New-York tribune., 1920-10-27
By
Heywood Broun

! Lewis's heroine is "a somewhat futile
person who beats her head against
wall and finds at the end that the wall
Is still there And in being somewhat
futile l think Nh Lewis's heroines is
fairly typical of many of u.s. If this
young woman is defeated by the town
1t IS not merely because the town is dull.
but because she is weak. The book
really shows. not only what is the
matter with Gopher Prairie, but what
is the matter with his heroine: not only
what is the matter with commercial
America, but what is the matter with US
who don't like comlnercalism Perhaps
Mr.. Lewis intended to show this; but if
he did, think his enthusiasm for
showing up the town so far exceeded his
candor about his heroine that he failed
of impartiality. In short, | would have
liked Mr.. Lewis's book better if it had
been so written that you had hailed it,
not as satire on Gopher Prairie, but
on the current type of we'll meaning
and Intellectual young dealist.
THAT nrey be merely a matter of
preference; but it is pertinent to nv
point Conceded that Gopher Prairie
has something to learn from Mr. Lewis's
ideahstic young heroine. so has she
something to learn from Gopher Prairie
And what | complain of is that she
never learns anything. There is at the
beginning something essentially silly
about all young idealism; do not say
this in condemnation, but in mere de-
scription, as I might identify par
ticular kind of bird by the color of its
wings. AS matter of fact, I admire
this kind of Stiffness. The Stiffness of q
young Shelley IS one of the most beau
tlful things in the world But it is silli-
ness just the same 1t consists in be-
havlng-often quite magniticently-
though certain well known facts were
non-existent. Shelley, for instance. be-
haved as though jealousy were non
existent. He believed there could be
love without jealousy-as a baby might
believe that there could be fire without
burning. But the burnt child has
learned something about the nature of
fire And the sillest young idealist can
learn something about the nature of
the world in which he lives. 1t happens
that we gain our knowledge mostly
through pain. What I object to in Mr..
LeWis's book is that he gives us the
story of an exceedingly painful expe-
rlence without suggesting even the pos
sibility that its victim might have
protited by the experience
"Mr. Lewis's reference to Dante eno-
gests a way of emphasizing my point.
Dante put his enemies in hell. which
IS what Mr.. Lewis has practically done
IN this book of his. But Dante observed
precise discrimination in the kind Of
doom to which he assigned his charac
ters Thus, though he could not forgive
Paolo and Francesca for offending
against the Divine order, yet he did
not put them in hell but just outside it.
And his reason was that after all
theirs was crime of passion. What Mr..
Lewis fails to observe is that the
crimes of American commercialism are
IN some part also crimes of passion. The
fury with which American salesmanship
desecrates the landscape with sign
boards is merely the last flicker of the
flame which once shot up toward the sky
IN the French Revolution-the flame in
which all the beauty as we'll as all the
injustice of the old aristocratic order
was consumed. These American COM
mercialists really believe in CONNER
calism as a gospel-which Mr.. Lewis |
notes, but only to set it down, with an
arr of surprise, as new offense against
them. They do terrible things in the
name of kind of progress which is |
really sacred to them. And only BY |,