TWO COMMUNICATIONS
351
THE FICTION OF FICTION : A CRITICAL NUDGER
In a recent review of fiction Delmore Schwartz felt called
upon to uphold the Old Lady. He gave what seemed like a reasonable
defense of the vitality of the form, but what is interesting is that he
felt pressed to say a word in her defense, as if reassuring himself that
everything was all right. The sad fact which we have all uneasily
felt, if not defined to ourselves, is that everything is not all right. We
may read our quota of contemporary novels each season, but the
crucial symptoms are being shown every three months in our quarterly
magazines. Where once we made for the short stories with interest
and eagerness we are now often bored by the very idea of a story; I
ask the reader to honestly check his own experience on this point. In
addition, many of the writers who once had an almost sacred attitude
toward fiction are now turning their typewriters to the article-of-ideas.
Here is a phenomenon which can't be explained away by saying
that good writers are not appearing; that is probably true, but the
reason they are not appearing is a general one and the words "good"
and "bad" are inadequate to the problem that confronts us. This
problem goes beyond individual writers and covers something more
crucial. Short stories in the "little" or literary magazines were once
read with keen interest because they were pertinent to our lives: aes–
thetically, morally, personally-the whole kaboodle all at once. I
remember fifteen years ago, as does everyone of my generation, the
way we read
Story
magazine from cover to cover; these were "literary"
stories, the very kind which usually bore the pants off us today. Today,
as each of us knows, we pick up the latest quarterly and leaf through
for a lively-looking article; that is, one with intellectual pace, pace
enough to keep up with the
speed
of our minds.
The italicized word is my first clue to the deadness and irrelevance
of almost all the short fiction we have been seeing. For many reasons–
all the answers to which I don't know, nor do I think anyone does–
our minds are racing far ahead of the imaginative expression we have
been seeing on the page. For most people 30 or under this not only
holds true for the fiction they have been getting, but is proven by
the amount of skipping they do in reading great books of the past.
Out of sheer curiosity I have asked a number of people, writers and
just ordinary neurotics, about their reading habits and practically all
confess a tremendous impatience with past works.
As
one painter told
me: "Balzac takes thirty pages to describe the birth of a child; I want
