Page 26 - 1911 November - To Dragma

TO DRAGMA OF ALPHA OMICRON PI 23

THE LITERARY NEEDS OF AMERICA

When we have accepted a few generalizations that have been so
reiterated that we have ceased to question whether or not they still
hold true, the question of the literary needs of America, seems to
resolve itself more than any other phase of American literature,
into a question of personal opinion and judgment. I f there is any
merit in the results which I have reached after some weeks of
reading and serious thinking, it is that they are an expression of my
personal estimate of what our literature lacks when compared with
the literature and literary conditions of other countries.

Granting the four points on which critics agree i n an analysis
of the American literary output of the present day—namely—lack
of creative ability; slip shod methods of writing, with little or
no mastery of technique, and a failure to produce work strictly
national in tone; we are confronted with the lack of accord among
critics in their ratings of individual authors. Mark Twain and
Mr. Howells, all seem to agree, are deservedly on a plane above the
others, although Prof. Wendell says of one Dean of American
Letters—that "while he is completely American—his chief limitation
seems to be a kind of life long diffidence which has forbidden a
feeling of intense familiarity even with the scenes and people of
his own creation. His novels indicate, with tireless energy the
material of which literature might be made, rather than mould that
material into final form."

Mr. George F. Parker in an address before the Literary Societies
of Washington and Lee University most sweepingly condemns all
American literature of the present day.

Mrs. Atherton in a scarcely less biting review in an issue of the
North American Review of recent date, leaves us no one of merit
save Mark Twain and Bret Hart and she takes occasion to belabor
poor Henry James unmercifully. A l l of which seems not very
pretty in a lady who is herself a suppliant for popular favor.
% Mrs. Josephine Daskam Bacon in an answering review proves
quite refreshing by her optimism, and refutes Mrs. Atherton at
every point with examples of originality in Seton Thompson's " W i l d
Animals I Have Known,"—of new effect in "Monsieur Beaucaire,"—
of stories adding directly to the knowledge of mankind, and showing
the world as it is, i n "The Note" by Margaret Deland, "The Golden
Ford" by Henry Wallace Phillips, and "The Desert" by Arthur
Croslett Smith. She concludes her answer with the sentence, " A t
any rate, even i f all American fiction is anaemic (Mrs. Atherton's