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MARY McCARTHY
modern world, whose leading characteristic is irreality. And
that, so far as I can understand, is why the novel is dying. The
souped-up novels that are being written today, with injections
of myth and symbols to heighten or "deepen" the material, are
simply evasions and forms of self-flattery.
I spoke just now of common sense-the prose of the novel.
Weare all supposed to be born with it, in some degree, but
we are
also
supposed to add to it by experience and observa–
tion. But
if
the world today has become inaccessible to com–
mon sense, common sense in terms of broad experience simul–
taneously has become inaccessible to the writer. The novelists
of the nineteenth century had, both as public persons and
private figures, great social range; they "knew everybody,"
whether because of their fame in the great capitals of London,
Paris, St. Petersburg, or in their village, province, or county,
where everybody knows everybody as a matter of course. Today
the writer has become specialized, like the worker on an as–
sembly line whose task is to perform a single action several
hundred times a day or the doctor whose task is to service a
single organ of the human body. The writer today is turning
into a
machine
a
ecrire,
a sort of human typewriter with a
standardized mechanical output: hence the meaning of those
questions ("How many hours a day?" "How long does it take
you?" "Have you ever thought of using a dictaphone?").
This
standardization and specialization is not only a feature of his
working hours but of his social existence. The writer today-and
especially the young American writer-sees only other writers;
he does not know anyone else. His social circle comprises other
writers and his girl friends, but his girl friends, usually, are
hoping to be writers too. The writer today who has a painter
for a friend is regarded as a broad-ranging adventurer, a real
man of the world.
If
he teaches in a university,
his
colleagues
are writers or at any rate they "publish," and his students, like
his girl friends, are hoping to write themselves. This explains
the phenomenon, often regarded as puzzling, of the "one-book"
