STATE OF AMERICAN WRITING
he will go with or against
his
time, or what works of the past he
will draw
his
inspiration from. But we do know that if certain theories
of art are generally taught young writers, and taught with conviction
and effect, this teaching is bound to have at least a limiting or
negative influence on much of the work produced until these theories
change, or arc made to change in the course of theoretical contro–
versy rising out of the historical situation.
In this sense a distinct trend can be defined in the forties in the
attitude toward literature taught in the colleges. Tllis is important,
because after this war, under the G.I. Bill of Rights, such a large
proportion of the potential writers who had been through the war–
experience went back into the colleges and into the crowded literature
and writing courses taught by the younger, more fashionable teachers.
Even before the war the colleges had pretty well come to dominate
the world of serious letters in this country. Most of the young writers
teach in the colleges and publish their work in the college quarterlies,
which are so numerous now that no one can possibly read them all.
But they are filled mostly with criticism.
If
a writer is supporting
himself as a teacher, he has to spend his time working up material
for courses in forms which are most readily turned into critical articles.
In the .academic atmosphere criticism seems more central, more
important, than imaginative work, and is certainly more likely to
give professional prestige and lead to better offers. Creative work in
these circumstances is usually guarded, limited, self-consciously subtle,
written with one's colleagues in mind. The occasional short story or
lyric is marginal to the criticism, a display of literary sensibility to
justify the writer's claims as a critic. Acadenlic life is full of politics,
bitter jealousies, comple.x relations of all kinds, yet the people inside
this world have never written good novels about it. It seems less fruit–
ful for the imaginative writer as material than even the vicissitudes
of bohemianism.
Nor do these young writers who would have been the bohenlians,
the avant-gardists, the radicals and little magaziners of the twenties
and thirties constitute a dissident faction in the colleges, fighting
against academic conservatism. With the emphasis on textual explica–
tion, on absolute values, on individual ethics .and on the complete
autonomy of art, the new critics and the old guard have formed a
nearly solid front. The contributors to the highbrow quarterlies have
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