Lionel Trilling
W. D. HOWELLS AND
THE ROOTS OF MODERN TASTE *
Every now and then in the past few years we have heard
about the revival of interest in the work of William Dean Howells
that we might soon expect. And certainly, if this rumor were sub–
stantiated, there wOl,lld
be
a notable propriety in the event. In the
last two decades Henry James has become established as a great
magnetic figure in our higher culture. In the same period Mark
Twain has become as it were newly established-not indeed, like
James, as a source and object of intellectual energy, but at least as
a permanent focus of our admiring interest, as the representative of
a mode of the American mind and temperament which we are happy
to acknowledge. To say that Henry James and Mark Twain are
opposite poles of our national character would be excessive, yet it
is clear that they do suggest tendencies which are very far apart,
so that there is always refreshment and enlightenment in thinking of
them together. And when we do think of them together, diverse as
they are, indifferent to each other as they mostly were, deeply sus–
picious of each other as they were whenever they did remember
each other, we naturally have in mind the man who stood between
them as the affectionate friend of both, the happy admirer of their
disparate geniuses, who saw so early the fullness of their virtues
which we now take for granted.
It
would make a pleasant symmetry
of thought if we could now know that William Dean Howells has be–
come the object of renewed admiration, that he was being regarded,
like his two friends, as a large significant figure in our literature.
But the rumor of the revival is surely false . A certain number
of people, but a very small number, do nowadays feel that they might
find pleasure in Howells, their expectation being based, no doubt, on
*
This essay was read as a lecture at Harvard University in February 1951.
