Chapter I: Foreword

This book grew out of a series of lectures given by the author at the Sorbonne during the year 1926. These lectures were later published in a volume which was awarded the Montyon prize by the French Academy. The author’s first task is to apologize to the American reader for his audacity in attempting to transcribe it into English, and to seek his indulgence by reminding him that this is “an essay from a French pen,” to quote our former ambassador, M. Jusserand. It is only fair that the writer should warn his readers that the field of his investigation has been limited. His purpose was not to write a complete history of the American novel, although the principal masters of modern fiction have been included in the book; nor was it his intention that this should be purely a piece of literary criticism.

No one can open an American novel without being impressed by the earnestness and the unanimity which the authors display in discussing moral and social questions. Their books constitute a vast satire of present-day American civilization, a defense of the rights of man against the pressure of obsolete ideals and traditions. From this standpoint, they constitute a homologous group while each retains his full measure of originality.

Realism is not a new factor in American fiction. From Edward Eggleston to Theodore Dreiser, the American novel has tended more and more to become a precise account of American society. However, realism has never been as prevalent and as outspoken as it is to-day. As the United States increased in number and in population, the conflict between the ideals of the individual and those of the mass became more and more acute. Meanwhile the progress of experimental psychology afforded the American novelist a new means of explaining and revealing the motives of the individual.

In my book I have made reference to psychoanalysis in particular. Current literary criticism cannot afford to ignore Doctor Freud. Some masters of American literature, such as Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry James, Margaret Fuller and Amy Lowell have lately been subjected to a successful psychoanalysis. The new psychology permits a more exact diagnosis of several important phases of our consciousness which have their origin in the deepest recesses of our soul, and which, though not literary in themselves, are often manifest in literature. Freudian psychology is the natural ally of the sociologist. It shifts the largest part of the responsibility for many of the moral diseases and idiosyncrasies of the individual upon social institutions. By presenting Puritanism as a form of moral inhibition it throws a new light upon it.

Moral and psychological duplicity have been the subjects of several European investigations before the ascendancy of Doctor Freud. One of the most suggestive was presented in a book called “Le Bovarysme” by the French philosopher, Jules de Gaultier. He chose Flaubert’s Madame Bovary as being the most typical case of romantic inhibition. He showed that after all romanticism was nothing but a psychological disease and the attempt of an individual under social pressure to appear in a double light in his own eyes. A more pathetic example can scarcely be conceived than that of Flaubert’s heroine, Emma Bovary, and her attempt to lead an imaginary life as a compensation for her monotonous environment. It is obvious from a perusal of American novels of to-day that Emma Bovary has many brothers and sisters in this country. A normal society cannot exist without normal people and the latter cannot be imagined without a certain amount of personal freedom and felicity. Standardization, the tyranny of public opinion and morals, the leveling of the exceptional to the mass ideal, petty persecutions, blue laws, Comstockery and so forth, had a part to play in Emma Bovary’s slow but sure moral and spiritual starvation, and in her ultimate suicide. Social welfare rests on a harmonious balance of give and take between the upper and lower classes. An excess of freedom produces anarchy; an excess of tyranny, inhibitions, despair and crime. No life is worth living wherein action is not a sister to dreams to some extent, to use Baudelaire’s saying. The plight of Flaubert’s heroine and that of Carol Kennicott in “Main Street” are different aspects of the same social and moral disease--undue moral repression.

The author of this book is not a pessimist and he is well aware that there are many American virtues; frankness, cordiality, buoyancy, a love of life and a love of action, a craving for change, the exaltation of youth, pure and triumphant, and the dynamism of national life,--these are qualities which the Old World might envy the New. But an outside observer might also have the right to point to the reverse side of these qualities. What has become of ethical and intellectual standards in the United States, a country so unmistakably prosperous and happy from a material point of view? What is the present condition of culture which exists behind the display of luxury and comfort? How has America fared in the conflict of quality _versus_ quantity which has swept the world?

One thing strikes the European in these United States of to-day; it is the contrast between the general prosperity and the individual discontent. The average American, taken out of his natural surroundings, appears like one who is sacrificed by being harnessed to some huge task whose importance he cannot grasp with reference to his personal satisfaction. He has helped to build a colossal structure, but what has he succeeded in achieving for his own gratification? Has he not sacrificed his best personal interests to the general welfare? The average American is an optimist superficially, but many disappointments lie buried in his heart. There seems to be some ungratified longing in his life; neither Puritan asceticism nor material prosperity can satisfy the new generation in America. The newcomers declare themselves discontented; they have become frankly pessimistic. A proud and wealthy nation, the proudest and wealthiest of all, the most eager and the most successful in conquering the means of material welfare, America does not seem to know how to make her children happy. They are in revolt, they are questioning the ideals and institutions of their fathers. In poetry, in drama, in the pulpit and in the press, pessimism and criticism prevail. Only recently the élite of the American intelligentsia declared that the civilization of the United States had been a failure.

What of all that? The author is not dismayed by these complaints. He holds that art in its largest sense has always had pessimism as its base and exaltation as its apogee. _Durch Leiden Freude!_ the great Beethoven proclaimed. Better to have the blues of a Chatterton, an Edgar Allan Poe, a Francis Thompson, than to have the banal optimism of a Babbitt after a good meal. The present pessimism of the younger generation in America is a good omen and an indication of a better future. Young America is looking forward to more thrilling spiritual adventures and it certainly will not be deceived in its high expectations.

RÉGIS MICHAUD

CONTENTS

Foreword vii

I The Case Against the Puritans 3

II How Nathaniel Hawthorne Exorcised Hester Prynne 25

III Henry James, Edith Wharton, William Dean Howells
and American Society on Parade 47

IV Theodore Dreiser as a Bio-Chemist 71

V Theodore Dreiser and the American Tragedy 102

VI Sinclair Lewis and the Average Man 128

VII Sherwood Anderson or When the Dreamer Awakes 154

VIII Sherwood Anderson on This Side of Freud 181

IX James Branch Cabell and the Escape to Poictesme 200

X James Branch Cabell on the High Place 221

XI Reinforcements: Willa Cather, Zona Gale, Floyd Dell,
Joseph Hergesheimer, Waldo Frank 238

XII Ulysses’ Companions: Robert McAlmon, Ben Hecht,
William Carlos Williams 257

Index 285

THE AMERICAN NOVEL TO-DAY