184
PARTISAN REVIEW
Communism is just one name among many still unknown names of
totalitarianism. Nothing yet has proved that totalitarianism cannot
be
rich, luxurious and even liberal, if we take for liberalism some notions
and items the subjects of communism were deprived oC We cannot help
but rule out some absolutely opposite arguments.
A
trip to modem
Japan, for example, can give you food for imagining some traits of the
future, rich and liberal totalitarianism.
Then again, it is not necessary to travel so far away if you would
agree to focus your attention on modern art. I happened to say a few
times that the West has implemented into life one of Lenin's major slo–
gans, which has usually made the Soviet intellectuals furious.
"Art
belongs to the masses," said a leader of the world proleteriat. It goes
without saying that he was cunning, as all Communists were cunning
with their slogans. He certainly meant thoroughly-controlled masses, the
masses with meticulously shaped-up tastes and demons. Hence, Art
belonged not to the masses, but to a leading group of those masses, i. e.,
to the Party. In the West, that slogan lost its ambiguity and can be taken
literally and seriously. Art belongs to the masses, because the masses, by
no means the refined connoisseurs, pay for it in real cash.
Focusing our attention on the book world and contemporary lit–
erature, we cannot help but wince in fleeting consternation: how far
they have advanced toward a new, still not completely sensed totalitari–
anism, and how seriously the creative person has bent under the pressure
of commercial conformism. The notion of literary success is undergoing a
process of serious distortion. Most successful books turn out to be poorly
written, their dialogues look wooden, the metaphors - far-fetched, they
show a bleak imagination, an absence of style and a tremendous presence
of vulgar taste.
For some reasons, and probably due to these just-mentioned
characteristics, these books demonstrate high sales figures and therefore,
their authors, during the last conference of publishers in New York, were
regarded as they "big writers"; meanwhile, those who sold less found
themselves in the lists of "smaller writers." In the world where literary
success is being shaped up by the sizes of advances, royalties and collateral
contracts, worthless, insignificant books are becoming a serious
production of a great industry, the cases of serious considerations and
serious investments. A publisher's first priority today is to guess the sale. If
it seems to him that he detected a green, "I'll take it" light in the eyes
of the hypothetical buyer, he rushes straight ahead with virtually
unlimited advances, investments and advertising expenses, pushing a book
to its release, neglecting even regular editing, as was lately shown by an
article in The
New Republic.
Today in America, the intellectuals more and more often start dis-
