OUR COUNTRY AND OUR CULTURE
439
same as he was two generations ago, one who was happy in his
belief that America was "a young nation," happy to be a "homespun"
creature, a divine and prosperous provincial.
If
he thought of himself
as being childish, part of his belief was genuine. His belief is not
quite the same today; if he enjoys television and almost buries his
head in the set and cherishes it with the delight of owning a new
toy, his gesture of being a child has an air of shamefaced self–
consciousness. He is trying to avoid the responsibilities that rise like
clouds above the horizon- one cloud is Europe and another, slightly
below, behind it, is Asia.
The stay-at-home American diverts his fears with the pleasures of
sex, food, motor cars, and television with the same intensity that a
twenty-year-old reads a "comic book" and knows that he is indulg–
ing himself in returning to a world that may be gone tomorrow.
His children are dressed in "cowboy suits"-that last remnant of
the Wild West that carries with it romantic memories of the Amer–
ican Indian and the frontier. And this, too, belongs to the world of
"comic books," tabloids, and glossily illustrated weekly magazines-–
which is the sub-culture of American life, written large on nursery
walls. It has become as thin, as insubstantial as the ghost of the
Indian, and in our generation has life only in some of the short
stories of William Faulkner, in "The Old Folks" and "The Bear."
I think it can be said that the American, at home or abroad,
is beginning to grow up, and that he does not enjoy the process of
doing so. His country that was once Europe's Utopia is extending
its powers across the Atlantic and the Pacific; the American feels
his pockets "And wonders what's to pay."
LOUIS KRONENBERGER
It
is clear that there has been a change in attitude among
American intellectuals; rather less clear in what direction or to what
degree. Two attitudes that successively dominated our thinking have
vanished, and our intellectuals are now more likely adjusting them–
selves to circumstances than really affirming any poiI:lt of view. (Or
perhaps they are having affirmation thrust upon them.) The attitude
that flourished in the '20s was one of scornful dissatisfaction with
