T^he Saturdap Review of Jliterature
Heroes and Monsters
T
HIRTY years ago, I objected to the
evasive idealism in American n o v -
els. Nowadays, I object to the
aimless violence. Not that I oppose
either evasiveness or violence as ma-
terial for fiction, provided the whole
cloth is not cut, as dressmakers say,
on the bias, and draped round a
lay figure in a uniform style. But
whenever I watch the professional
rebels against gentility basking
in that lurid light so fashionable
at present among t h e genteel, I
remember with a smile the local
t h u n d e r - s t o r m that followed my
first modest effort to overturn a
literary convention.
Thus it occurs to m e that the
flavor of plain truth, culled from
long and sometimes bitter e x p e r i -
ence, may not be unwholesome today.
For of all the weeds that grow and r u n
wild in Southern soil, plain t r u t h is the
most difficult to serve without sauce.
Moreover, there does not exist in the
South today, nor has there ever e x -
isted at any time, a treatment of t r u t h
in fiction so plain and broad that it
could be called, with fairness, a school
of realism. There are, no doubt, a few
scattered realists, as lonely as sincerity
in any field, who dwell outside the Land
of Fable inhabited by fairies and gob-
lins. B u t goblins are as unreal as fairies;
and beneath the red paint and c h a r -
coal. Raw - Head - and - Bloody - Bones, is
our battered old friend, J a c k - t h e - G i a n t -
Killer. We remain incurably romantic.
Only a puff of smoke separates the fabu-
lous Southern hero of t h e past from the
fabulous Southern monster of t h e present
—or the tender dreams of James Lane
Allen from the fantastic nightmares of
William Faulkner.
So I shall pass on while I toss a m a g -
nolia blossom to those intrepid novelists
who have won fine Southern reputations
in the North—the only climate, it appears,
that has ever been favorable to Southern
literary reputations. To confine myself to
a few of the notable successes of t h e
Spring, I congratulate Miss Chilton, Miss
Roberts, Mr. Wolfe, Mr. Faulkner, Mr.
Berry Fleming, Mr. Hamilton Basso. I
welcome Mr. Stark Young's glowing r e -
affirmation of courage in defeat. I salute
Dr. Freeman's superb life of Lee, which
has restored not only p u r e biography to
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"Only a puff oj smoke separates the jabu-
lous Southern hero . . ." (see next page)
English letters, after a period of wild oats
and light living, b u t even t h e obsolete
word " d u t y " to t h e American tongue. A n d
nothing, I am persuaded, unless it is a r e -
covered faith in Santa Claus, could confer
greater happiness on a liberated world
than the miraculous resurrection of t h e
sense of duty. In a sultry age, w h e n we
need the tonic of a bracing literature,
character has become a lost quantity in
fiction, and we miss the full, clear, com-
manding note of t h e disciplined mind.
Our very vocabulary whines or blusters.
T u r n i n g from t h e formal traditions in
Mr. Young's book, which is more history
than romance, to the inflamed rabble of
impulses in t h e contemporary Southern
novel, one asks immediately: What is
left of the pattern? Has Southern life—or
is it only Southern fiction—become one
vast, disordered sensibility? Is there no
Southern horizon beyond Joyce? W h e r e
is that "immoderate past" celebrated in
Mr. Allen Tate's loyal "Ode to t h e Con-
federate Dead"? Has "the salt of their
blood" oozed away in a flicker of irides-
cent scum on the marshes? Does defeat
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May I 1935
always appear nobler t h a n victory? Or is
the whole tedious mass production of d e -
generacy in our fiction—^the current lit-
erary gospel of futility and despair—
merely a single symptom of t h e n e u r -
oses inflicted on its slaves by t h e
conquering dynamo?
Already, I think, we have a n -
swered most of these questions.
Not the South alone, b u t the
whole modern world, after its r e -
cent bold escape from supersti-
tion, is in fact trembling before
its own shadow. We are trying to
r u n away from o u r shadows u n -
der the delusion that w e are r u n -
ning away from the past. But it is
as useless to r u n away from t h e
past as it is to r u n away from what
we call life. Wherever w e go, we still
carry life, and t h a t root of life which
is the past, in our tribal memories, in
our nerves, in our arteries. All w e can
do is to deny or distort t h e shifting
semblance we k n o w as reality. And
so the fantasy of abominations has
stolen t h e proud stilts of the romantics.
To borrow Mr. Gerald W. Johnson's
amusing expression, Southern fiction
"comes stepping high," as of old, only it
is now stepping over a bog instead of a
battlefield. F a r t h e r away, beyond the
authentic masters of horror, press and
push the rows of ambitious amateurs, who
imagine that they are realists because
they have tasted a stew of spoilt meat.
But it takes more t h a n spoilt meat to
make realism. It takes, among other a t t r i -
butes, a seasoned philosophy and a m a -
t u r e outlook on life.
For thirty years I have had a part in
the American literary scene, either as a l a -
borer in the vineyard or as a raven croak-
ing on a bust of Pallas. In all these years
I have found that t h e only permanent law
in art, as in the social order, is the law of
change. Although it may be t r u e that w e
cannot change h u m a n nature, history
(Continued on next page)
Wext
EDNA FERBER: A PORTRAIT
By LOUIS BROMFIELD
THE LEAGUE OF AMERICAN WRITERS
By JOHN CHAMBERLAIN

"from the fahulous Southern monster."
proves on every page, as Mr. J o h n C h a m -
berlain has observed, t h a t w e can and
constantly do change h u m a n behavior. I
have seen fashions in fiction and in b e -
havior shift and alter and pass away while
we watched them. I have seen reputations
swell out and b u r s t with wind and shrivel
up into d a m p rags of I n d i a - r u b b e r . I h a v e
seen, not without sardonic amusement,
the balance of power in American letters
pass from genteel mediocrity with hair
on t h e face to truculent mediocrity with
down on t h e chest.
For these and other reasons, t h e last
position I would assume is that of the lone
defender of t h e h u m a n species in modern
fiction. I needed no peep at w a r to teach
me t h a t w e live among evils. I needed no
"planned economy" to prove to m e that
these evils are of our own making. It may
be true, as our more popular novelists a s -
sure us, that w e are doomed. It m a y be
t r u e that all is lost to us b u t moral and
physical disintegration, and w e should
hasten out, while it is yet day, to gather
in that rich literary harvest. This, I r e -
peat, m a y be true. One may point to life
and prove anything; it all depends on the
pointing. A n d despair itself may be vital;
it m a y be strong; it m a y be courageous;
t h o u g h only w o r m s can survive t h e d a m p
chill of negation. F e w things, however,
a r e more certain t h a n this:—the litera-
t u r e that crawls too long in the m i r e will
lose at last the power of standing erect.
On t h e farther side of deterioration lies
t h e death of a culture.
But, even so, w h e n the worst has been
written, it is not an ignoble fate—it is not
an u n h a p p y fate—to go down still fighting
against t h e inevitable. T h a t is a t r i u m p h
of t h e will, not a s u r r e n d e r ; and if n o t h -
ing pleasanter m a y be said of t h e inevi-
table, at least it is w o r t h fighting. W h a t -
ever contemporary fiction m a y think of
love, the world h a s shown from t h e b e -
ginning that it loves fighters. Nor is the
impulse toward something better, or at
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(Scene from Caldwell's "Tobacco Road.")
least different, confined to humanity; it
. r u n s back and forth through all n a t u r e .
We a r e too apt to forget that the earliest
recorded conquest over destiny was
achieved by a fish. Nowadays, while we
puzzle over the h u m a n mass movement
back into t h e slime, it is well to remind
ourselves of our first revolutionary a n -
cestor, that "insane fish," so lovingly com-
memorated by Mr. J a m e s Branch Cabell,
"who somehow evolved the idea that it
was his duty to live on land, and e v e n t u -
ally succeeded in doing it." Surely that
high exploit deserves a more appropriate
memorial t h a n sophisticated barbarism
and t h e sentimental cult of corruption.
The revolutionary fish no longer leaps.
Although the word Revolution is in the
air, the t r u e spirit is wanting. Instead, we
breathe in a suffocating sense of futility.
That liberal hope of which we dreamed in>
my youth appears to have won no finer
freedom than an age of little fads and t h e
right to cry ugly words in the street. Not
for whims like these do men unite and
live or die happily. T h e t r u e revolution
may end in a ditch or in the shambles; but
it must begin in t h e stars. There must be
bliss, as Wordsworth found, in that dawn,
"with h u m a n n a t u r e seeming born again."
I am not asking t h e novelist of t h e
Southern Gothic school to change his m a -
terial. The Gothic as Gothic, not as pseu-
do-realism, has an important place in our
fiction. Besides, I k n o w too well that t h e
born novelist does not choose his subject;
he is chosen by it. All I ask him to do is
to deal as honestly with living tissues as
he now deals with decay, to remind h i m -
self that t h e colors of putrescence have no
greater validity for our age, or for any
age, t h a n have—let u s say, to be v e r y d a r -
ing—^the cardinal virtues. For, as a great
modern philosopher has written: "An
honorable end is t h e one thing that c a n -
not be taken from a man."
This article was read to the Friends of
the Princeton Library on April 25.
The Saturdap Review
"The First American
Writers' Congress"
By J O H N CHAMBERLAIK
L
AST week in New York City, at
Mecca Temple on Friday evening
^ and at The N e w School for Social
Research on S a t u r d a y and Sunday, w r i t -
ers of a generally "leftist" orientation
gathered to attend w h a t was advertised as
the First American Writers' Congress. The
aim of t h e Congress was to create a
League of American Writers to oppose the
spread of both fascism and war. Moving
spirits in calling this Congress w e r e the
American Communist P a r t y and t h e e d i -
tors and contributors to t h e communist
literary periodicals, such as The New
Masses a n d The Partisan Review, b u t t h e
instigators disavowed any desire to c r e -
ate a specifically communist organization.
The League, it was explained, would be
broadly based, a united front manoeuvre,
with only fascists and " o u t - a n d - o u t " r e -
actionaries excluded. Membership in it
will not imply acceptance of t h e C o m -
munist political position.
So far as literature goes, t h e speakers at
the various sessions certainly showed no
willingness to accept any "party l i n e " for
criticism, the drama, t h e novel, and p o -
etry. Earl Browder, speaking for the
Communist P a r t y at t h e Mecca Temple
gathering, said there was no desire on the
part of t h e communists to m a k e good
writers over into "bad strike leaders," to
dictate the forms or t h e materials of t h e
writer, or to put artists into uniform. The
New School sessions, at which Edwin
Seaver discussed t h e "proletarian novel,"
Isidor Schneider "proletarian poetry," and
James T. Farrell t h e short story, devel-
oped a wide diversity of opinion, with Mr.
Farrell, at least, seemingly contradicting
the speech made by Granville Hicks on
the "Development of Marxist Criticism."
Josephine Herbst, a u t h o r of "The E x e -
cutioner Waits," stood on Mr. Seaver's
side against those who urged on all p r o -
letarian writers the example of Zola who
went out to investigate the lot of t h e coal
miners of F r a n c e . Among t h e other
speakers at t h e N e w School sessions w e r e
Malcolm Cowley, K e n n e t h B u r k e , Corliss
Lamont, E d w a r d Dahlberg, J o h n H o w a r d
Lawson, Meridel Le S u e u r , Tillie Lerner,
Jack Conroy, Waldo F r a n k , Matthew J o -
sephson, H e n r y Hart, and Alexander
Trachtenberg.
The absence of Trotskyite and socialist
writers, of "third p a r t y " advocates and
free lance radicals, from t h e meetings of
the congress raises questions which c a n -
not be discussed in the brief space of this
report. I shall consider these, and other
aspects of t h e American Writers' C o n -
gress, in a more extended article in next
week's Saturday Review.