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PARTISAN REVIEW
what human beings feel and think about each other, and what
they do to one another. This book marks a change in the character
of American life.
There were also in the twenties several significant books by
black writers. One, which was about blacks and stimulated
others, was written by a white man:
Nigger Heaven
by Carl Van
Vechten. A very fine novel called
Home to Harlem
was written by
the poet Claude McKay. It's the story of a West Indian Negro
who is more intelligent than many Americans of another color.
But the only job he can have is that of pullman porter. At the end
of his trip he goes home to Harlem, where he has a good time
when not traveling between New York and Chicago on the
pullman car. It's a very well-written book . There is another one
about the black bourgeoisie,
The Jtalls of Jericho,
by Rudolph
Fisher. An extremely promising young writer named Jean
Toomer wrote a remarkable book of short stories,
Cane,
and then
he succumbed to a Russian, Georges Gurdjieff, who was the
predecessor of the Reverend Moons and the Gurus and the
Scientologists and other fakers of the present time. Gurdjieff
promoted what he called Unitism. Toomer's literary career
ended, and he spent his life in some kind of "colony" getting
along with himself.
Interviewer:
This change you've been describing, where America
moves from the emphasis on work and achievement to an em–
phasis on entertainment-could you give some specifics, perhaps
on how this trend shows up in some of the more popular or better
writers? Willa Cather, maybe? Or Sinclair Lewis?
Farrell:
I presented this idea to H. L.Mencken and Lewis. In Lewis's
Main Street,
you recall, Carol Kennicott comes up against a poor
and rather dreary culture in the small town of Gopher Prairie.
Through the latter part of the nineteenth century we had the
triumph of the city at the expense of the small town, which, of
course, declined in importance with the growth of the railroad.
The areas of social intercourse and of commerce, by and large,
had been circumscribed by the distance a horse could be driven.
With the coming of the railroad that area expanded. And that
made it possible for the introduction of the "national brand"
product, which in turn led to advertising.
The triumph of the city over the small town and the rural
areas can be described as an issue of city vs . town as the center,
