BOOKS
481
the application of the "market system" to literature upon
this
frontier
base- do not characterize concretely enough the situ'ation we now
face. True, the market system is an essentiaJ feature of our economy,
but it hardly characterizes capitalism in its productive, socially dy–
namic aspect, or in its social and human aspect as a specific relation
between producer and consumer. From Blackmur's abstract talk of
"the market system" we might never gather that there are real flesh–
and-blood human beings who
deliberately
and
cunningly
reap huge
profits from the ignorance, pathetic fantasies, and helpless fear of
boredom of other large masses of human beings. What we now face is
expressed more adequately as a situation of
cultural exploitation
con–
ducted with constantly augmenting outlays of capital, constantly
wider and lower standards of mass appeal, and a conSequent
bureau–
cratizing
of all personnel engaged in production. And these two
features--cultural exploitation and bureaucratization of the writer–
make up the background against which the little magazine has been
developing over the last three decades, and which its own changing
directions reflect.
This history-at least what is relevant for us here, for the pre–
history of the little magazine hardly relates itself very concretely to
our present situation-begins with the 'teens, a period of real ferment
in America when we have such new reviews as
The Masses
( 1911-17),
Poetry
( 1912-
) ,
The Little Review
( 1914-29),
The Liberator
( 1918-24). Over this decade, in which Eliot and Pound have de–
parted from America, hangs also the shadow of Henry James's long
exile abroad, and the expatriate themes- the revolt against America
as a provincial and frontier country, against the 'genteel tradition,
together with a longing for the new, fresh, and even shocking in liter–
ature-still figure, and it is significant that
The Little Review
eventu–
ally moves to Paris. But now these older themes are transformed by
two newer developments: a sense of the possibilities and ferment in
American life, which
The Seven Arts
explicitly announces as "the
beginning of that national self-consciousness which is the beginning
of greatness"; and the appeax;ance of a mature radicalism, which be–
comes, in its cultural aspect, an avenue of escape from American
provincialism, since it links up the Left intelligentsia with political
movements all over the world.
Between the twenties and the 'teens there is no essential break,
one of the rare instances of con.tinuity in American culture, and-World
War I itself provides an extraordinary acceleration away from intel–
lectual isolation and provincialism. The expatriated sensibility still
