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Henry Seidel Canby. Definitions

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PREFACE

PREFACE. I. ON FICTION. SENTIMENTAL AMERICA FREE FICTION A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION TOWARD FICTION THE ESSENCE OF POPULARITY. II. ON THE AMERICAN TRADITION. THE AMERICAN TRADITION BACK TO NATURE THANKS TO THE ARTISTS TO-DAY IN AMERICAN LITERATURE: ADDRESSED TO THE BRITISH TIME'S MIRROR THE FAMILY MAGAZINE. III. THE NEW GENERATION. THE YOUNG ROMANTICS PURITANS ALL THE OLDER GENERATION A LITERATURE OF PROTEST BARBARIANS A LA MODE. IV. THE REVIEWING OF BOOKS. A PROSPECTUS FOR CRITICISM THE RACE OF REVIEWERS THE SINS OF REVIEWING MRS. WHARTON'S "THE AGE OF INNOCENCE" MR. HERGESHEIMER'S "CYTHEREA" V. PHILISTINES AND DILETTANTE. POETRY FOR THE UNPOETICAL EYE, EAR, AND MIND OUT WITH THE DILETTANTE FLAT PROSE. VI. MEN AND THEIR BOOKS. CONRAD AND MELVILLE THE NOVELIST OF PITY HENRY JAMES THE SATIRIC RAGE OF BUTLER. CONCLUSION. DEFINING THE INDEFINABLE. I

ON FICTION. SENTIMENTAL AMERICA

FREE FICTION

A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION TOWARD FICTION

THE ESSENCE OF POPULARITY

II

ON THE AMERICAN TRADITION. THE AMERICAN TRADITION

BACK TO NATURE

THANKS TO THE ARTISTS

TO-DAY IN AMERICAN LITERATURE: ADDRESSED TO THE BRITISH

TIME'S MIRROR

THE FAMILY MAGAZINE

III

THE NEW GENERATION. THE YOUNG ROMANTICS

PURITANS ALL

THE OLDER GENERATION

A LITERATURE OF PROTEST

BARBARIANS A LA MODE

IV

THE REVIEWING OF BOOKS. A PROSPECTUS FOR CRITICISM

THE RACE OF REVIEWERS

THE SINS OF REVIEWING

MRS. WHARTON'S "THE AGE OF INNOCENCE"

MR. HERGESHEIMER'S "CYTHEREA"

V

PHILISTINES AND DILETTANTE. POETRY FOR THE UNPOETICAL

EYE, EAR, AND MIND

OUT WITH THE DILETTANTE

FLAT PROSE

VI

MEN AND THEIR BOOKS. CONRAD AND MELVILLE

THE NOVELIST OF PITY

AFTER SCENE

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

SPIRIT OF PITIES

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

SEMI-CHORUS I OF THE PITIES

SEMI-CHORUS II

CHORUS

HENRY JAMES

VII

CONCLUSION. DEFINING THE INDEFINABLE

Отрывок из книги

Henry Seidel Canby

Essays in Contemporary Criticism [First Series]

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Nothing brings home the artificiality and the narrowness of this American fiction so clearly as a comparison, for better and for worse, with the Russian short story. I have in mind the works of Anton Tchekoff, whose short stories have now been translated into excellent English. Fresh from a reading of these books, one feels, it is true, quite as inclined to criticize as to praise. Why are the characters therein depicted so persistently disagreeable, even in the lighter stories? Why are the women always freckled, the men predominantly red and watery in the eye? Why is the country so flat, so foggy, so desolate; and why are the peasants so lumpish and miserable? Russia before the Revolution could not have been so dreary as this; the prevailing grimness must be due to some mental obfuscation of her writers. I do not refer to the gloomy, powerful realism of the stories of hopeless misery. There, if one criticizes, it must be only the advisability of the choice of such subjects. One does not doubt the truth of the picture. I mean the needless dinginess of much of Russian fiction, and of many of these powerful short stories.

Nevertheless, when one has said his worst, and particularly when he has eliminated the dingier stories of the collection, he returns with an admiration, almost passionate, to the truth, the variety, above all to the freedom of these stories. I do not know Russia or the Russians, and yet I am as sure of the absolute truth of that unfortunate doctor in "La Cigale," who builds up his heroic life of self-sacrifice while his wife seeks selfishly elsewhere for a hero, as I am convinced of the essential unreality, except in dialect and manners, of the detectives, the "dope-fiends," the hard business men, the heroic boys and lovely girls that people most American short stories. As for variety,— the Russian does not handle numerous themes. He is obsessed with the dreariness of life, and his obsession is only occasionally lifted; he has no room to wander widely through human nature. And yet his work gives an impression of variety that the American magazine never attains. He is free to be various. When the mood of gloom is off him, he experiments at will, and often with consummate success. He seems to be sublimely unconscious that readers are supposed to like only a few kinds of stories; and as unaware of the taboo upon religious or reflective narrative as of the prohibition upon the ugly in fiction. As life in any manifestation becomes interesting in his eyes, his pen moves freely. And so he makes life interesting in many varieties, even when his Russian prepossessions lead him far away from our Western moods.

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