ALFRED KAZIN
43
a major force in American intellectual life.
Forster himself, not the most bravura and self-confident talent in the
world, was so encouraged by Trilling's book that he beamed on all
Americans he met, saying, "Your Mr. Trilling has made me famous!"
There was little reason for him to appreciate the situation
ol/tre mer.
To
Trilling and many other Americans weary of the corruption of the liberal
imagination by the radical tradition - the unspoken premise behind
Trilling's argument - Forster's England in
Howards Elld
resembled a
moral paradise. Or a prig's?
Bernard Shaw liked to say "it's the common language that divides
us." No, it's just the American difference. There was nothing in common
between the England that presides over
HOl/Jards Elld
and the England
that Forster's American admirers liked to see as a relief from their own
more openly turbulent society. In a way the social problem in America is
more hopeless, for the differences founded on race, the lasting wounds of
slavery and un£1shionable "national origin" may be harder to cross over
than the differences between Schlcgels and Wilcoxes - who at the end of
the book do get to live in the same ancestral house. The only figures in
America comparable to the first Mrs. Wilcox in deep unconscious wis–
dom, rooted to the earth, crazy about the earth long ago taken from
them by white predators, are "native Americans." And they live not in
the middle of the most respected society, like Mrs. Wilcox, but in segre–
gated, horribly poor, isolated "reservations."
We in America have lots of Wilcoxes - they are the go-go boys
who become corporation executives, Wall Street financiers and the rest.
Nor do they look down on the culture of the Schlegel type, all museum
curators and professors. They subsidize museums, concert halls, grants for
writers, dancers, painters , performers of every stripe; culture adds to the
prestige of their cities. And if Leonard Bast is at all imaginable and
locatable in America it is because he emigrated here a long time ago in
order to get into a state university. Leonard is in direct-mail marketing
now, rapidly making his way to the top because of his gentlemanly En–
glish accent - always a great help in the American business world.
