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The New Leader Book Page American Currents By VIVIENNE ROCH 01 Uumfcr*Jon"' c*mbrid"- h«>™<* u-»tr.% fmmmt time now, Howard Mumford Jones, who referred to himself recent nppointment to the...
...Some of thia writing has come from established American writers, but for the moat part, the best of it stems from writers with limited reputations or from unknowns: Harry Brown, Christopher I^aFarge, Ira Wolfert, John Cheever, John Hersey, and so on...
...It is that ear liberal arts tradition is dominated (perhaps, justly so) by English matetials...
...are uniformly excellent in the clear texture of the prose as well as in the very careful, if sometimes labored, documentation...
...Jonea' thesis, it is necessary, nevertheless, to examine both the specific *•**• ho employs to develop his srgum*>t and also the exempliticstion, in his writing, of the kind of thing he is ¦*f»ting...
...Delivered as addresses before various learned societies and institutions, the pieces in this group range from rather special considerations like "Desiderata in American Colonial History" to more ambitious attempts at cultural diagnoala auch as "New England Dilemma" and "Nobility Wanted...
...Jones, so many rungs above Mr...
...Jones' stand for greater sad mem scientific knowledge of our own cultural history, his awareness of the usefulness of American literature aa s test In the analysia of our own unique needs and problema ia entirely in his favor...
...It is hard to conceive that'Edwin Beaver's critical acumen could ba of such low calibre...
...There are a scattering of pieces by Negroes which will not gladden the hesrt of the NAACP— self conscious, glib, phony as the "Black and white, unite and fight" chant which filled Union Square before Earl Browder teamed up with Wall Street...
...It is hard to determine what his critical bias Is, other than a weakness for mawkishly bsd writing...
...ot the conflicts of many cultures, many traditions, many nations, many men...
...Though this makes up the bulk of contemporary writing, Mr...
...Jo0*"' P1*" ***** on the "Pert of prophecy when compared with the current emphasis in the English departments of the nation's colleges «¦ astinSllr" in cultural values, a natHMiaiitai quickened by tha war, itaelf, »• well as by tha subsidisation of loarn¦m W tha Amy and Nary...
...Csnseouently, Mr...
...He seems either unable or unwilling to approach literature as literature...
...But it is in "Nobility Wanted" that Mr...
...e * • ALTHOUGH I have no quarrel with Mr...
...Jones is opposed to the recent drive for "required" courses i» American literature and history ss well as to the so-called "corrective" proposal for courses in the "humsne tradition" beginning with the thought of "'•see and Rome...
...Seaver was lazy or other non-literary factors entered into the compiling of this "collection of new American writing/' Whatever the cause, the editor has seen At to bring together as dreary an assortment of second and third rate stuff aa you will And in an...
...We need to learn in all humility how small a part we and Europe have played in the total history of mankind...
...The crash of bourgeois economic equanimity in '29, followed by the lond explosion ef Popular Frontism tan year later in the Hitler-Stalin pact...
...the high hopea aronaed by the Battle of Britain, succeeded by the cynicism which followed Russia's entry into the war...
...Jeffers would argue for such a conclusion...
...What is the New England way of life...
...Robinson Jeffers set forth the basic truths about human nature, democracy cannot work...
...There are othera whose work you will find from time to time in Partiaan Review, in Kenyon Review, in Accent, Chimera, and other literary magazines...
...L. b. Fischer...
...a philosophic truth of profound importance to himself, but he clearly puts himself out of line with the Connecticut Wits, Emerson, Whitman and Brander Matthews," one asks "What of it...
...What is New England Philosophy...
...Whatever the permanent value of their output may be, it will certainly be of interest to the Partington of the future, concerned not to much with belles lettres as with literature as it affects its own period...
...These are the "new writers," the post Hemingway snd Doa Passos innovators, and to them you might add the creators in conventional modes who have distinguished themaelvea with pertinent novela in the past few years -Mary McCarthy, Lillian Smith, and a few others...
...True, there are practically no writers today primarily interested in experimental form, but there are some who are breaking away from the traditional inanne' of contemporary expreaaion and analysis, who are trying to bring a new soi t of intellectual content or emotional direction to creative prose writing...
...He is not an opportunist, hs is a genuine liberal, and whatever limitations he bss ate those flowing from his bssic profession of literary historisn, which can, at times, prove a limiting rather than a liberating discipline...
...Professor Jones' contention, which actei aa a bombshell in the academy in the thirties, was not at all now to the American literary scene for as early as 1916 Van Wyck Brooke and othera had made much the'asms argument...
...and Edwin Seaver's "Cross-Section" does little to refute the charge...
...Jones very deeply, he may wish to reconsider his assessment of this influence in future studies...
...Nevertheless, aince the area of Franco-American relations seems to interest Mr...
...So too ia Robert Paul Smith...
...Anything short of global thinking in higher education will ba inadequate...
...Among other virtues, there is, in The American Scholar Once More a brief and common sense discussion of the Hutchins educstionsl program which, although written in 1937, stands up aa cogently today...
...One as when he writes, "I do not desire a literature of propaganda, God knows...
...In the latter group, unfortunately, Mr...
...JfF...
...Jones funrtons at his highest and most instructive level...
...Jones legislates for writers and artists that I feel he akates on thinnest Ice...
...Jones rather uncritically accepts Gilbert Chinard's thesis thst the French influence on Jefferson was negligible...
...Surely, Jeffers' symbolic representations of psychopathological conflicts need not be stretched into an annihilation of the particular social philosophy to which Mr...
...Nothing short of this universality will •me...
...And if in 1935 Mr...
...In thirteen esssys, loosely •t«ng together by their preoccupation *>ta American culture, past and present, Jsr...
...of thoae "regional" anthologies which miaguided college preases iasue from time to time...
...On the whole, then, while there is much to question in Ideas in America, and while the title is more provocative than accurate, more teltc than actual, it is wellworth examination...
...And although he sometimes seems aware of the peril, human struggle has its nobler side...
...Seaver's regionalism is political and psychological rather than geographic, but the effect la the same...
...Jones is at his very worst both in logic and in conclusions...
...No Cross-Section CROSS-SECTION...
...In "New England Dilemma," for example, some of the iasues of the rultuial breakdown of that area are well-stated...
...slices of life cut from a Greenwich Village loaf, fellow-traveler baked...
...Again, when Mr...
...Edited by Edwin Souver...
...He complains that if "the poems of Mr...
...The essays in the section Studies in the History of ldtas in A merita dealing with subjects as diverse aa "Origins of the Colonial Idea," "American Prose Style: 1700-1770," "The Drift to Liberalism in the American Eighteenth Century" etc...
...His aesthetic apparatus seems singularly limited...
...Delmore Schwartz is one of thoae...
...It is, then, when Mr...
...Out of charity, I offer the conjecture that Mr...
...Jones' utter sincerity in his cultural aims...
...And it is precisely here that Mr...
...The fact that this demand ha been termed "revolutionary" is a sad commentary, indeed on the coalftkm of the academy in America...
...thoae created confusion and critical despair, but in the siftings and the searchlngs, a new vigor and interest have become apparent...
...This esssy attempts to evaluate contemporary literature by the touchstone that "literature is still a powerful imaginative medium which can support or fail to support the democratic tradition in the United States" and, in consequence, Mr...
...Seaver has somehow overlooked it...
...Jones is beating his breast over a very unrewarding matter, indeed, when he inquires: "What is a New England point of view...
...Jones is committed...
...Jones bluntly stated that "American literature should have a central place in the thinking of Americas scholars," by 1942 fie had expanded his aims to include a far broader cosswaoiitaa Spirit: "I am profoundly .convinced that our absorption with the culture of Western Europe muat go...
...Today'a struggle to bring about a synthesis between collectivism and personal freedom ("democracy," if you will) certainly deserves a layer in a cross-section...
...The New Leader Book Page American Currents By VIVIENNE ROCH 01 Uumfcr*Jon"' c*mbrid"- h«>™<* u-»tr.% fmmmt time now, Howard Mumford Jones, who referred to himself recent nppointment to the De»nship of the Harvard Graduate Sim •* Artg 111(1 fctaM" as having "gunk to be an administrator of •«$r tad who resigned subsequently because he had tired of being a "g.-ar-elerk," *•» been considered the bad boy of the academy...
...De Voto in ideas and talent, had yet not so reminiscentiy exposed the limitations of his literary prejudices...
...Before 1 discuss what "Cross Section" is, let me sketch out what it might have been...
...For example, he seems to identify "naturalism" in the novel as an ethic, a mode of conduct, and nowhere recognizes it aa a method...
...Moreover, our literature despite its high technical dexterity lacks "nobility...
...Actually, the mod irstien of Mr...
...I ask nobody to surrender his honest conviction," a few sentences later he forgeta all caution when he exhorts, "Surely the lime is ripe for inspiring words .. ." and hopes that literature will insist that "the wishes that Mr...
...Jones saya that T. S. Eliot's announcement that he is conservative, Catholic and royalist, "may have...
...But it is as a literary historian that Mr...
...The war haa stimulated a great deal of excellent writing, aa atraight reportage or under the cloak of fiction, which no anthology claiming to be a cross-section ahould ignore...
...But this too has been overlooked by Mr...
...Thsre are perhaps three or four decent contributions, but it would be unfair to name them in this company...
...upon the adjustment...
...His basic position has been to urge, in eminently sound and reasonable terms a -mature interpretation of our own intellectual history (as) . . one of the important eoneenu of American scholarship...
...In the face of all thia evidence, a tolerant man can only surmise...
...Unfortunately, in both the esssy on 18th Century liberslism aa well as in one on European ideas in 19th Century America, Mr...
...And what a curious bed-fellow is Matthews, that second-rate literary historian of the "genteel tradition" for the rest of that brave com :ny...
...Jones finds that "for something over a quarter of a century it has in the main unconsciously failed to support that tradition...
...Seaver, along with more dlreetly literary criticism such as Lionel Trilling and Alfred Kann, to name but two, are writing today...
...Jones admittedly devotes eight of tbem as "Ideas" of a "general and hortatory" nature...
...There are short stories, plsys, poems, even one helping of "criticism" seeking to prognosticate a "War and Peace" to coma—for the most par...
...One questions whether even Mr...
...On the whole, however, one is left with the feeling that Mr...
...Jones is not primarily a Jefferson scholar and the materiale I refer to have only become available recently...
...Jonea argued, merely, for a more reasonable distribution of percentages...
...Jones' weaknesses show up most clearly...
...As for the short story department . . . I am unable not to make individious comparisons between the present collection and the seversl volumes of "American Caravan" which, despite a certain dsted quslity ,sre still Interesting documents in the history of post-war experimentalism...
...Happily, Professor Jones' assays, dating in com,nlHin from 1984 to IMS, nowhere betrsy the taint of the dangerous and narie*r ehauviniam which the hand wagon lalhsadaita in tha colleges and universities ere displaying...
...By PAUL CASTELAR The whither-are-we-drifters and the critical pot-wallopers have for some time been making a great to-do over the state of American letters...
...However, Mr...
...There is no question in my mind as to Mr...
...Seaver has .let friendship or political indebtedness run awsy with his sense of literary valuss...
...And although he does *at present a program of his own, his *nal stand is with those philosophers of tbt Enlightenment who saw that "A durable order of peace in the world . . . ¦est'he based . . . upon comprehension ¦ • upon the concept of the human race, "•tsf tribalism...
...Seaver has moved in other directions...
...The moderate reader will note after a cursory glance at "Cross-Section" that Mr...
...We must get out from under the shadow of Occidental tribalism...
...Jones sometimes relies on slick writing rather than on profound investigation...
...The war has also shaken critical writing out of its rut and forced many critics into a re-examination of values...
...Most of our important writers, they say, are of 1920's vintage...
...Recent studies of Jefferson's philosophy hare adequately refuted that notion...
...He hss thrown together an anthology whose criteria ars neither experimental nor traditional...
...Either Mr...
...1J.60...
...The highest common'denomlnator seems to be a predilection for what msy be called "the Mike Gold school of literature...
...We must alter •ur whole concept of cultural education on both practical and theoretical grounds...
Vol. 27 • September 1944 • No. 39
