Evening star., 1936-10-10
By Mary.Ca,fer Roberts.

~HIS new work of Gilbert Seldes',
given to evaluating America
today, is laid out by his own
u statement, in -four general di-
visions" These are, still in his own
words:
First, countercharge: That the in
tellectual attack upon America has
been ill-natured or ignorant or both;
that the literary belittling Of America
has carried forward a propaganda for
the destruction of the American politi-
cal system and the abaSement of the
American standard of living; that
the intellectuals have made no effort
to understand and preserve the variety
and excellence of life in America, and
that their constant attack has left
Americans helpless before the i'm
pact of hostile European systems.
Second, the event: This is brief
statement of the formation of Amer
lea = an attempt to discover what
has always been American
Third, the straight line: The COM
ing struggle for American independ-
ence from the Fascist and Communist
systems
Fourth, the huntsmen are up in
America: An epilogue. possibly rhetori-
cal. The three fundamental require
ments of the average American citizen
and the possibility of gaining them by
making. more earnestly than ever, the
tremendous effort required to create
o democracy"
These, certainly, are respectfully
large objectives to cover in a single
work, but Mr.. Seldes gives them all
due attention. He is wordy and at
Zines involved, and between the first
section of his book and the last there
seems to be no inescapable relation,
at least not as he presents the mate
rials. But he makes some first-rate
points, notably in the first section,
and his whole thesis is devoted to
the practical solution of American
difhculties-not to the practical" So
hutton of the economist with a ready
made plan and blueprints, but to that
practicability which lies within the
natural capacities of the American
people-as, Of course, Mr.. Seldes sees
them.
Works on the trend and state of pub
lie affairs are so numerous today that
any of them must be extraordinarily
sensible or extraordinarily smart in
order to stand out from the ruck of
the rest.
Mr.. Seldes' book is not at all times
extraordinarily sensible nor is it at
all times extraordinarily smart, but
it contrives to be one or the other
much of the time, and, for the rest,
certain element of suspense will keep
the reader going
The reviewer is frank to say that
she liked the smart parts best. They
are chiefly to be found in the first
section, "Countercharge, where Mr..
Seldes examines the critics of Amer
lea who were eminent in the twenties,
and takes them for ride. He pro-
ceeds in this entertainment by the
device Of publishing a paragraph of
a given critics accusations and then
demonstrating the essential falseness
of the thinking behind the attack.
Thus he holds up to polite ridicule
some highly revered gentlemen, such
undisputed leaders of American in
tellectual opinion as H. l.. Mencken,
Theodore Dresser, Sinclair Lewis,
George Jean Nathan, Van Wyck
Brooks, Granville Hicks, Harold E
StearnS, Ludwig Lewisohn, Sherwood
Anderson George Santayana, Ernest
Hemingway, Stuart Chase, Deems
Taylor, Edmund Wilson, Harry Elmer
Barnes and James Truslow Adams.
Obviously an examination of so large
number of Eminences will involve
wide sweep of subject matter, and Mr.
Seldes is easily able, in the course of
his swing around the intellectual aisle
of decade ago, to take up criticism
of the stage, the movies, literature, the
radio, the plastic arts and religion.
Indeed, he manages to get pertty we'll
over what was called, in those vanished
days, the american scene"
When he is through he has shown us
an America almost completely under
the domination of a self Imposed
pessimism which ran sometimes to the
vein of pure vitriol and sometimes
expressed itself in tones of philo-
sophical indulgence. That he con-
siders all this mass of adverse opinion
of ourselves definitely passe, and never
more than fashion of the times he
makes clear in mildly apologetic
paragraph:
"The intellectuals set the STYLE" he
says, land it is worth an examination
even though, like all styles which do
not correspond to the modes of a
Nations life. it seems absurd after a
few years and has now been aban-
doned. MIR. Sinclair Lewis has dis
covered a few things about America
which are not Main Street: Mr.. Ludwig
Lewisohn has found a river he can
cross, and need not swim upstream:
Mr.. Mencken has definitely abandoned
the indoor sport of boob batting: MIR.
George kaufman has become an ex-
pert at the great American art of
revue, and the entire field of criticism
has shifted so that our social crimes
are now ranked as nnisdemeanors,
easily forgivable if they weren't symp-
toms of our serious disease-that we
are in the last fever of finance
capitalism. Yet the decade of derision
had an effect upon us, and we can
throw off the effect only if we know
the cause"
And what is this effect? As we
emerge from the decade of derision"
where do we stand? MIR. Seldes con-
siders the business depression ended;
in his mind it seems to have been a
material debacle Gaping our era of
self-proclaimed cultural inferiority. As
we come out of both our intellectual
and material crashes, what have we
left and what can we expect of our
selves? These are the questions that
he undertakes to answer in the latter
sections Of his work.
We are, he says, thanks to our long
ignoring and beHttling Of our own
genius as people, pretty nearly wide
open to European political systems