OUR COUNTRY AND OUR CULTURE
579
the readiness of universities to swallow small quantItles of talent,
making critics out of poets and pseudo-scholars out of critics–
since there is nothing else, neither independent substance nor liter–
ary journalism nor bohemia?
Nowhere in our literary life is there the zest and generosity
and fraternity of the twenties, the earnestness and idealism of the
thirties. In 1920 Waldo Frank wrote Sherwood Anderson ecstatic
letters welcoming him to the literary east as a "brother"-is there
an American critic under 35 so unschooled in caution that he
would thus risk making a fool of himself? The socialist ideal of the
thirties, which was something more and better than Stalinism, proved
a chimera, as every philistine is ready to inform one; but at least
it gave writers a belief in something beyond their egos.
John Aldridge's book on the young novelists had this simple
virtue of truth-telling: the moods he found are those that exist. Be–
wilderment, fear, skepticism, lassitude, confusion, despair-these,
inescapably, are the moods that prevail in the work of any writer
honest and courageous enough to endure ' his deepest perceptions.
And what else can one feel about the world of 1952?
True, most American writers no longer behave like exiles–
which is good; nor like rebels-which is a pity. But except for
Dos Passos' recent novels, which can be praised only from motives
of piety, I see no evidence of any "acceptance" of America. Cer–
tainly not among the young Southerners in whose fiction there is a
complete indifference to the course of social life; nor among the
young urban novelists whose central images are, almost unwittingly,
images of alienation; nor among the "war novelists" like Mailer and
Jones; nor among the younger poets, a good many of whom seem
uninterested in any experience but that of writing poetry.
Whatever ,acceptance there may
be
is largely a product of the
will, a forced march of intellect.
If
we were really entering a period
of affirmation, such as American literature enjoyed in the mid–
nineteenth century, we would see a release of energy, enthusiasm,
hope. But it is significant that even those intellectuals who talk about
the "promise" of American life do so with long faces. Perhaps our
negativism has become mere habit; perhaps we should apply to Mr.
MacLeish for lessons in affirmative cheer.
What makes me so skeptical about the tendency PR describes
