
tion. The American nightmare has taken the place of the American
dream, and it is as sentimental as its predecessor, as popular and as. wide–
ly believed in. We all know our shame and our disgrace by now; they
have blended with the breakfast coffee. Miller is in the position once
ascribed, if I remember, by Mencken to George Bernard Shaw-parading,
stripped to the waist, with a placard that reads: Man
is
a Mammal and
maf}azine
A HISTORY AND A BIOGRAPHY
Bv FREDERICK
J.
HoFFMAN, CHARLES ALLEN AND CARoLYN
F. ULRICH. Here at last is a book which gives the "little mag–
azine" the attention it deserves as an important source of in–
formation about contemporary literature. Mr. Hoffman and
Mr. Allen have devoted the first half of the book to a little
magazine history-a fascinating story of ideas, of experiments
in style and of personalities. Miss Ulrich has prepared the
bibliography which occupies the second half of the book–
over 500 little magazines published in English in this century,
chronologically arranged, and annotated by Mr. Hoffman.
Illustrated.
$3.75
At your bookstore
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, PRINCETON, N.
J.
