The Birmingham age-herald., 1922-06-11
PEEWSH LITERARY ARGUING INF FISTS
 LONDON CIRCLES
Wells Is Attacked as Alleged Leader of Vulgar and
 Indecent Contemporaries
nr NoRMAN MArsoN

bN fNOhNbaEs hAA9ON
 Special Correspondent of The Age Herald
 Copyright 1929, by The Age-HeraidJ
 London, June lO.--It has been
 week of rather peevis., literary
 arguing, and whether literary
 controversy can he conducted
 without using "pep" or "darn
 Iiternry,1 as shane Leslie ayers
 in his rebuikt of sinclair Lewis
 hearty criticism of British con-
 ternporaries, it evidently can
 hardly he conducted without
 "suppressions' and ''Iibfd~.'
 Leslie, having criticised Lewis as "tempter" and his English, points out by way of refuting the state- ment that American writers are pat ronized by the English literaries; that Whitman was hailed and glori- fled by English writers; that Edith Wharton and Hergesheimer are ap- preciated, that some critics have reed Carl sandburg, James Branch Caben and Henry Mencken. Apparently he has never heard of Sherwood An de1 son. And as for there being no vitality in English writers, while in America there is Life vigor, adven- ture and experiments" he dosent think that American's twenty years of experimenting will match up with Ezra Pound. synge and lame Joyce.
 Walls, Fiction Vulgar
 Dean Inge publishes 8 newspaper article criticising the alleged Vul- sarity and indeceney in much of mo- dern English fiction. referring par ticularly to H. G. Wells latest book, Secret Place of the leart, Mr. Wells replies: "The book Is per fectly straightforward and on the whole rather brutal treatment Of the cnoflict between sexual drtre and the desire for human service. 1t IS the only really sexual book have wrlt- ten in all this large amount or writ- ing since 1914" After naming his eight last books ie asks the Dean where he finds a growing obses- sion of sensuous ideas2 It Is not there. Where, on the other hand IS that scholarly accuracy tstaiemehs that once distinguished Dean lhees note instead the growing sloVeh- liness of phrases and thought ol tolcrat public old. would like to utter a protest against this non sense of the Deans that 1t IS posslole to write love stories without se'-- uality."
 "The homely deminders of the Anglican marriage service shouiq have taught him better. Even among the higher clergy, love I understahu' is an afa between pople of the opnosite sex and turns on that op- position. It seems to be that people who profess to love and undertake 10 marry without strong sexual desires are the worst sort of unpleasant ana intolerable people and that love stories without a wholesome under tone of sensuousness are not so com neEdable as he would have us thln h' Dean Inge praises cranioru lDy Mrs. Gaskill) I supposed because U is all about the oddities of poor thWare-t ed old maids"
 Shaw Extoils Wells
 And MT. Shaw, after explaining James Joyce by saying he was brought up on the reticenees or tns heroes and heroines of Sir Walter Scott. have just read MT Wells newest book, and 1 swear 1t contains no ugly story of seduction tquot- ing the deanJ. Is MT Wells to de- scribe sexual human nature faiseiy' as the yictorians require to be de scribed, or is he to describe 1t as II actually is? It seems to me that when the dean applies the word eseductione to a perfectly natural attraction between two fully grown and highly capable adults, he quail fies it as ugly. he is for once in his life writing like a taboo-ridden dean instead of one of the mentally most gifted Englishmen now living. MT. Wells does not shrk facts because they are considered seandaious, es- pecialiy when the conventional foun- dation of that view of them is Be- coming more and more questionable' but I cannot find in his books a trace of that morbidezza which dis gusts the dean. and which is very largely produced by the fact that the