948
PARTISAN REVIEW
ture as a whole from the literature of previous periods is its extraordin–
ary, and perhaps even overweening, ambition. We are now at the mid–
point of the century, and looking back on the half-century of writers who
will eventually give their names to the period, we seem to see them in
retrospect as belonging almost to a vanished culture, so different were
the conditions of their existence from those of the period into which we
are now entering.
If
they inherited the nineteenth-century view of the
writer as a separate and anointed being, a kind of priest, they were able to
hold on to this role only with the tensions of an irony that provided it with
a new human content. Proust, Joyce, Mann and the others, all exist in the
full plenitude of a tradition, of which they sought to lose no part, so that
their work in its richness already carries the seeds of disorder and dis–
solution. Probably a moment like this in literary history could not be
prolonged any further. Sartre's is perhaps the first conscious announce–
ment that the conditions of literature must return to a lower and less
ambitious level; but even if the program did not become conscious, the
attitude has already begun to prevail generally. We are now able to
understand our surprise at the evolution of Sartre's career. The dis–
crepancy between the very abstract and involved philosophy and the
rudimentary and plodding fiction is no longer a puzzle. It was something
of a shock, after the intellectual sophistication and complexity of
L'etre et
Ie
neant,
to descend upon the
firs~
volume of Sartre's trilogy, not be–
cause his creative gifts were lacking but because he was willing to aim
so low in the novel. But all this now turns out to have been intentional:
the deliberate aiming at the second-rate is part of Sartre's program for
literature. The committed writer disdains the creation of masterpieces,
and even the very concept of the masterpiece, with whatever silence,
exile, or cunning it may exact, no longer seems to have any connection
with that act of writing that aims essentially at making an impact, just
as one might strike a blow or fire a pistol.
Sartre is therefore entirely consistent with himself when he pro–
poses that the writer neglect none of the mass media, like radio and
cinema, available in this period. He notes with satisfaction that the
modern writer is able
to
reach a much vaster audience than his predeces–
sor of the nineteenth century: for Sartre this is the great opportunity in
the present situation. It is true that he also observes the other side of
the coin-that when Gide, for example, becomes known through the
cinema to thousands who have not read him, the writer also becomes
inseparable from the face of Michele Morgan-but he fails to con–
sider what will happen if this process continues unchecked. The cultural
process in modern society (which, whatever its form of economy, is
