Literature in the Making, by Some of Its Makers. VariousЧитать онлайн книгу.
who will tell us about the joys of the poor. We need writers who will be aware of the pleasures to be derived from a good dinner of corned beef and cabbage and a visit to a moving-picture theater. Often when I pass a row of mean houses, as they would be called, I think gratefully of the good times that I have had in just such places."
The thought of that little Celtic Californian reading Dickens among the redwood-trees appealed to me. So I asked Mrs. Norris to tell more about her childhood.
"Well," she said, "we hear a great deal about the misery, the bleak and barren lives of the children who live in the tenements of New York's lower East Side. But I think that an East Side tenement child would die of ennui if it should be brought up as we were brought up. We had none of the amusing and exciting experiences of the East Side child—we had no white stockings, no ice-cream cones, no Coney Island, nothing of the sort.
"We never even went to school. We would study French for a while with some French neighbor who had sufficient leisure to teach us, and then we'd study Spanish for a while with some Spaniard. That was the extent of our schooling.
"My parents died when I was eighteen years old. I went to the city and tried my hand at different sorts of work. For one thing, I tried to get up children's parties, but in eighteen months I managed only one. Then I did settlement work, was a librarian, a companion, and society reporter on a newspaper. Then I got married—and wrote stories."
Mrs. Norris was at one time opposed to woman suffrage. Now, however, she is a suffragist, but she refuses to say that she has been "converted" to suffragism.
"I can't say that I have been converted to suffragism," she said, "any more than I can say that I have been converted to warm baths and tooth-brushes. And it does not seem to me that any women should need to defend her right to vote any more than she should need to defend her right to love her children. There is a theme for a novel—a big suffrage novel will be written one of these days."
It may be that the author of Mother will be the author of this "big suffrage novel." But at present she disclaims any such intention. But she admits that there is a purpose in all her portrayals of normal, wholesome American home life.
"I don't think that I believe in 'art for art's sake,' as it is generally interpreted," she said. "Of course, I don't believe in what is called the commercial point of view—I have never written anything just to have it printed. But I do not believe that there is any one standard of art. I think that any book which the people ought to read must have back of it something besides the mere desire of the writer to create something. I never could write without a moral intention."
NATIONAL PROSPERITY AND ART
BOOTH TARKINGTON
Mr. Booth Tarkington never will be called the George M. Cohan of fiction. His novel, The Turmoil, is surely an indictment of modern American urban civilization; of its materialism, its braggadocio, its contempt for the things of the soul.
It was with the purpose of making this indictment a little clearer than it could be when it is surrounded by a story, that I asked Mr. Tarkington a few questions. And his answers are not likely to increase our national complacencies.
In the first place, I asked Mr. Tarkington if the atmosphere of a young and energetic nation might not reasonably be expected to be favorable to literary and artistic expression.
"Yes, it might," said Mr. Tarkington. "There may be spiritual progress in America as phenomenal as her material progress.
"There is and has been extraordinary progress in the arts. But the people as a whole are naturally preoccupied with their material progress. They are much more interested in Mr. Rockefeller than in Mr. Sargent."
The last two sentences of Mr. Tarkington's reply made me eager for something a little more specific on that subject.
"What are the forces in America to-day," I asked, "that hinder the development of art and letters?"
Mr. Tarkington replied: "There are no forces in America to-day that hinder the development of individuals in art and letters, save in unimportant cases here and there. But there is a spirit that hinders general personal decency, knows and cares nothing for beauty, and is glad to have its body dirty for the sake of what it calls 'prosperity.'
"It 'wouldn't give a nickel' for any kind of art. But it can't and doesn't hinder artists from producing works of art, though it makes them swear."
"But do not these conditions in many instances seriously hinder individual artists?"
Mr. Tarkington smiled. "Nothing stops an artist if he is one," he said. "But many things may prevent a people or a community from knowing or caring for art.
"The climate may be unfavorable; we need not expect the Eskimos to be interested in architecture. In the United States politicians have usually controlled the public purchase of works of art and the erection of public buildings. This is bad for the public, naturally."
"I suppose," I said, "that the conditions you describe are distinctively modern, are they not? At what time in the history of America have conditions been most favorable to literary expression?"
Mr. Tarkington's reply was not what I expected. "At all times," he said. "Literary expression does not depend on the times, though the appreciation of it does, somewhat."
I asked Mr. Tarkington if he agreed with Mr. Gouverneur Morris in considering the short story a modern development. He did not.
"There are short stories in the Bible," he said, "and in every mythology; 'folk stories' of all races and tribes. Probably Mr. Morris's definition of the short story would exclude these. I agree with him that short stories are better written nowadays."
"But you do not believe," I said, "that American literature in general is better than it used to be, do you? Why is it that there is now no group of American writers like the New England group which included Longfellow, Whittier, Lowell, Emerson, and Thoreau?"
"Why is there," Mr. Tarkington asked in turn, "no group like Homer (wasn't he a group?) in Greece? There may be, but if there is just such a modern group it would tend only to repeat the work of the Homeric group, which wouldn't be interesting to the rest of us.
"The important thing is to find a group unlike Longfellow, Whittier, Lowell, Emerson, and Thoreau. That is, if one accepts the idea that it is important to find a group."
Mr. Tarkington's criticisms of the modern American city have been so severe that I expected him to tell me that all writers should live in the country. But again he surprised me. In reply to my question as to which environment was more favorable to the production of literature, the city or the country, he said:
"It depends upon the nerves of the writer. A writer can be born anywhere, and he can grow up anywhere."
There has recently been considerable discussion—Professor Edward Garnet and Gertrude Atherton have taken a considerable share in it—on the relative merits of contemporary English and American fiction. I asked Mr. Tarkington if in his opinion the United States had at the present time novelists equal to those of England.
"That is unanswerable!" he answered. "Writers aren't like baseball teams. What's the value of my opinion that The Undiscovered Country is a 'greater' novel than A Pair of Blue Eyes? These questions remind me of school debating societies. Nothing is demonstrated, but everybody has his own verdict."
Until I asked Mr. Tarkington about it I had heard only two opinions as to the probable effect on literature of the war. One was that which William Dean Howells tersely expressed by saying: "War stops literature," and the other was that the war is purifying and strengthening all forms of literary expression.
But Mr. Tarkington had something new to say about it. "What effect," I asked, "is the war likely to have on American literature?"