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GEORGE LEVINE
(where did Leavis' come from?), out of what George Eliot
is
quoted
as calling a ''beautiful human nature," partly because he is only the
beginning of that antiliberal tradition which culminates in this volume
with Leavis (the hero as the man of letters?).
I don't mean to undervalue the judiciousness or to minimize the
worth of Gross's usual resistance to the oversimplifications of which he
accuses Leavis. The problems are not at
all
simple, and neither Leavisian
rigor nor Ryecroftian retreat is an available option for our descendants of
the men of letters in the academy, or for the ordinary reader, wherever
he is. Surely academia does perpetuate some of the very worst aspects
of English studies, and surely, too, there is something profoundly nar–
row-minded in a tradition which rejects technology and modern com–
munications unequivocally with no serious consideration of what tech–
nology has been able to do in the lessening of human suffering.
But Gross's discomfort with the way things are is manifest, espe–
cially in the "Epilogue." He resists all the new modes which seem to
him
to
be a real threat to the humane Arnoldian tradition his judi–
ciousness is defending. McLuhan and Leslie Fiedler strike
him
as "band–
wagon" riders who are fundamentally antiliterary: "Apocalyptic fashions
come and go," he says, "especially fashions which draw their main
strength from that most wasting of all assets, Youth." Youth, modern
radicalism, contemporary antirationalism (extensions, one might infer,
of Leavisian antiliberalism) are the enemies of judiciousness. Apocalyptic
writers are complicit in the social changes that have eroded the posi–
tion of the man of letters--of letters themselves-in modern society.
Academia professionally dessicates literature; antiacademic aoademics like
Fiedler work out of protected positions to further divert literature and
its values from the ordinary man. And where is there now a place for
the man who resists co-optation into academia yet maintains standards,
who perpetuates the tradition of civilized forebearance which even aca–
demia no longer sanctions in an unqualified way, who persists
in
reading
literature and valuing it by virtue of "a commitment to the life which
lies beyond literature."
Surely, the narrative voice, which Gross finds
in
this book, speaks
for precisely such a man, a man who has found a place outside academia
and outside radicalism. Its judiciousness should demonstrate that there
is a place for the man of letters, sanely aware of the limits of his activ–
ities and of his competence, refusing to make claims beyond what liberal
pragmatism and rationality will allow. One ought to be grateful for such
a voice, even if it comes through discussion in brief of dozens of dis–
parate and not compellingly fascinating careers. In part, I feel the grat–
itude it ought
to
inspire. But it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that
