382
that reveals the comic and tragic
aspects of that world with astonish–
mg pace and intensity and an ear as
good as Ring Lardner's, and along–
side which our academic critics'
favorite recent "comic" novel,
Malcolm,
seems witless as well as
gutless, a chi-chi fairy tale.
There is a kind of protest Iiter–
ature, valuable both as protest and
as literature, that is produced
neither by political ideologues nor
by mindless howlers-a literature
written by men from the bottom
(or at least men willing
to
go live
on the bottom and take a good look
around) that is impassioned, violent,
yet artistically coherent. Surely Mr.
Howe would not deny literary merit
to such representatives of it as
Celine and Genet (nor deny it to
Henry Miller's first and best book,
CORRESPONDENCE
Tropic of Cancer).
Well, it looks
as
if
the hipsters may soon give
us Celine and Genet; certainly
such writers as John Rechy,
Alex–
ander Trocchi and Jack Gelber, for
all their mistakes of a technical
sort that usually beset the novice
writer, are serious candidates. As for
Norman Mailer's newer fiction:
recently Alfred Kazin put it down
by remarking that Mailer's trouble
seems to be that he is trying
to
become the American Marquis
De
Sade. But would it really be such
a bad thing
if
American letten
produced its own De Sade?
Ned Polsky
Mr. Howe replies:
Sms :
Ned Polsky's letter seems to me
an instance of Misplaced Polemic.
THE,
PRETENDER;
A New
Play by
LIONEL ABEL
Directed
by
HERBERT MACHIZ
Opens May 2.4th
Cherry Lane Theatre
