RADICALISM TODAY
49
Bourne might have seen the necessity for making the distinction
clear had he lived longer. Van Wyck Brooks seemed on the verge of
seeing it, but his interests went off in other directions and he became
more and more in all things the middlebrow.
It
has been said that
Brooks "abdicated" his position of cultural leadership after his early
works.
If
so, it was not only because he was tired and took the easy
way but because his impossible dream of an organic liberal nationalis–
tic American civilization led him to apply the precepts which are suit–
able to a liberal politics and economics to culture and literature as
well. It was thus that he failed us, after his brilliant beginning.
-A minute ago, Professor Chase, you used the word "middle–
brow." Of course, radicals are highbrows, aren't they?
-No, radicals .are no-brows, if you will permit the term. These
terms are rather unstable, to be sure, but they have a crude applic–
ability. In at least one important sense of the word, nearly everyone
is a middlebrow these days, including many of those who think of
themselves as highbrows or lowbrows. The liberal critics, the philis–
tine critics, the academic critics-these perennially look for a middle
ground of taste and opinion whereon tensions and oppositions can be
ignored or, in fantasy, reconciled. The more recondite critics find in
myth, symbol, and tragic "action" their own arduous ways of liqui–
dating contradictions.
-But the no-brow...?
-Is someone with enough detachment and receptivity to roam
over the cultural spectrum at will. His thought is the intellectual
equivalent of Faulkner's imagination-or Melville's or Whitman's
-Now, really, Professor Chase. You can't be serious in proposing
Faulkner as an example of intelligence. His work lacks moral ideas.
He dislikes middle-class culture, which is to say, in our time, that he
dislikes culture itself. There are no characters of high intelligence or
moral complexity in Faulkner, whereas in George Eliot.... But I
know you don't approve of her.
-Oh, but I do, Silverman. However, we will discuss her another
time if you like.
As
for Faulkner, I think you misunderstood me.
I did not propose extracting a philosophy from his works. I merely
drew an analogy intending to suggest that the colorful dialectics of
his imagination might stir up analogous but different dialectics in
our rational inquiries into social reality. This is perhaps what Bourne
