BOOKS
READERS ' PRESCRIPTION
WRITING IN AMERICA. Edited by John Fischer and Robert B.
Sil~ers.
Rutgers. $3.95.
Only an age of accommodation and intellectual incon–
sequence could have nurtured this apparently harmonious chorus of
singing birds, who are really, if they knew or cared to admit it, a
very discordant choir. The book is a collection of essays (with minor
additions) that appeared last year in a special supplement to
Harper's Magazine.
It
is a slight production, having neither the
weight and authority nor the historical perspective of the London
Times Literary Supplement
of 1954 called "American Writing
Today." Nor does it have the concerted seriousness of a symposium
like PR's "America and the Intellectuals" of some years ago.
Harper's
seems to have said, "Let's get a couple of highbrows, a
solid core of middlebrows, and one lowbrow, throw them together
and see what happens. As a lead-off piece we can use that stimulat–
ing and thought-provoking speech on the lack of persuasive ideas
in contemporary literature, delivered by Mason Gross before the
National Book Committee." But beginning with Mr. Gross, nothing
very electrifying happens at all.
Everyone except Elizabeth Hardwick and Alfred
Kazin
is so
amiable.
And the only one who actually makes some sparks fly
is
Miss Hardwick. There isn't even an attack on "the critics" or the
literary quarterlies. The formula for the supplement seems to have
provided for no more than four articles on writing as writing-"The
Alone Generation: A Comment on the Fiction of the Fifties" by
Alfred Kazin, "Poetry's Silver Age: An Improbable Dialogue" by
Stanley Kunitz, "Why American Plays Are Not Literature" by
Robert Brustein, and "The Decline of Book Reviewing," by Miss
Hardwick. With the exception of Mr. Kunitz's piece, which is most-
