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PARTISAN REVIEW
artist or intellectual who does not make his way "within" can find
no community "without," and must suffer
if
he is first-rate the
exercise of his abilities in obscurity, or if he is second-rate must
incur the even more painful condition of being not at all chic.
Really, the history of the twentieth century seems made to be
ignored. No one of the intellectuals who find themselves now in
the American grain ever discuss--at least in print- the needs of
modem war. One does not ever say that total war and the total
war economy predicate a total regimentation of thought. Rather,
it is suggested that society is too difficult to understand and history
impossible to predict. It has become as fashionable to sneer at econ–
omics and emphasize 'the human dilemma' as it was fashionable
to do the reverse in the thirties. Economics is now for experts and
the crisis of world capitalism is considered dull enough to be on a
par with the proletarian novel. One never hears about the dis–
appearance of the world market, nor is it polite to suggest that the
prosperity of America depends upon the production of means of
destruction, and it is not only the Soviet Union which is driven
toward war as an answer to insoluble problems.
The symposium posed questions about mass culture and demo–
cratic society without seriously debating how much freedom there
is to find the
effective
publication of one's ideas if they are dis–
senting ideas, without wondering whether democracy becomes more
attenuated and may cease to exist when the war comes, and with–
out considering how America may change in the future. Every–
thing is viewed in a static way. We are democratic, we support the
West, and the American artistic caravan is no longer isolated. The
important work is to search out the healthy aspects of American
life, and decide whether we can work with the movies.
I have said that none of the older American writers and in–
tellectuals have produced anything of note since the war. The
literary history of this last period has been made, for better or worse,
by the younger writers, who seem inevitably to arrive as barbarians
or decadents. Does not this, in itself, answer the question? John
Aldridge in
After the Lost Generation
could come up with only one
prescription-a genius is needed.
If
and when he arrives may I
speculate that he will
be
more concerned with "silence, exile, and
cunning," than a strapping participation in the vigors of American
