thumbnail of As others read us: American fiction abroad; Introductory program, part two
Transcript
Hide -
If this transcript has significant errors that should be corrected, let us know, so we can add it to FIX IT+
The tractors came over the roads and into the fields. Great crawlers live like insects having need incredible strength of insects. They crawl over the ground laying the track and rolling on it can pick it up. Diesel characters play very well they screwed. They tell you they will never settle down for grooming or snub nosed clusters raising the dust sticking their spouse into it straight down the country through fences through the door your orders in an hour go is in straight night. They did not run aground on their own beds. Big North Hills and gophers watercourses fences houses a man sitting in the seed us looked like a man of rubber dust mask over the nose and mouth. He was part of the monster a robot in the seat. The thunder of the siller sounded through the company became one with the hair and hear so that the air very motherly and sympathetic
vibration. The driver could now control it straight across the country away cutting through a dozen farms and straight back to Twitter to control things for care better. Various hands but outfits because. It was to build the character of the mother that sent the tractor out some of the drivers hammers it with brain or muscle and Garlin muscle gargled is my muscle speech gargled his perception muffled his protest he could not see the errors of the words he could smell or smell his feet stamped that plus nor feel the warmth the power of the year. He said and I am Caesar stepped on the air that he could not cheer or beat her purse the river bridge the extension of his will power and because of this he could not shear your purse to
recreate himself he did not know your even trust your receipt. Then it was seen drought did not germinate it was nothing. Fifty years of thrusting their withered cry out or drowned in a flood of rain it was no more to the driver than to the tractor. He loved the land no more than the bank a lot of land he thought admired tractor its machine services its surgery or the auroras detonating cylinders. It was not his character behind the character role of the shining discs coherent with blades now ploughing the surgery pushing the cover to the right. But the second Iraq just kind of pushed it to the left. Slicing like a shiny Polish cutter. And pulled behind the discs the hero's coming with time and teeth so the little plastic broker delivers a small
behind the hair of the all seniors 12th courier peny erected in the foundry for a given set by raping without in the ribbing with passion. The driver's seat and he was proud to scrape by. If you do know we have tractor heated up all proud of the power but no control. When the Dartmoor was harvested no man crumpled up applied his fingers and tearing the earth past his fingertips Noman turf the cedar luster for the growth man. Eight men eight but they had raised no connection with the bread land border. Terry. What figures of crisis and salvation did Steinbeck construct
for Europe so long embroiled in its own dubious battles. How different were the Americans created by Dos Passos and starting back as Europe saw them from those the people of fields and towns of the Ark Mapp account for that real and mystic of their region of Mississippi that has become a universal terrain for the voice of William Faulkner will also be heard before our series is down. Here is Faulkner reading a passage from there about the spiritual initiation of young iconoclast men. He left the next morning before daylight without breakfast. Long before alkalis would wake in his quilt on the kitchen floor and start the flour he had on one of the compost on a stick for the snakes. He could go almost a mile before he would need to see the compass. He sat on a log. The invisible compass in his hand while the secret night sound which had ceased at his moment scurried again and then felt still for good and the hour
ceased and gave over to the waking day birds and that was like in the grey wet woods and he could see the compass. He went fast yet still part of becoming steadily better and better as was a man without yet having time to realize it. He jumped a donor phone and walked him out of the bed close enough to see them. The crash of undergrowth the whites got the phone skirting along behind her faster than he had known it could have run. He was hunting right upwind as Sammy told him but that didn't matter now. He had left the gun by his own will and relinquishment he accepted not again but not a choice but a condition in which not only the bad as here to forn valuable anonymity but all the agent ruled and balances of heart and heart it had been abrogated. He would not even be afraid not even in the moment when the fear would take him completely blood skin bold bold memory from the long time before he even became his memory. All say that then clear quenchless lucidity which alone defend him from this bad from all the other Baz in box he would follow you in almost 70 years.
To which Sam had said be scared you can't help that. But don't be afraid. Nothing in the world going to hit you if you don't calm it or I don't smell that you are fraid a bad idea has got to be scared of a coward the same as a brave man has got to be. By noon he was far beyond the coating on the little bell father into the new and alien country than he'd ever been travelling now not only by the compass but by the old heavy biscuit thick silver watch which had been his father's. He had left the camp nine hours ago nine hours from now dark would already have been and how he stopped for the first time since he had risen from the log when he could see the compass face at last and looked about him mopping his sweating face on his sleeve. He had already relinquished of his will because of his need in humility and peace without regret. Yet a power that had not been enough. The leaving of the gun was not enough. He stood for a moment a child agan and lost in the green saw in the gloom of the Marquess wilderness.
Then he relinquished completely to it. It was the walk in the compass he was still taking. He removed the link chain of the one of the loop for all of the other from his overall to hang them on a bush and lean a stick beside them and entered it. When he realized he was lost he did as Sam had coached and drilled him made a cast across his back track. He had not been going very fast for the last two or three hours and he had gone even less fast since he left the campus and watch on the bush. So he went slower still now. Said the tree could not be verified all in fact he found it sooner than he really expected to and turned and went to it. But there was no bush beneath it no compass no watch. So he did next to Sam it Cosin drilled him made his next circle in the opposite direction and much larger so that the pattern of the two of them would dissect his track somewhere but crop but no trace no marking where his feet are in your feet and now he was going faster though still not panicked. His heart beating a little more rapidly but strong and steady enough and this time it was not even the tree because there was a down log beside it
which he had never seen before. And beyond the law the little small perceive that you're more just somewhere between earth and water and he did what Sam would coast and drilled him as the next to last. Seeing as he sat down on the log the crooked print the warped indentation in the wet ground which while he looked at it continued to fill with water until it was level fall in the water began to overflow and the sides of the print began to dissolve away even as he looked up he saw the next one and moving the one beyond it moving not hurrying running but merely keeping pace with them as they appeared before him as though they were being shaped out of thin air just one constant pay short of where he would lose them forever and be lost forever himself. Tireless eagle without doubt or dread panic a little about the strong rapid little how of his heart. Emerging suddenly into a little glade and the wilderness coalesced did Rush soundless and solidified the tree the bush the compass and the watch letting one ray of sunlight touched them. Then he saw the bath. It did not emerge appear it was just that immobile fixed in the green
and when this noon hot dappling not as big as he had dreamed it but as big as he had expected bigger dimensionless against the dappled obscurity looking at him. Then it moved across the glade without haste walking for an instant into the sun's full glare out of it and stopped again and looked back at him across one shoulder. Then it was gone. He didn't walk into the woods it faded sagged back into the wilderness without motion as he had watched a fish a huge old bass sink back into the dark depths of approval and vanished without even a movement of its fans. I cast them Tom Joad Eugene Debs portraits of America exported across the Atlantic as our most precious good and many more. Lambert Struther of the ambassador's Vida Sherwin of Main St. George F. Babbitt and ours were Lieutenant Henri of A Farewell to Arms and Jordan. Robert Jordan of For Whom The Bell Tolls and Thomas Wolfe hero of all his
novels What have all these meant to Europe. It is this question that will be tackled on the seven programs to follow by a notable group of European and American critics. W.H. Auden and our people back Merv will discuss Henry James Renato to Jolie and Terry Miller Sinclair Lewis out of Carmen and Maxwell Geismar Thomas world. Maurice Kwan drawl and Harry all of them together with DOS PASSOS himself. The impact of Dos Passos abroad Ari pear and Charles felt Phantom will discuss Ernest Hemingway and your loner and Alexander collie John Steinbeck Rene Girard and Carmel Collins William Faulkner. Mr. Warren has already sounded for us a major theme of the discussions to come from his side of the Atlantic so to speak. We are lucky to have with us on this hour another writer of
inside Madame Claudette mon money French scholar and critic a teacher at the Sorbonne and Cambridge University well known for her illuminating studies of American literature who has offered to tell us how she sees the problem before us from her side of the Atlantic. Madam my knee. I have been asked to see with the American over bow to you and why it was a bug in it was such a success in France it couldn't it was a long established tradition not to say given up at least to the end of the 18th century. The precise time you know which America came into being. Tradition always was also filed off. Not to say smug about Mr Whelan
as all of you start to make any case about the American novel this spiking my guns touch honestly. He's twice as Z extolled in high capacity of the American people for standing criticism of themselves sometimes very Housh criticism indeed. It is what to Marxists call criticism. What French writer of the 19th century used to cold confessions generally was out an early Benton's. There's a kind of saying when following generally practice by the study of ski hills as Mr. Owen pointed out just freedom of judgment is precisely what the word democracy is supposed to mean.
This was made not only possible but necessary by the stoical fact the fact was industrial and technical development of America coming before Hopi and can please America I was and you can. And this presented a challenge to its height. They had to do something about it. Understanding liking or disliking. Trying to find out why there might be some singalong brave new world. Yes they had to be critical for two reasons. Judging their country as Americans which doesn't mean condemning it and judging as itis
since literature is essentially a criticism of life. Is your position that something perfect about it feel sad to face of the problems from which in European countries who take refuge in a world of fantasy. American writers were lucky in finding new little forms a technique better adapted to the expression of modern lives and which still in spite of every creative effort was made not by too much tradition. And so many lessons which I guess you know from zero American contemporaries Louis I go online and jump and soft
to mention only some examples. Those revolutions in technique we have not superficially and profited not only craftsman and would be novelists. Are subtle benefits to seed in technique. It usually goes Didn't it the physic beyond it technique. You always find event and show your vision of the world. It technical device is always pregnant to his meaning voluntarily or not. And Emily can lie to us such as John Dos Passos not to mention and I James we are always very conscious of him swear not that told you know since well brings our wooden notes wild.
So evolution brought about by the main American novelist is compared to her own it was a scandal of French impressionists made in painting. In the last century for the first time modern life as such was going to be represented in every meaning of the word and was adequate means of its own. Doing it on its own well so to speak. Note that French novelist and tried to do that and certainly a man like geysers owes a lot to the French naturalist. But values that feel bad and even is a good
and to use devious means being obliged to submit to the all of the extent little addition. Having always to sink not only as a public but as a sacred conventions. And he established with little dicks. Whereas How did the exam even in Midvale as yet critics wear on the Impressionists. They did as much as it could well held up to dequeue files our best efforts even went to jail for this guy being things which now wouldn't shock a 10 year old child. But still they were fettered and in jail own selves worse luck. Now is that more like Gould
tradition. And you know it is always a burden not only a responsibility but a liability. Reading Faulkner all the specials or even simply a low voice not to mention ending with a boat bless a fresh air. A guest of the wild wild spaces to French literature which was living unwittingly and daily. In the Spassky affinity it kind of stuffy rules were flat. There was a and he's still the immense complexity of modern life which a new honest statesman now feels he can true please.
It was just beginning at the time of Balzac and would most of them sensed it and where billion Foz us of contemporary literature. She American novelist found a way to express this complexity. For instance who John dustbuster strategy so aptly called U S E. Individuals protest against modern life itself. Sayed. So we're not going to cooperate as anyone with does you know. If Farewell to Arms just rebellion is already found in guys. It's latent in every seen folk now created
and depression in his writing and evokes clemency and there's a motive. I can't you know he said I guess we forsaken envelops imaginary can play somewhere in the Deep South. But when must remember that the values of one kind of wilderness which was first was assumed in geology the meaning of the world as a cloak of Zen and all the germs of bad taste not in despair but a new military. And as the token of ultimate victory I finally got it. Bruce and his face Furniss to life and only Barry and do it.
What about a new relationship with language. In Yule up there used to be an accepted littler style. You know which is the same vocabulary I was used to describe. To put it cos a duchess or Steve a doll. In America however there can be no question of that. Both of them as a countess and a time are given so little treatment to which they had interaction. As a little a critic I want to stress this point in particular feel it sometimes appears to well I merely cannot write. Yes it seems to me to be very much to the credit of American novelist
to have taken his initiative in giving every day language. It's a height of littlest citizenship at this point. I should like to quote Lionel Trilling who in his book An E.M. Forster speaks in the style of the dialect appeal of foetal style of his immediate contact with the language of his public. He said he's not seeing the turn in style now you see a heightened sense of his audience and in America the audience is less easily seen as a voice. Must have been father. It becomes less intimate. It is significant. And two of our most remarkable
social critics and I Adams and they have been a hote difficult and self-conscious. They often find Posen out of an embarrassed relation you know only critics like Mencken Mumford will do Frank. When we do diverse as they are in their faults of style or light English as if they didn't quite know whom they were talking to. But shell and Chesterton idiosyncratic as they pretend to be right in perfectly normal pose. Letting tactics live as you would normally live said to fashion for you would be on the right. Just to become a user for the next
year or even strangle and helped overcome. So the span between 0 Heaton and spoken world. People like you see Lena and I want to know how greatly indebted to the American fellow lied to us. And they have shown zero gratitude in acquainting as the French public was America's great novelists. I have been asked to try and explain why American fiction. He spoke last night at least. One of the Silesian Well all of first season friends who care about literature are so fond of American novelists that America
by some gift was the only spirit. Has managed to produce many geniuses by geniuses I mean people have got a vision transcending their human understanding thus embodying flawless incarnating. So either and this is TELL YOU late Monday night means the tooth which passes so knowledge and self cannot be told unless you fabricators. Yeah necessarily linked
was an epoch. I like to see when he will Baldwin. But yeah I'm not bound to eat. And then even easier for you. May I mention it once the dead woman Nedved and moans are leaving. William Faulkner. Not excluding NLCS So wisdom which he says you know for centuries and countries in need Stay with us for ever. Thank you Madam I need you and Mr. Warren have surely given us many rich ideas for further exploration. And so we begin our next hour we shall here W.H. Auden poet critic and teacher in Oxford
and our people act more critic and teacher at Princeton discuss the foreign reputation of Henry James. The discussion you have just heard is the introductory broadcast in 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. This program is distributed by the National Association of educational broadcasters. This is the AMA E.B. Radio Network.
Series
As others read us: American fiction abroad
Episode
Introductory program, part two
Producing Organization
University of Massachusetts
Contributing Organization
University of Maryland (College Park, Maryland)
AAPB ID
cpb-aacip/500-445hfm2f
If you have more information about this item than what is given here, or if you have concerns about this record, we want to know! Contact us, indicating the AAPB ID (cpb-aacip/500-445hfm2f).
Description
Episode Description
This program, part two of two, presents an introductory overview of the series, hosted by Robert Penn Warren and Claude-Edmonde Magny. The program also includes the voices of John Dos Passos, William Faulkner, John Steinbeck.
Series Description
This series analyzes European views of the works of American authors.
Broadcast Date
1957-01-01
Topics
Literature
Subjects
American literature--Europe--History and criticism.
Media type
Sound
Duration
00:29:06
Embed Code
Copy and paste this HTML to include AAPB content on your blog or webpage.
Credits
Guest: Steinbeck, John, 1902-1968
Guest: Dos Passos, John, 1896-1970
Guest: Faulkner, William, 1897-1962
Host: Warren, Robert Penn, 1905-1989
Host: Magny, Claude-Edmonde, 1913-1966
Producing Organization: University of Massachusetts
AAPB Contributor Holdings
University of Maryland
Identifier: 57-22-1 (National Association of Educational Broadcasters)
Format: 1/4 inch audio tape
Duration: 00:29:15
If you have a copy of this asset and would like us to add it to our catalog, please contact us.
Citations
Chicago: “As others read us: American fiction abroad; Introductory program, part two,” 1957-01-01, University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed March 28, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-445hfm2f.
MLA: “As others read us: American fiction abroad; Introductory program, part two.” 1957-01-01. University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. March 28, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-445hfm2f>.
APA: As others read us: American fiction abroad; Introductory program, part two. Boston, MA: University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-445hfm2f