Arizona republican., 1920-05-24
MT. Howell and Life

up when sad 10 lulI one to sleep, to occupy the time of idle women. It was then that America began to produce it's enormous crop of cheap writers, who flatter it's vanity by painting 1t always as the greatest and most civil lized country on earth, who write all ways Of the sweet and the beautiful, of brave men and beautiful ladies, or happy marriages, and blissful homes. They leave out all the struggle and woe, all the sordidness. Instead of teach ing men how to see the truth of life that they may make it better, they teach men how to fool themselves.
 Held Fiction Cheap
 America had proceeded on the as sumption that stories were but trivial things, the amusement of an idle hour The writers accepted this estimate of their place. as they were bound to do and they gave America trivial things. And thereby they made of America in many ways c fatuous fool, blind to her own faults. For men must have stories They have never been able to live without them. And they have always believed the stories they hear, l however preposterous. That IS Why you may measure the actual civiliza . tion of country so accurately by it's writers.
 Even the great writers of that period after the Civil war obeyed the popular behest to produce pretty trifles. Bret t1arIe was an arl1SL OI the AAEilCSI 1 skill but he wrote about California in | '49 with all the brutality and hard ship left out. making it as sad anu pretty as a fairy tale. taking his cue i from the sloppy tearfulness of Dickens, | but lacking the great Englishman's power of caricature and humor. Mark Twain, the giant of them all, wrote one ! book which was a fair picture of bar 1 barrie America in "EIuclxelberry Finn and then wasted the best part of his 1 life writing such things as his Joan 1 of Arc' and "The Prince and the Pau per- His final judgment of human 1 life he did not allow to be published until after his death.
 What Howelis Achieved
 Into this period of greed and intol- erance Howells emerged as young l written of brilliant gifts and clear vision. Into it also emerged Henry l James, who died recently an English man James looked America over and l then went to Europe and never came i back When he wrote of America it was only to satirize it bitterly. In him 1 America lost a great man because she 1 did not yet know how to use him. 1 Howelis. too. went to Europe, and too felt the charm of that older and 1 richer civilization and felt by comparl- son how greedy and ignorant and in l tolerant was America. Nevertheless I unlike James. he deliberately chose 10 stay in his own country and he re- solved to find his subjects in it, too l More than that, he determined to paint it as it was His picture of Stlas Lapham was a daring thing in its day 1 for it showed a typical American Duss- i ness man as an ignorant, vain and l sycophantic fellow.
 But Howells was after all the crea ture of his time. He drew some true pictures of America. but he lSow towed to the stuffy nabobs of Boston. repre- senting them as beings exalted ane perfect. And he had the American
 sQueamishness as to sex. All hi:
 love affairs were bloodiess. all hi.
 heroines sweet. proper and somewha
 unreal. He fell short of the achieve
 ment of a great novelist. not for wan
 of skill but for want of courage. Ye
 he dared much, and accomplished
 much. And as critic and editor. h'
 fought long and fiercely against tn, puerile romancers who until then has
 dominated the public mind. He wa
 the advance guard of American real
 ists, and prepared the way for thos
 who have come after him. and thos
 who are yet to come-the writers whi
 will teach America to see herself al
 she is, young. 1usty, ignorant, full o
 Illusion and energy. a loutish gfantes
 on the way to great things, needing
 only a clearer comprehension of her self.