The explanation I wish to proffer in this essay may sound
fantastical; most explanations that explain anything usually do--
at first. I believe that this vast rush of nature into American
literature is more than a mere reflection of a liking for the
woods. It represents a search for a tradition, and its capture.
Good books, like well-built houses, must have tradition behind
them. The Homers and Shakespeares and Goethes spring from rich
soil left by dead centuries; they are like native trees that grow
so well nowhere else. The little writers--hacks who sentimentalize
to the latest order, and display their plot novelties like
bargains on an advertising page--are just as traditional. The only
difference is that their tradition goes back to books instead of
life. Middle-sized authors--the very good and the probably
enduring--are successful largely because they have gripped a
tradition and followed it through to contemporary life. This is
what Thackeray did in "Vanity Fair," Howells in "The Rise of Silas
Lapham," and Mrs. Wharton in "The House of Mirth." But the back-
to-nature books--both the sound ones and those shameless exposures
of the private emotions of ground hogs and turtles that call
themselves nature books--are the most traditional of all.
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