Why has duty become so unpopular in American literature? Is it
because she is, after all, just what that loftiest if not most
impeccable of Puritans called her, stern daughter of the voice of
God? Is there to be no more sternness in our morals now we
understand their psychology, no voice commanding us to do this or
not to do that because there is a gulf set between worth and
worthlessness? Is it true that because we are not to be damned for
playing golf on Sunday, nothing can damn us? That because the
rock-ribbed Vermont ancestor's idea of duty can never be ours, we
have no duty to acknowledge? Is it true that if we cease being
Puritans we can remain without principle, swayed only by impulse
and events?
When these questions are answered to the hilt, we shall get
something more vital than anti-Puritanism in modern American
literature.
THE OLDER GENERATION
The American Academy of Arts and Letters says a word for the Older
Generation now and then by choosing new academicians from its
ranks. No one else for a long while now has been so poor as to do
it reverence. Indeed, the readers of some of our magazines must
have long since concluded that there are no fathers and mothers in
the modern literary world, but only self-created heralds of the
future who do not bother even to be rebellious against a
generation they condemn.
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