WORLDS OF STYLE
515
words. Genres have no instrumentality for expression, especially those
of "novel" and "romance." These so-called genres have none of the
ascertainable conventions of style that can legitimately be associated
with such genres as the pastoral or the epic. One can see and hear
language, see and hear the struggle in a voice to find a language ap–
propriate to some mysterious state of consciousness; but no one has
ever seen or heard language that necessarily belongs to a novel rather
than a romance.
Once beyond the superficiality of genre criticism and the limita–
tions of other more sophisticated categorizations, what is most inter–
esting in American literature is the attempt in the writing to "build
a world" wherein, say, even drunkenness might be the rule of the
day. I mention drunkenness not only because it is a fairly common
way of at least temporarily modifying one's relationship to customary
environment. It is also William James's example when he is discussing
in
Varieties of Religious Experience
a problem in life much the same
as the problem I am considering in literature:
Inner happiness and serviceability do not always agree. What
im–
mediately feels most "good" is not always most "true," when measur–
ed by the verdict of the rest of experience. The difference between
Philip drunk and Philip sober is the classic instance in corroboration.
If
merely "feeling good" could decide, drunkenness would be the
supremely valid human experience. But its revelations, however
acutely satisfying at the moment, are inserted into an environment
which refuses to bear them out for any length of time. The conse–
quences of this discrepancy of the two criteria is the uncertainty
which still prevails over so many of our spiritual judgments. There
are moments of sentimental and mystical experience ... that carry
an enormous sense of inner authority and illumination with them
when they come. But they come seldom, and they do not come to
everyone; and the rest of life makes either no connection with
them, or tends to contradict them more than it confirms them.
Some persons follow more the voice of the moment in these cases,
some prefer to be guided by the average results. Hence the sad dis–
cordancy of so many of the spiritual judgments of human beings... -.
According to William James there is a necessary discontinuity
between revelatory moments, always sporadic and infrequent, and the
