PARTISAN REVIEW
Mohammedans" and "The Imaginary Jew" are cases in point. Excel–
lent pieces, but they make me think of what Busoni called Schubert:
"a gifted amateur." Hold them up to Chekhov, or even W. C. Williams'
fiction, and they're rather transparent, don't you think? Well, what's
left? Perhaps Mr. Laughlin's principles of selection adumbrate one of
the new perspectives he calls for.
If
so, it would reveal Katherine Anne
Porter as the shaft of a spear, but Eudora Welty as its head; Tate as
a traditionalist, perhaps because he composes Odes; and Marianne
Moore as more experimental than Wallace Stevens-because her lines
are differently shaped, or because she writes about smaller animals?
Alas, I fear that even this perspective is an odd variant of a really ancient
one: Tradition-and-Innovation. "Nothing like a new song," says the
younger generation in the
Odyssey.
.. .
But you seem to be getting
restive, so I'll sum up. Does new writing demand new terms and new
perspectives? No. Does experiment mean anything except as an aspect
of originality? No. Can originality be understood, or even sensed, with–
out a grasp of literature as a whole? No. Was Goethe doddering when
he said, "What is new is not true, and what is true is not new?" No.
Which leaves us, also in his words, "as clever as we were before."
S
(explosively)
:
This is more than I can stand. I've been listen–
ing so far out of psychological curiosity, wondering how you would ex–
plain your emotions about this book; and all I get is antique blah about
originality and noble voices and the great tradition. I'm only surprised
that you haven't dragged in Memorable Speech, and Sweetness and
Light, and Emotion Recollected in Tranquillity. All right, so some writers
have more talent than others; so what? When you've got them all filed
away in your bottomless pit, what the hell have you achieved? Have
you enabled yourself or anyone else to appreciate these writers any
better, or even to understand your own preferences? Classify, classify–
that's all you bumbling pundits can do. What a way to spend a life–
trying to prove that no one can possibly do anything unique!
B: Oh, come, come. I only made that catalogue to show that
"experimental" writing is no harder to classify than any other kind, not
that any kind is easy to classify. Also that there's no such thing as a
better pigeon-hole, since there are no good ones in the first place.
S: Then why all the fuss about a few harmless phrases?
If
a man
wants to call some writers experimental and others not, why shouldn't
he, especially if he publishes them? Anyway, the word isn't meaningless;
it's unsatisfactory, but it does stand for something. When I write, I am
constantly aware of choices, even in the simplest matters.
If
I want
to convey a character's unexpressed emotions, shall I do it by making
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