Vol. 31 No. 3 1964 - page 436

43c.
GEORGE L1CHTHEIM
modern form. Leslie Stephen, in his great
History of English Thought
in the Eighteenth Century,
put the matter in words with which we may
conclude (II, 114) :
Locke expounded the principles of the Revolution of 1688
and his writings became the political bible of the follow–
ing century. They may be taken as the formal apology of
Whiggism. He gave the source from which later writers
drew their arguments, and the authority to which they appealed
in default of arguments. That authority vanished when the
French Revolution brought deeper questions for solution, and
new methods became necessary in politics as in all other
speculation.
George Lichtheim
THE VACANT LOT
THE MODERNS : AN ANTHOLOGY OF NEW WRITING IN AMERCA.
Edited and with on introduction
by
LeRoi Jones. Corinth Books. $5.95.
In his unfortunate introduction to this collection, Mr. Jones,
in a moment of near-lucidity, explains that he has selected "writing that
shows a care for deeper involvement beyond the specific instance of its
virtues as 'literature,'" and has been "interested . . . in placing to–
gether prose that had some
future,
.as literary and social phenomena ...
and not necessarily in that work that could be called good. . . ." In
short, he has done his best to make literary criticism beside the point,
and in so doing is altogether as academic as the shadow he boxes all
through his surly preface. Mr. Jones, it seems, has given up hope for
American literature; the amoeboid shapes he presents in its place are
nerveless, insensate, and fractured: "literary and social
phenomena."
Predictably, the most disturbing feature of this collection is its anony–
mity; most of the prose might be anyone's, might, in fact, have been
pieced together from scraps of weekly news-magazines and sociologies:
it does not require a voice or a vision. It is rare and surprising when
one of these writers arrives at a style, and no easy task for the reader
concerned with distinguishing typographical errors from what may be
the more revolutionary elements of The New Writing.
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