As others read us: American fiction abroad; Introductory program, part one

This is the first of a series of eight one hour programs and titled as others read us American fiction abroad produced and recorded by the Literary Society of the University of Massachusetts under a grant from the Educational Television and Radio Center in cooperation with the National Association of educational broadcasters and the college English Association of Teachers and students of the University of Massachusetts in the departments of English speech philosophy German and romance languages and in the audio visual center. Ever work together in conceiving editing and. Producing the series as a whole moderator of this introductory program is Mr. Frederick S. Ellard head of the university's Department of German and chairman of the literary society. Mr. Ellard today as never before in our history we are seriously concerned with European opinion of America and America. And with the materials upon which that opinion may be based it is the

purpose of these programs to discuss the role of American literature. The novel in particular in creating among men and women abroad the current attitude toward our country its people and its culture. For more than a century now Europeans have been reading American novels in English and in translation. What in these books has attracted or repel readers overseas. How truly are we seen through the eyes of our own writers. This series hopes to make a beginning at answering such questions by exploring the European reactions to seven American novelists. All of whom have substantial reputation in the United States and have been read widely in other countries. The names of these novelists will suggest the variety of their subject matter their style and their appeal.

Henry James Sinclair Lewis. John Dos Passos Ernest Hemmingway Thomas will John Steinbeck William Faulkner. Some of these programs will bring the voices of the writers themselves the voices of Dos Passos Steinback and Faulkner by way of informal colloquy. Each of the seven novelists will be discussed by critics of note an American and a European critic in each case to launch our series. As others read us we are fortunate in having the assistance of Mr. Robert Penn Warren as distinguished novelist critic poet and teacher Mr. Warren speaks with a rare authority for and about the American novel. Mr. Warren there is a gentleman this program will present some of the American writers alive and Dad who have made an

impact on Europe. We don't present an exhaustive list. So what most famous and influential names presidents hold on the elbow are emitted. What we aim to do it was add writers. There were different among themselves who have struck the interest or taste of Europe. And we hope an examination of these writers in this perspective may tell us something about a literate you're and indeed about ourselves. You know time of crisis. The role of the writer is always called into question. On the eve of World War 2 there was for example an outcry. But the writers of the time after World War 1 had sold us out. Archibald MacLeish called Hemingway Das passes Cummings and others the irresponsible war they had he said unnerved us for the impending conflict.

And in the middle of that war. But late but not Devoto wrote a book called literary fallacy which he hoped to affirm the beauty and goodness of American life choice that Sinclair Lewis and other dark characters had told her roundest lies about our country. Now in the Cold War we hear from many sides the old arguments the new bosses the old whining the new battle our right is telling us telling lies about us abroad. They charge depressing books a lot of time a depression they say in a time of the great boom. I'll book should be affirmative. They declare they are male been things to criticize in America a few years back. They admit it but not now.

And now anybody who doesn't affirmative it if a traitor or sexual deviant or even worse in our society if they. What are we to make of all this. When at home in our own country we pick up an American novel. I say novel because all the writers will be discussed on this program are novelists we judge it or try to judge it by its psychological subtlety its rudeness of social observation. It's been a city of language and cunning of structure. It's philosophical weight. In short by its human veracity and artistic expertness two things which very often appear is when the same thing. We try in other words to judge the book. But as soon as we think of the same book being read by foreign

eyes we are tempted to judge it by its effect on that foreign reader. Its political effect. Not being concerned with how the reader will regard the book. But how. As a consequence of the book he will regard us we regard America. Americans stumble into world power. We didn't seek this power. We literally stumbled upon it. But we have it. And because we did not seek it we didn't how. For better or worse a philosophy about power we scarcely know what to make of it. We are embarrassed and uncertain in its exercise. Even irritated sometimes at the weight of responsibility that goes with it. At one moment we can disregard the world to turn it would have borne ourselves upon our own problems or happy concerns at the next moment. We are peculiarly almost pathologically sensitive

to the appeal to the world about us. When we are in this latter mood a paradoxical situation develops we are apt to deplore the very book which once we praised. We once praised Rice as American tragedy because it showed in a deep human way how the American West with material success might lead to crime and not the prosperity. Are we ready now in a time of the great boom to have a European reader already steeped is own dark suspicions of us convert any suspicions from the pages of Dreiser or for that matter from the pages of Emerson author or we once praised Sinclair Lewis for showing us the Apocrypha of mainstreet or the pathos about it. And to this we once praise Faulkner for showing some of the deep cleavage is and conscience tortured violence

to topicality what are we ready body images created by Lewis or Fox to be the images standing in the world's eye. It does not matter whether we are ready or not. It doesn't matter whether we are ready or not or like it or not because the images are they are already in the world are already here. And nothing we can do. No protests or explanations or extenuation will ever remove those images. Why are those images they are already and inexplicably because they are imaginative and created truly created weird. They are for a life of their own. So paradox again we may say but that is the pity of it. The power of our good writers here is by one line of thought a liability for us. If Dreiser and Faulkner had not

been on this had not been able to create their worlds and they are people then those deplorable images of the imagination would not stand in the world's eyes. So we cry out but don't look at me they're not really true at all. But the only imagination the imaginings of Dreiser and Louis involved in such people. Most American boys don't murder their poor trusting sweet hearts to be free to marry a guy with a rich influential family that just drives us leftist notion. Most American towns aren't like Gopher Prairie. That's just louis is just tempered imagination. There's no place in America. Less is Mississippi which of course isn't America anyway. Well you can find Popeye in Temple Drake and Christmas in flambe Snopes. That's just doctors private nightmare. So this line of argument goes. In one sense we were right to make our objection in a statistical sense.

But does this mean that the imagination of Dreiser and Fatah tells lies all about two kinds of truth to just to go and imaginative. And if there are two kinds then how will they sometimes seem to be so antithetical. Can they both be true. This is a thorny and complicated question. And we need not pretend here to a fuller answer. But let us look at Dreiser with this question in mind. At Dreiser because he gives a bit simpler and more manageable instance than some of the other writers who we discussed or later programs in fuller detail. Though the district is speaking very few young men to follow the example of crisis class grit and drown the poor sweet heart. How many young men under the compulsion of success have passed about a girl whose human qualities most appeal to they are in order to make a good

marriage. Clive Griffith this killer is Robert or Johnny Jones down the street from us Olympics acquirable Susie. The filling station man is daughter because he wants to take Josephine whose father was a banker to the high school prom. How many of us have denied some deep need or conviction in the cause of material success. In other words client group this act we're going to fulfill the potentiality present in much of American life. Dreiser there abstracted one significant potentiality and let us see it develop the extreme of its terrifying logic. If we should begin a study of thought now we might do well to start by asking what level his criticism is relevant to us. We might ask What do you find readers at all. If your stories did not somehow hold up a

mirror to some possibility of good and evil in the reader's heart or if his criticism of a dehumanizing abstraction of the modern world did not shock to life some suspicion that we in our complacency have low to rest. No the imaginative truth can't be arbitrary. Its primary assumption in the potentiality it draws from the complex of things it must have thought of some objective reality that imaginative true differs however from statistical truth in the remorselessness of its logic its refusal contingency its rigor in filling the elected potential. But why oh why. Can't our writers elect some potential that developed would give a nice unflattering picture of us. We know we are nice people. We know we have certain virtues. Then why do we deprecate ourselves.

Well a writer is not an advertising man. He is not trying to sell anything. He is trying to discover something. He is trying to make sense to make sense of them are a way of experience as he sees it. He will write about that they get most deeply exacerbate him. If for example he loves justice. If you love his country. You will be more starting to write about whatever sort of injustice in his beloved country thank him placement. To write about night in an episode of justice and brooding over justice. He will most certainly have scrutinized as you know others but most deep in himself the importers that make the injustice. At this moment in our history under mounting political pressures we may regret. But our writers have given a critical picture of American life.

Have it were offered aid and comfort to the enemy in the struggle for world power. But how about our writers been critical enough. Are we not in some danger of national self righteousness. Are we not in danger of smugly regarding our great as divine reward for my want to bury our dead. All right we are in a mood to refuse self scrutiny. Aren't we prepared to close our ranks and demand universal conformity. If these dangers are real dangers and that is a question that each of us must answer in the privacy of its being then our writers have not been critical enough. They have not adequately anathematized our age. They have not shocked us into self-knowledge. I should think we need writers who are more not less critical than those now on the bestseller lists.

Writers more like Bo or some of those who will be discussed in these programs. In saying that I should add at their ages and people have the greatest energy and capacity there are those who have produced the great fundamental and critical literature yours but literate you are that strangely enough we now look back on but a great affirmation of humanity. The Greeks the Elizabethans the Romantics and others this is a paradox. But it makes sense. As soon as we realize that literate you are there's most profoundly critical is always the most profoundly affirmative in so far as literate Your struggle is to engage the deep inner issues of life. The more that literate you are being critical the more that ears will engender impatience with the compromises that on we the materialism the self-deception the complacency the secret unnamable display are those that mark so much of ordinary living. So I salute your

ears at the same time affirmative. Because it affirms the will and courage to engage life at fundamental levels that is to discover and tell truth. Furthermore in so far as that will to tell truth achieves its form in so far in other words as it becomes literature at all it is affirmative in that the form affirms the ordering power of the human being confining his experience in some of the writers who we discuss in this program. We do not however have to look always an indirect and implicit affirmation. Who. Except of course some politics bigot would miss for example the celebration of courage and Hemingway. The hatred of sham in Lois the faith the redemption through love and brotherhood in fact. And who could miss

the fact that though all the clever difficulty of achieving Bircher all of FAR AIM the will toward its achievement in the face of that difficulty as the crowning human factor in our writers at least those writers who the world wants to read. If these writers don't get a consistently flattering picture of us what can we do. The answer is I think simple and appalling. We must trust to our humility and our strength. We must trust in humility because only by humility and the recognition that we have not fulfilled our best possibilities can we hope to fulfill all those possibilities. Far call our navies may melt away. And on that day we may need the ultimate humility. Meanwhile in a moment of our strength

we hope that our strength is more of an historical accident. Is a mark of model solidity. But if that hope is to be more than a hope it must be subjected to the test of conscience and literate is one of the voices of a national conscience. We must rebuke our Hubers. Not out of superstitious fear but from a blog of a pullup truth which we hope is within us. And we must trust in our strength because only the strong can afford the luxury of radical self-criticism. Only if we believe in our strength. Can we take the risks of our book culture all about money with all these integrative and paradoxical possibilities in that dialectic. For America has a secret weapon you could choose to use it. The weapon of not having a secret it is the weapon of radical self-criticism. Radical it nonpolitical that

sense. There was an old name for this weapon. Not now often used misconnection the name was democracy. Not long ago if a French friend wrote me a letter on this point. He is a devoted admirer of American life and literature. But he misses in this literature he says some affirmation of the role of America some faith in its mission. You have orthodox to execute a contrast in dust to S-K he says. We find all the evils of Russian life and human character depicted in a way more shocking than anything in American literature. But we also find he says. I don't voice behind all the voices a long dialogue the way the voice of Holy Russia affirming how mission of faith. He does not hear that voice in the American literature or he says.

But I think we can hear that voice or rather I think we hear a silence more eloquent but any voice the silence of America the silence which says we should not lift a voice to stilly a voice we criticize us for we would trust whatever truth may be at us. Is it too much to believe that many Europeans hear that silence behind the varied voices of our literate you are. Otherwise why would they honor us more for Lewis than for Electra locks. Talk to them for the fall ball eight. Ball for a mill of General Motors. Don't we do them an injustice if we think that they cannot hear that silence. I tell a story. A little while after the last war in Europe I became acquainted with a young Italian who in the first year of the war as an officer in a fascist army had deserted and taken to the mountains to fight on our

side. I once asked him what made him take this drastic step. He was a bit cold a bit young man well acquainted with American literature and history. You replied to my question. But American novelists I converted him. How I ask. Well he said. The fact is you have to let us read American literature You're because you give a very grim picture of America. They thought it was good propaganda to let us read it. But you know it suddenly occurred to me that democracy girl allowed that kind of criticism itself it must be very strong and very good. So I took to the mountains. Thank you Mr. Warren for your perceptive keynoting of a major theme of our program. And thank you too for framing So clearly some of the knotty inescapable questions posed by the title of our series. What are the images of America that James and Louis Hemingway and just past us. Steinbeck Wolf and

Faulkner have fashioned in their books. Are they true images. How has Europe seen them. How have European readers and writers reacted to them. And what of the literary art that created and as part of these images what has Europe thought of it. In short how have these voices of the American novel in the 20th century been listened to across the water. I have sat on some of the programmes to follow in this series. A few of those voices will be heard. There will be the voice of John Dos Passos whom Sartre once called the leading novelist of his time formulating his credo as a writer in the year 1956 and reading this vignette of Eugene Debs from the forty second parallel. Debs was a railroad man born in a weatherboard of what we wanted a weatherboard shack at Terre Haute if you want to ensure his father come

to America to see the ship in forty nine now Setian from korma. Not much of a money maker for want of musical reading Give me a true chance to finish public school that is about all he could do to fifty Gene Debs was already working as a machinist in Indianapolis and her whole career where he worked as a real locomotive fireman put in a store. Joined a local Brotherhood of Locomotive fireman like a secretary traveled all over the country organized troller shareable foot it better than he had a sort of gusty rhetorics and her father and all workers were root workers in the empire and what it holds. Made them want the world he wanted the Wood Brothers might hold for everybody which didn't even. I'm not a Labor leader. I don't want you to follow me united or anyone else. If you're looking for motives to lead you out of the capitalist wilderness he will stay right where you are. I would not lead you into this promised land if I could but if I lead you mean somebody else would lead you out that is how you talk to freight handlers and get walkers to find out when the

switchman engineers telling them it wasn't enough to organize the railroad means that all workers must be organized that all looks to be organized to the workers cooperative Commonwealth. What about if I went on many a long nights run out of the smoke a fire burned him up. But gusty words that beating and boarded a horse. He wanted his brother to be a free man. But when he saw the crowd and met him at you well Street people he came out of jail after the Pullman strike. There were the men chalked up 900000 votes for him indicted 12 and scared the frock coats of the top hats and Diamond hostesses of Saratoga Springs and he worked with the body of a socialist president. But where would you brothers in 1985 when Woodrow Wilson had him locked up at Atlanta for speaking against war. Where were the big men fart of whiskey fart of each other. Gentle rambling tellers of stories or barge of small towns in the Middle West. Quiet beautiful white house with a porch to Parag fat wife to cook for them a few drinks

and cigars a garden to dig a good rag with. We wanted work Friday at others to work for it. We were the locomotive fireman and engineers with a humble good lad a bit denture and they brought him back to dive into her home. Disorganized portion of Rocco is a God is my society. This is why fix to vote for the people of Turkey the people of the people who live in West were fond of a bit afraid of him but flaws removed all kindly uncle lump and want to be with him and I would give them candy when they were free. As if you can track your soul disease if it's all leprosy. Too bad but on account of the flag and prosperity that made you world safe for democracy. They were afraid to be with him but I think much about it to fear they might believe what he said. While there is a lower class of it while the other could look last I apartment while there's a soul in prison I am not free.

That was DOS PASSOS the great innovator in the time and space structure of the novel only shown here discussing his work with critics Maurice quando and Harry all of them on the fourth program of our series. There will be the boys tour of John Steinbeck who is pious Sino-US and Okies have found one response in so many European readers explaining why he writes and sketching his figures of earth in his novel The Grapes of Wrath. Various. One of our hams again tomorrow for the state to figure to wonder are there some brown faces were dark and their sun light. Cautiously out of the doorways and behind there were horses ready to run. They were boys squatted beside their fathers because the men after a time but only one of the men

in the smaller pain was in their eyes. We've got to get off the tractor. Superintendent factories were gone. And the women were back. The houses of her children had a danger that a man so hurt and so perplexed made training or even other people heroes. They let them know to figure out the wonder in the dust. Andrew Tyrie broadcast at 10 a.m. and looked about to pop 10 years ago with him. The flowers on the start of the chopping block are a thousand sheep into the field that the hair flower lying in the share of the patent career hanging in there. The children crowded about the women in the houses. What are we going to do or are we going to

go. The women say they don't know yet. But don't go near your fire. He might go near him. You know we were on the word but all the time you watch the news sweating in the dust for players.