He has been very successful in local color. But then local color
is _local_. It is a minor art. In the field of human nature he has
fought a doubtful battle. An occasional novel has broken through into
regions where it is possible to be utterly American even while writing
English. Poems too have followed. But here lie our great failures. I
do not speak of the "great American novel," yet to come. I refer to
the absence of a school of American fiction, or poetry, or drama, that
has linked itself to any tradition broader than the romance of the
colonies, New England of the 'forties, or the East Side of New York.
The men who most often write for all America are mediocre. They strike
no deeper than a week-old interest in current activity. They aim to
hit the minute because they are shrewd enough to see that for "all
America" there is very little continuity just now between one minute
and the next. The America they write for is contemptuous of tradition,
although worshipping convention, which is the tradition of the
ignorant. The men who write for a fit audience though few are too
often local or archaic, narrow or European, by necessity if not by
choice.
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