The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1935-01-23

erS can best give their support to the working
class. 1t will also serve to clear up the technical
and esthetc problems that beset the writers at
such time of changing landmarks, and help to
reorientate them to new world of esthetics.
In preparation for this congress, wide discus
sion of literary problems is being planned in the
revolutionary and liberal press.
The letter by Edward Dahlberg, the novelist,
which follows will open such discussion in this
column I hope. Writers and workers are invited to
make their comment on it. I disagree with some
Of Dahlbsrgs Foundations, and shall reply to them
tomorrow;
Are Our Critics Too PatrOnizing?
THE number of books published in 1884 by revo-
lutionary, proletarian and fellow traveller novel
lists was exceedingly impressive; but what often
disheartening the way so many of these books
we're mishandled The New York Times for ex-
ample, either gives novels with definite working
class bias obituary notice or no mention what
ever. Clifton Fadiman in the New Yorker and
this is quite typical likes books very intensely in
four to lines that is books that are danger
GUS to like. Marxist books, we know, are betrayed
and sold out in much the manner as strikes,
and Marx himself had good deal to say about
the conspiracy of silence surrounding the pub
LEGATION of his own works.
ut is then correct to assume that these books,
which belong to us, would receive the most
munist press and magazines and that drive would
be launched to give these novels wide circula-
ton. But no such thing is done; frequently the
very contrary is true.
80 many reviews appearing in our various
magazines and periodicals are often series of
slogans and didactic instructions and are to boot
very patronizing Recently in the New Masses
Granville Hicks estimating proletarian literature
for 1884, passed out little gold stars to writer's
Ne If 1ar{fc and 10
least, is very offensive. For instance Hicks writes
dspraising author while he insults the other:
Langston Hughes Not without Laughter was more
disappointing than Calico Shoes because had
expected more. Later on he gives Waldo Frank
pedagogical pat the back, from above 7
honor him for his persistence and his honesty
Honoring highly serious author and ore of the
most gifted prose writer's in America today for
his persistence is simply obnoxious
Class Room Criticism
"A PERFECT illustration of this sort of haphazard
n inconsistency is Granville Hicks review of
Robert Cantwels Land of Plenty; it was a quiet
burial done in a brief ltany of about three hun
dred words Hicks wrote then: 8. The Land Of
Plenty fails to sweep the reader along, William
Rollins The Shadow Before does, to a high resolve
and sense of ultimate triumph When Cantwel
complained, Hicks rhetorcally slapped him down
to review it briefly and But it does not seem
to me that he (CantwelD raises the problem cogently
enough for his novel to deserve the political dis
cussion he demands In the Jan. issue of the New
Masses, Granville Hicks writes: The first part Of
Cantwells Land of Plenty has none of the faults
of The Shadow Before, and I rank it as the finest
piece of imaginative writing the revolutionary
movement in America has produced
These kinds Of class room lessons and contradic-
tonS fills the columns of DIR Vounp These
PlekhanovS usually spend three fourths of the space
of a book review a discussion of the deepening
of the crisis and toward the conclusion manage
somehow to blunder Tito discussion of the novel
before them. month or so ago Philip Rahv sue
ceeded in packing into four hundred word re-
view of James T. Farrelrs Calico Stories the follow
ing: Statistical lineaments, successive drain and
flood of objective drama subjective interposition
of personality naturalia' awaited coordination
and did not mention one specific character or story
in the book.
wallace Phelps, reviewing Joyce has the fol-
lowing mutually exclusive statements and in one
short piece: The demise of Joyce's disciples proves
that the method of any writer, however effective,
cannot be translated to other literary material par
tculary proletaran material and Ulysses is now
part of our literary heritage. And it is likely that
proletarian writers will use variants of the Joyceen
method
The Literary Speed-up
"pECENTLY the Partisan Review adopted the
~ literary speed-up in the best briefer notice
tradition Of the Times and Nation lighthouses
You Can't Sleep Here was given short in the
latter and for an obvious reason; the reviewer
acted pallbearer for no less than six books al
lotting something like two hundred words to each
novel.
Revolutionary novelists are writing books not to
kill time, as Knut Hamsum said short while ago
but to persuade the hesitant and the wavering
that there is only one solution to hunger, home
lessness and bitter despair
They cannot perform that duty without readers;
sd reaeers are marshalled and organized like dem
onstrations; there is no spontaneity' about these
things And until this is done, we have all Of us
failed to carry out very significant task: the edu-
cation of the masses Workers will come to the
Communist Party through many avenues; a novel
dealing with hunger, poverty the nomadic migra-