OUR COUNTRY AND OUR CULTURE
421
but the trouble is that these periodic movements of the Zeitgeist
always go too far, and the first thing we know the intellectuals, in
the course of whipping up their enthusiasm for America, begin to
show some of the appalling traits of conformism which
Time
maga–
zine recently discovered in the undergraduates of the nation.
At the moment, for example, the most influential doctrine in
literary criticism in this country boils down to a defense, or rediscov–
ery, of bourgeois values: the values of stability, material possessions,
family, social manners, and so on. Now all these things are very
much needed in America, and I am pleased to see them now seriously
advanced by certain critics; but I grow very uneasy at the point
where this critical message stops, and when I see the names of
Pascal and Tolstoy invoked in this defense of bourgeois values, I
can't help suspecting that the spiritual anguish of these men
is
being very conveniently forgotten. Isn't this, after all, what a lot
of Americans would like to believe: that all those long centuries
of mankind's spiritual struggle in the past become unnecessary in
the face of the extravert and technological intelligence that can
pos–
sess and manipulate material goods?
No doubt, we are on our way to forming a new civilization in
this country, but this is a theme too large to be brought up here,
except insofar as the newness of this civilization seems to emerge
in current tendencies. Perhaps the dominant trait of America,
psychologically speaking, is just this overwhelming attachment to
the extravert and technological intelligence-the kind of intelligence
for which our very great philosopher John Dewey sounded his life–
long paean. Excellent as it is, however, this is not the only form
which wisdom and intelligence can take, and currently there are two
directions in which Americans begin to be uneasy about its limita–
tions: first, on the question of our art; second, on the question of
our psyche and its health.
(1) Many critics-from Bernard DeVoto to John W. Aldridge
-have recently become alarmed at the quality of the literature we
are now producing. I talked with the director of a large local museum,
which had just staged a big group show of contemporary artists. The
show was depressing, and I said so; to which the director shrugged,
"This is not an aesthetic period." Why not? Mter
all,
there is no
secret about the great periods of
art
in the past: they simply coin-
