Praise and prejudice

GEORGE DANGERFIELD

Never were times more favorable for a new woman writer of genius to emerge. But is there, anywhere, any sign of one?

The hook world will be more or less completely filled, until after New Year's, with The Woollcott Reader, an excellent anthology upon which it is unnecessary to comment, since large sections of the public are already, and in advance, preparing their bosoms to receive it. Ibis is a convenient time, therefore, to look back and, scanning the past literary year, recover from that cluttered and transitory scene whatever there is to be recovered.

Nominating the best book of the past twelvemonth is a favorite pastime among critics at this season: but, whether fortunately or otherwise, the Limited Editions (dub has already taken the play away from all of us, by bestowing their first Gold Medal upon Donald Culross Peattie's An Almanac Tor Moderns (Putnams. $2.50) as "The American Classic"—no less—"for 1935." Some people may disagree with this statement, but nobody is likely to get nasty about it. It is pleasant to see a really fine book, hitherto more or less unrecognised by the public, receive its reward.

But it so happens that the past year reveals a singular, an ominous event. One book bangs, like a setting star of the first magnitude, low in the literary heavens of 1935; and that book is Willa Gather's Lucy (lay heart. As I write this, Lucy Gay heart seems to me to be of infinitely more moment than even such a great and successful piece of writing as Oj Tune And The River.

You will perhaps remember the reception which Miss Gather's novel received. Everybody admitted with reluctance that it was little more than so much beautiful writing, which is rather a sad thing to say of fiction; and everybody admitted, simultaneously, that Miss Gather is one of the major writers of our time. Phis would be true if she had written nothing more than Death Comes h or The Archbishop, a novel which haunts the imagination as only a great book can do. I do not think that I am saying anything disrespectful if I sa) that the star of Willa Gather is on the wane; not the star of her reputation, of course, which grows brighter and brighter, but of her power to provide us with many more great stories. She never was a prolific writer. . . .

But what woman writer is to take her place? Or to take the place, when the time comes (and may it be distant) for them to disappear, of Edna Ferber and Ellen Glasgow and others whose reputations are founded in the past? Is there any sign of a new woman genius, an outstanding fresh feminine talent, anywhere in America? or anywhere in England, for that matter?

The question is an important one. A truly rational woman is either dull or disastrous; woman is an intensely personal creature, emotional, intuitive, at odds with facts, and miserable with theories. Fiction and poetry, where emotion predominates, are the quarters in which she may be expected to shine.

In this respect, there are two facts worth mentioning. ( 1 ) Never since the Dark Ages has the world been so emotional as it is today. (2) Never in the history of all mankind has woman been given such a chance to express herself. Publishers, editors, lecture-bureaux clamor for her services, and nobody would dare admit, or would even think of admitting, that between the two sexes—in writing, at any rate—there is the slightest inequality.

Put these two self-evident facts together, and one conclusion seems to emerge from them—the state of contemporary history and the broad-mindedness of contemporary opinion absolutely demand the appearance of a new female genius. Is there any sign of one in the English-speaking world? Is there any new woman in America to compare with Willa Gather? or in England to compare with Virginia Woolf?

So far as American fiction is concerned (English fiction is not revealing) two names immediately suggest themselves— Josephine Johnson and Tess Slesinger. The work of Miss Johnson somehow strikes a blind spot in me, and I can't pretend to understand its success. But the critical reception given to her Now in November, like that given to Miss Slesinger's The Unpossessed, proves how eager we are today to get hold of any promising feminine talent, and shove it up into the stratosphere. The Unpossessed, as a matter of fact, was a somewhat disheveled book; Miss Slesinger's volume of short stories, Time: The Present, was far more exact, tense, exciting. These two writers, shooting above the horizon like meteors, may possibly turn into fixed stars; and the innumerable possibilities lying around in Nancy Hale s Never Any More (a sensitive novel received with a good deal of indifference) suggest that they may possibly be joined by a third. One could mention twenty or thirty young women—(I am wondering, for instance, when Harriet Colby's fine critical prose will travel into a larger field)—with every gift but one—the gift of writing what might be permanent literature.

On at least two occasions this year, women missed a great opportunity. Such a book as It Cant Happen Here, which was aimed in the timeliest fashion straight at the unreason of America, should never have been written by a man: difficult as it is to beat Sinclair Lewis to a story, a woman should have got in first. And then there was Butter field A. The thing that was really wrong with Butterfield H was this— its heroine, or villainess, or whatever she was, became, in Mr. O'Hara's hands, practically pre-historic. She was extinct, she was legendary, she was something which died with the coming of Repeal. Mr. 0 Hara reported her brilliantly; but it was, to all intents and purposes, a report on the habits of the female Dodo. A woman, with her god-given instinct for a kind of imaginative malice, her power of endowing with vitality the most defunct of social gestures (such as the gesture of lifting a drink in a speakeasy), could have given some universalii) to such a character as Gloria Wandrous. But will anyone dare rescue it now from its grave in Butter field 8?

As for poetry, 1 suppose that everyone will admit that no woman exists in the English-speaking world who could claim the stature of Elinor Wylie, or the early Edna Millay. At one time I thought that Elizabeth Coatsworth, mainly because ol an enchanting lyric in the lamented Dial. would deliver the goods: but now it seems that such laurels as there are must crown the precise, the almost (lawless, the limited talent of Frances Frost. In England, so far as I can discover, there is no young poetess of any importance whatsoever.

The reason why, in a time so favorable to feminine genius, there should be so little sign of it, is presumably beyond discovery. Perhaps popular writing, which insists that nobody should write quite as well as he can, and which sometimes rewards this selfsacrifice with a rather terrific income, is responsible. But I do not think that real writers have ever been kept back because they had to write for money.

Perhaps some feminine genius will appear in the coming year; if it does it can be fairly sure of a reception which will make the one given to Anthony Adverse a mere murmur. The editors of America are waiting for it with an extraordinary solicitude. But how long, oh Lord, how long?