The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1833-1916, 1916-04-15
Booth Harrington. author of
Seventeen" (Harper.)

in Britain. with the same class. for.
truth to tell. a certain sort OF reader.
passionately DESTROYS TO belong to a cult.
doesn't know the difference bet first
rate and a good second. They are like the
musical devotees who have h~ypnotized
themselves into believing that Mahler's
Eighth symphony Is great because he is
dead and German and DISCUSSES his
finsy inspiration under exceptional
raucousness.
Some fourteen wears ago 7 wrote an
article for the North American RerieU
called "Why Is American Literature
Bourgeois:" and about the same time a
character, an author. In one OF my hooks
remarked with gloom. "In England to ne
great you've only to bc dull. hut In
America to be great you've got to be a
euruch.''
We'll. I should not dream OF writing
that article or MEETING n OF my char
actors to make any such lament to-day.
Fourteen years ago American literature
was still In leading strings to what for
the sake ~ corcentiatlon may be called
the old atlantic Mou'hly tradition. con-
ventional, correct. littloist.c. hin. cata-
loguing the deeper passions and inn
pulses that motivate even the highest
civilization as indecent. and any iuci-
dent striking enough to obtain huspi-
tally by the daily newspaper as far too
melodramatic for a really refined novel.
Any author. trrn vii, the group OF Drain
coils that produced fiction too naturally,
who was original and fearless WAS an
object of suspicion. not to say dire APP
prehcnsion the citadel was threatened.
Well. that old citadel Is In ruins to-
day. During the last ten years, partly
owing to the best OF the cheaper maya
zines, which. forced tn MI their pages,
were hospitable to new writer's and less
eNoctinC so long as they could tell m In
teresting story, encouraging hundreds to
try their hand at a reflex of real life
fiction that was neither aristocratic nor
wrapped its realism up in a number
Of new l~ndiyiduali,ics have arisen and
formed a new. and as 1t proved an ire
sistiblc, order.
For tho point II this: These popular
writer's of to-day. some Of whom write
well both by ~instins, and delfbcration.
while others are %culpably careless con-
sidering their gifts. are expressing their
own country. They not only depict the
American scene. but their work Is so
informed with the American spirit that
one may hope at last that intellectual
sr~obbishness Ia making It's hnal exit
from American letters. The old fogies
will all he dead soon, and the formal
lists among the younger critics are so
few in number and So lahorcd in their
attempts to impress tho reader with their
superiority to anything accepted by he
public that they only succeed in being
dull and are hardly worth mentioning,
If the literature ~ the country means
anything II means that 4, Is tho actual as
well as the dramatized expression Of
that country, and must always rank as
current history. Its creators should he
encouraged. not constantly and odiously
compared with writer's Of an older land,
who of course are doing their own duty
at home. ] never shall forget one of
these much-and justly-admired Eng
llsh novelists saying to me- once If
YOU could but know how we envy yoli
American authors with your practically
mex haustible new fields and types! over
hero We have to use the same old
material over and over again. beating
our brains to make II look new, All We
can do IL to go on developing our in
~tellects and working out a philosophy.
digging deeper and deeper nto human
nature. over there you rarely dig as
deeply as we do because you have such
an enormous amount Of fresh and vivid
and perfectly new material that YOU
haven't the need. But some day you will
come to the end Of II and then you will
find yourselves JUST Wnere We are now
and we will ave disappeared altogether,
That Is to say the British author will
have ceased to exist. He simply will
have nothing more to write about. Don't
envy us. Let us env you"
Don't waste time writing to ask mo
Who that was. for 7 shall mt toll Rut
he was quite right, As ] said before let
us read and be thankful for the best
that England can give US, but for
heavens sake let us discriminate be-
tween the vital stock and the "younger
sons dixie w. L.. George and one James
Stephens, for instance), and above all let
MS read and encourage our own, FOR
they are doing magnificent work. fear
less. vital. informing and above all
vivid work.
owen Johnson made an admirable sIg-
gestiOn some time ago: that , cert in
number OF the established authors should
make an arrangement with tho eview
pages Of our magazines and newspapers
whereby we could zach write n criticism
three or four times Il yea on some one
Of the arriving American writer's. u
criticism both encouraging and soundly
analytical. Many Of them have 4
tendency to write ~oolloauially In the text.