298
PARTISAN REVIEW
of the inevitability of man's failure does not cancel out the realiza–
tion of the splendor of his vision, nor the splendor of his vision
conceal the reality and beauty of his failure, can tragedy be touched.
It
is toward this tragic margin that the American artist is impelled
by the neglect and love of his public.
If
he can resist the vulgar
temptation to turn a quick profit by making yet one more best–
selling parody of hope, and the snobbish temptation to burnish
chic versions of elegant despair, the American writer will find that
he has, after all, a real function.
Indeed, he is needed in a naked and terrible way, perhaps
unprecedented in the history of Western culture- not as an enter–
tainer, or the sustainer of a "tradition," or a recruit to a distinguished
guild, but as the recorder of the encounter of the dream of innocence
and the fact of guilt, in the only part of the world where the reality
of that conflict can still be recognized.
If
it is a use he is after and
not a reward, there is no better place for the artist than America.
NORMAN MAILER
I think I ought to declare straightaway that I am in
almost total disagreement with the assumptions of this symposium.
My answer, then, can hardly contribute much in an affirmative way,
but perhaps it may serve the value of not allowing the question
to be begged.
At any rate, one has to admit that the older American intellec–
tuals and writers have changed their attitude toward this country
and its culture. The New Criticism seems to have triumphed pretty
generally, PR's view of American life is indeed partisan, and a
large proportion of writers, intellectuals, critics- whatever we may
care to include
in
the omnibus--have moved their economic luggage
from the WPA to the Luce chain as a writer for
T ime
or
Life
once
remarked. Among the major novelists, Dos Passos, Farrell, Faulkner,
Steinbeck, and Hemingway have traveled from alienation to vary–
ing degrees of acceptance, if not outright proselytizing, for the
American Century. Dare one mention that their work since the
Second World War has been singularly barren and flatulent? Is
it entirely a coincidence that they sound now like a collective
pater
familias?
