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PARJISAN REVIEW
which is, moreover, not his, but a kind of consensus of opinion, deadly
average, and readers' plebiscite?
These remarks may seem severe, especially since the work in ques–
tion is
obviously
not the product of a deliberate conspiracy, but the
result of a profound and intuitive collaboration between the taste of
numerous readers and hard-pressed editors who do the best they can, ac–
cording to their lights. Nevertheless, whatever the compulsion of pub–
lic taste may be,
The New Yorker
is rich and free.
If
it
can afford
the luxury of the criticism of Edmund Wilson, it ought to be able to en–
courage in its gifted authors a greater cultivation of their own originality.
Proust appeared in the French equivalent of
T he New Yorker,
and
Chekhov wrote a story every week for Russian equivalents. It is true
that James Thurber, as good an
index
as any, does not seem to like
Proust very much (he once wrote with pleasure that some likeable
person had made Proust more clear to him and less important than
anyone else had succeeded in doing, an indubitable yet ambiguous feat) ;
but Thurber is fascinated by Henry James, a fondness which may lead to
God knows what, and anyway, as everyone knows, you get used to any–
thing, you can even get used to writing governed by the motives which
inspired fiction in the past.
Delmore
Schwartz
