critic, nor is it open to him to let his virtuous political and social
he suffered from a sadly limited intellect, for so much fancy and so
opinions do duty for percipience. To throw out Poe because he
much art could scarcely be needed unless the writer were trying to
cannot be conveniently fitted into a theory of American culture, to
exploit to the utmost the few poor ideas that he had.
speak of him as a biological sport and as a mind apart from the
Hawthorne, then, was "forever dealing with shadows, and he
main current, to find his gloom to be merely personal and eccentric,
knew that he was dealing with shadows." Perhaps so, but shadows
"only the atrabilious wretchedness of a dipsomaniac," as Haware also part of reality and one would not want a world without thorne's was "no more than the skeptical questioning of life by a
shadows, it would not even be a "real" world. But we must get benature that knew no fierce storms," to judge Melville's response to yond Parrington's metaphor. The fact is that Hawthorne was deal
American life to be less noble than that of Bryant or of Greeley, to
ing beautifully with realities, with substantial things. The man who
speak of Henry James as an escapist, as an artist similar to Whistler,
could raise those brilliant and serious doubts about the nature and
a man characteristically afraid of stress-this is not merely to be mispossibility of moral perfection, the man who could keep himself taken in aesthetic judgment; rather it is to examine without attenaloof from the "Yankee reality" and who could dissent from the tion and from the point of view of a limited and essen�ially arrogant
IO
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Reality in America
II
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conception of reality the documents which are in some respects the
themselves to virtually the same social and moral fact. The differmost suggestive testimony to what America was and is, and of course ence here is one of quality, and perhaps nothing is more typical of
to get no answer from them.
American liberalism than the way it has responded to the respective
Parrington lies twenty years behind us, and in the intervening
qualities of the two men.
time there has developed a body of opinion which is aware of his
Few critics, I suppose, no matter what their political disposition,
inadequacies and of the inadequacies of his coadjutors and disciples,
have ever been wholly blind to James's great gifts, or even to the
who make up what might be called the literary academicism of
grandiose moral intention of these gifts. And few critics have ever
liberalism. Yet Parrington still stands at the center of American
been wholly blind to Dreiser's great faults. But by liberal critics
thought about American culture because, as I say, he expresses the
James is traditionally put to the ultimate question: of , . .,hat use, of
chronic American belief that there exists an opposition between
what actual political use, are his gifts and their intention? Granted
reality and mind and that one must enlist oneself in the party of
that James was devoted to an extraordinary moral perceptiveness,
reality.
granted too that moral perceptiveness has something to do with politics and the social life, of what possible practical value in our world of impending disaster can James's work be? And James's style, his
II
characters, his subjects, and even his own social origin and the
This belief in the incompatibility of mind and reality is exemplimanner of his personal life are adduced to show that his work fied by the doctrinaire indulgence which liberal intellectuals have
cannot endure the question. To James no quarter is given by Amerialways displayed toward Theodore Dreiser, an indulgence which becan criticism in its political and liberal aspect. But in the same decomes the worthier of remark when it is contrasted with the liberal gree that liberal criticism is moved by pol:tical considerations to
severity toward Henry James. Dreiser and James: with that juxtatreat James with severity, it treats Dreiser with the most sympathetic position we are immediately at the dark and bloody crossroads
indulgence. Dreiser's literary faults, it gives us to understand, are
where literature and politics meet. One does not go there gladly, but
essentially social and political virtues. It was Parrington who estabnowadays it is not exactly a matter of free choice whether one does lished the formula for the liberal criticism of Dreiser by calling him
or does not go. As for the particular juxtaposition itself, it is ina "peasant": when Dreiser thinks stupidly, it is because he has the evitable and it has at the present moment far more significance than
slow stubbornness of a peasant; when he writes badly, it is because
the juxtaposition which once used to be made between James and
he is impatient of the sterile literary gentility of the bourgeoisie. It is
Whitman. It is not hard to contrive factitious oppositions between
as if wit, and flexibility of mind, and perception, and knowledge
James and Whitman, but the real difference between them is the
were to be equated with aristocracy and political reaction, while
difference between the moral mind, with its awareness of tragedy,
dullness and stupidity must naturally suggest a virtuous democracy,
irony, and multitudinous distinctions, and the transcendental mind,
as in the old plays.
with its passionate sense of the oneness of multiplicity. James and
The liberal judgment of Dreiser and James goes back of politics,
Whitman are unlike not in quality but in kind, and in their very
goes back to the cultural assumptions that make politics. We are still
opposition they serve to complement each other. But the difference
haunted by a kind of political fear of the intellect which Tocqueville
between James and Dreiser is not of kind, for both men addressed
observed in us more than a century ago. American intellectuals,
12
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Reality in America
13
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when they are being consciously American or political, are remarkmore significant, is the comment which Granville Hicks makes in ably quick to suggest that an art which is marked by perception and
The Great Tradition when he deals with James's stories about artists
knowledge, although all very well in its way, can never get us
and remarks that such artists as James portrays, so concerned for
through gross dangers and difficulties. And their misgivings become
their art and their integrity in art, do not really exist: "After all,
the more intense when intellect works in art as it ideally should,
who has ever known such artists? Where are the Hugh Verekers,
when its processes are vivacious and interesting and brilliant. It is
the Mark Ambients, the Neil Paradays, the Overts, Limberts, Denthen that we like to confront it with the gross dangers and difficombes, Delavoys?" This question, as Mr. Hicks admits, had occulties and to challenge it to save us at once from disaster. When incurred to James himself, but what answer had James given to it?
tellect in art is awkward or dull we do not put it to the test of ulti
"If the life about us for t
he last thirty years refused warrant for these
mate or immediate practicality. No liberal critic asks the question of
examples," he said in the preface to volume xn of the New York
Dreiser whether his moral preoccupations are going to be useful in
Edition, "then so much the worse for that life .... There are deconfronting the disasters that t;hreaten us. And it is a judgment on cencies that in the name of the general self-respect we must take for
the proper nature of mind, rather than any actual political meaning
granted, there's a rudimentary intellectual honor to which we must,
that might be drawn from the works of the two men, which acin the interest of civilization, at least pretend." And to this Mr.
counts for the unequal justice they have received from the pro
Hicks, shocked beyond argument, makes this reply, which would
gressive critics. If it could be conclusively demonstrated-by, say,
be astonishing had we not heard it before: "But this is the purest
documents in James's handwriting-that James explicitly intended
romanticism, this writing about what ought to be rather than
his books to be understood as pleas for co-operatives, labor unions,
what is!"
better housing, and more equitable taxation, the American critic in
The "odors of the shop" are real, and to those who breathe them
his liberal and progressive character would still be worried by James
they guarantee a sense of vitality from which James is debarred.
because his work shows so many of the electric qualities of mind.
The idea of intellectual honor is not real, and to that chimera James
And if something like the opposite were proved of Dreiser, it would
was devoted. He betrayed the reality of what is in the interests of
be brushed aside-as his doctrinaire anti-Semitism has in fact been
what ought to be. Dare we trust him? The question, we remember,
brushed aside-because his books have the awkwardness, the chaos,
is asked by men who themselves have elaborate transactions with
the heaviness which we associate with "reality." In the American
what ought to be. Professor Beard spoke in the name of a growing,
metaphysic, reality is always material reality, hard, resistant, undeveloping, and improving America. Mr. Hicks, when he wrote formed, impenetrable, and unpleasant. And that mind is alone felt
The Great Tradition, was in general sympathy with a nominally
to be trustworthy which most resembles this reality by most nearly
radical movement. But James's own transaction with what ought
reproducing the sensations it affords.
to be is suspect because it is carried on through what I have called
In The Rise of American Civilization, Professor Beard uses a sigthe electrical qualities of mind, through a complex and rapid imaginificant phrase when, in the course of an ironic account of James's nation and with a kind of authoritative immediacy. Mr. Hicks
career, he implies that we have the clue to the irrelevance of that
knows that Dreiser is "clumsy" and "stupid" and "bewildered" and
career when we know that James was "a whole generation removed
"crude in his statement of materialistic monism"; he knows that
from the odors of the shop." Of a piece with this, and in itself even
Dreiser in his personal life-which is in point because James's per-
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15
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sonal life is always supposed to be so much in point-was not quite
those who used-or, as Mr. Burgum says, utilized-"the diction of
emancipated from "his boyhood longing for crass material success,"
the Middle West, pretty much as it was spoken, rich in colloquialshowing "again and again a desire for the ostentatious luxury of the ism and frank in the simplicity and directness of the pioneer tradisuccessful business man." But Dreiser is to be accepted and forgiven tion," and that this diction took the place of "the literary English,
because his faults are the sad, lovable, honorable faults of reality
formal and bookish, of New England provincialism that was closer
itself, or of America itself-huge, inchoate, struggling toward exto the aristocratic spirit of the mother country than to the tang of pression, caught between the dream of raw power and the dream
everyday life in the new West." This is mere fantasy. Hawthorne,
of morality.
Thoreau, and Emerson were for the most part remarkably colloquial
"The liability in what Santayana called the genteel tradition was
-they wrote, that is, much as they spoke; their prose was specifically
due to its being the product of mind apart from experience. Dreiser
American in quality, and, except for occasional lapses, quite direct
gave us the stuff of our common experience, not as it was hoped to
and simple. It is Dreiser who lacks the sense of colloquial dictionbe by any idealizing theorist, but as it actually was in its crudity."
that of the Middle West or any other. If we are to talk of bookish
The author of this statement certainly cannot be accused of any lack
ness, it is Dreiser who is bookish; he is precisely literary in the bad
of feeling for mind as Henry James represents it; nor can Mr.
sense; he is full of flowers of rhetoric and shines with paste gems;
Matthiessen be thought of as a follower of Parrington-indeed, in
at hundreds of points his diction is not only genteel but fancy. It is
the preface to American Renaissance he has framed one of the sharphe who speaks of "a scene more distingue than this," or of a woman est and most cogent criticisms of Parrington's method. Yet Mr.
"artistic in form and feature," or of a man who, although "strong,
Matthiessen, writing in the New York Times Book Review about
reserved, aggressive, with an air of wealth and experience, was soi
Dreiser's posthumous novel, The Bulwark, accepts the liberal cliche
disant and not particularly eager to stay at home." Colloquialism
which opposes crude experience to mind and establishes Dreiser's
held no real charm for him and his natural tendency is always
.value by implying that the mind which Dreiser's crude experience
toward the "fine":
is presumed to confront and refute is the mind of gentility.
This implied amalgamation of mind with gentility is the rationale
. .. Moralists come and go; religionists fulminate and declare the
of the long indulgence of Dreiser, which is extended even to the
pronouncements of God as to this; but Aphrodite still reigns. Emstyle of his prose. Everyone is aware that Dreiser's prose style is full bowered in the festal depths of the spring, set above her altars of
porphyry, chalcedony, ivory and gold, see her smile the smile that is at
of roughness and ungainliness, and the critics who admire Dreiser
once the texture and essence of delight, the glory and despair of the
tell us it does not matter. Of course it does not matter. No reader
world! Dream on, oh Buddha, asleep on your lotus leaf, of an undiswith a right sense of style would suppose that it does matter, and he turbed Nirvana! Sweat, oh Jesus, your last agonizing drops over an
might even find it a virtue. But it has been taken for granted that
unregenerate world! I
n the forests of Pan still ring the cries of the
the ungainliness of Dreiser's style is the only possible objection to be
worshippers of Aphrodite! From her altars the incense of adoration
made to it, and that whoever finds in it any fault at all wants a
ever rises! And see, the new red grapes dripping where votive hands
new-press them!
prettified genteel sty le ( and is objecting to the ungainliness of reality
itself). For instance, Edwin Berry Burgum, in a leaflet on Dreiser
Charles Jackson, the novelist, telling us in the same leaflet that
put out by the Book Find Club, tells us that Dreiser was one of
Dreiser's style does not matter, remarks on how much still comes to
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Reality in America
17
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us when we have lost by translation the stylistic brillance of Thomas
ing a scene as this, important? Bunk! It is som
_
� form of titillat�ng
Mann or the Russians or Balzac. He is in part right. And he is right
illusion with about as much import to the supenor forces that bnng
too when he says that a certain kind of conscious, supervised artistry
it all about as the functions and gyrations of a fly. No more. And
is not appropriate to the novel of large dimensions. Yet the fact is
maybe less." Thus Dreiser at sixty. And yet there is for him always
that the great novelists have usually written very good prose, and
the vaulgarly saving suspicion that maybe, when all is said and done,
what comes through even a bad translation is exactly the power of
there is Something Behind It All. It is much to the point of his inmind that made the well-hung sentence of the original text. In literatellectual vulgarity that Dreiser's anti-Semitism was not merely a ture style is so little the mere clothing of thought-need it be insocial prejudice but an idea, a way of dealing with difficulties.
sisted on at this late date ?-that we may say that from the earth of
No one, I suppose, has ever represented Dreiser as a masterly inthe novelist's prose spring his characters, his ideas, and even his story tellect. It is even commonplace to say that his ideas are inconsistent
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