NEW ROADS, NEW ROUTES
him perform a significant action, or make a significant remark, or simply
by telling the reader what the character felt? Suppose I try it one way
and it doesn't come off, so I resort to another-am I experimenting,
or not? And if I hit on a way no one has tried before, doesn't that put
me in the vanguard, and can I help it if it does? And with all this I
still may not have written a book you and your cronies would call
original. So, when it appears, you'll ignore my experiments unless I'm
a genius, in which case you'll say I wouldn't need to experiment any–
way. That's what your "joyous recognition" boils down to: lack of rec–
ognition. How will I get recognized in time to be Recognized, if this is
the kind of thing you people do to my potential audience?
B:
Oh, you'll find an audience if you die in the attempt; and in
case you have other plans, take heart. Critics aren't as influential as all
that. No·critic can break an audience; there's only one in this country
who can make the kind of audience you would want; and when he goes,
the public will probably be on its own again, bless its little heart, with
nothing to fear but the book clubs.
S: Then does it matter how we label ourselves, or are labeled by
others?
B:
Yes, because labels stick. Critics and book clubs aren't the only
cicerones of literature. Thf!re are also editors, publishers, booksellers;
and
if
they get into the same incurable habits of classifying writers,
that leaves you completely surrounded, doesn't it? And poor old litera–
ture looks just as queer at one end as at the other. Vanity of vanguards,
saith the Preacher....
S: Preacher is right. You should take orders as a Brooks brother.
Where would your Pounds and Williamses be without the vanguard–
the little magazines, the eccentrics, the financiers of oddity?
B:
Elsewhere, no doubt. I know, I know: there's no one else.
And "avant-garde," in our time and place, does have a kind of historical
or pragmatic significance: in the situation created by Hollywood and
the wreck of humanistic education, it becomes "avant-garde" to be
simply honest and creative. But I am beginning to suspect that the
avant-garde myth, as fostered by the apparatus of vanguardism, is inap–
propriate to the present literary situation in America, and dangerous
to any future one. Inappropriate, because the term "advance party" as–
sumes the presence not only of an enemy, but of a main body and rear
guard on your own side: groups of important, serious writers who are
generally read, established, accepted. Is this the case
chez nous?
Take
Mr. Laughlin's middle-roaders. Do they constitute a main body? I
know they should, but do they? Is Wallace Stevens' audience so very
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