Italian popular literature exudes sentiment; and the
sale of "squashy" fiction in England is said to be threatened only
by an occasional importation of an American "best-seller." We have
no bad eminence here. Sentimentalists with enlarged hearts are
international in habitat, although, it must be admitted,
especially popular in America.
When a critic, after a course in American novels and magazines,
declares that life, as it appears on the printed page here, is
fundamentally sentimentalized, he goes much deeper than
"mushiness" with his charge. He means, I think, that there is an
alarming tendency in American fiction to dodge the facts of life--
or to pervert them. He means that in most popular books only red-
blooded, optimistic people are welcome. He means that material
success, physical soundness, and the gratification of the emotions
have the right of way. He means that men and women (except the
comic figures) shall be presented, not as they are, but as we
should like to have them, according to a judgment tempered by
nothing more searching than our experience with an unusually
comfortable, safe, and prosperous mode of living.
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