Kitabı oku: «Pieces of Hate; And Other Enthusiasms», sayfa 9
XXX
THE ORTHODOX CHAMPION
The entire orthodox world owes a debt to Benny Leonard. In all the other arts, philosophies, religions and what nots conservatism seems to be crumbling before the attacks of the radicals. A stylist may generally be identified to-day by his bloody nose. Even in Leonard's profession of pugilism the correct method has often been discredited of late.
It may be remembered that George Bernard Shaw announced before "the battle of the century" that Carpentier ought to be a fifty to one favorite in the betting. It was the technique of the Frenchman which blinded Shaw to the truth. Every man in the world must be in some respect a standpatter. The scope of heresy in Shaw stops short of the prize ring. His radicalism is not sufficiently far reaching to crawl through the ropes. When Carpentier knocked out Beckett with one perfectly delivered punch he also jarred Shaw. He knocked him loose from some of his cynical contempt for the conventions. Mr. Shaw might continue to be in revolt against the well-made play, but he surrendered his heart wholly to the properly executed punch.
But Carpentier, the stylist, fell before Dempsey, the mauler, in spite of the support of the intellectuals. It seemed once again that all the rules were wrong. Benny Leonard remains the white hope of the orthodox. In lightweight circles, at any rate, old-fashioned proprieties are still effective. No performer in any art has ever been more correct than Leonard. He follows closely all the best traditions of the past. His left hand jab could stand without revision in any textbook. The manner in which he feints, ducks, sidesteps and hooks is unimpeachable. The crouch contributed by some of the modernists is not in the repertoire of Leonard. He stands up straight like a gentleman and a champion and is always ready to hit with either hand.
His fight with Rocky Kansas at Madison Square Garden was advertised as being for the lightweight championship of the world. As a matter of fact much more than that was at stake. Spiritually, Saint-Saens, Brander Matthews, Henry Arthur Jones, Kenyon Cox, and Henry Cabot Lodge were in Benny Leonard's corner. His defeat would, by implication, have given support to dissonance, dadaism, creative evolution and bolshevism. Rocky Kansas does nothing according to rule. His fighting style is as formless as the prose of Gertrude Stein. One finds a delightfully impromptu quality in Rocky's boxing. Most of the blows which he tries are experimental. There is no particular target. Like the young poet who shot an arrow into the air, Rocky Kansas tosses off a right hand swing every once and so often and hopes that it will land on somebody's jaw.
But with the opening gong Rocky Kansas tore into Leonard. He was gauche and inaccurate but terribly persistent. The champion jabbed him repeatedly with a straight left which has always been considered the proper thing to do under the circumstances. Somehow or other it did not work. Leonard might as well have been trying to stand off a rhinoceros with a feather duster. Kansas kept crowding him. In the first clinch Benny's hair was rumpled and a moment later his nose began to bleed. The incident was a shock to us. It gave us pause and inspired a sneaking suspicion that perhaps there was something the matter with Tennyson after all. Here were two young men in the ring and one was quite correct in everything which he did and the other was all wrong. And the wrong one was winning. All the enthusiastic Rocky Kansas partisans in the gallery began to split infinitives to show their contempt for Benny Leonard and all other stylists. Macaulay turned over twice in his grave when Kansas began to lead with his right hand.
But traditions are not to be despised. Form may be just as tough in fiber as rebellion. Not all the steadfastness of the world belongs to heretics. Even though his hair was mussed and his nose bleeding, Benny continued faithful to the established order. At last his chance came. The young child of nature who was challenging for the championship dropped his guard and Leonard hooked a powerful and entirely orthodox blow to the conventional point of the jaw. Down went Rocky Kansas. His past life flashed before him during the nine seconds in which he remained on the floor and he wished that he had been more faithful as a child in heeding the advice of his boxing teacher. After all, the old masters did know something. There is still a kick in style, and tradition carries a nasty wallop.
XXXI
WITH A STEIN ON THE TABLE
Half a League would be better than one. Perhaps a quarter section would be still better. The thing that sank Mr. Wilson's project, so far as America was concerned, was the machinery. It was too heavy. Not so much was needed. The only essential thing was a large round table and a pleasant room held under at least one year's lease. Of course, it should have been the right sort of table. If they had put knives and forks and, better yet, glasses upon the one in Paris, instead of ink and paper, we might already have a better world. Beer and light wines can settle subjects which defy all the subtleties possible to ink.
What the world needs, then, is not so much a league as an international beer night to be held at regular intervals by representatives of the nations. Good beer and enough of it would have settled the whole problem of the covenants which were going to be open and did not turn out that way. The little meetings would have a persuasive privacy, and yet they would not be secret to any destructive extent. An alert reporter hanging about the front door could not fail to hear the strains of "He's a jolly good fellow" drifting down the stairs from the conference room and, if he were a journalist of any ability, he would have no difficulty in surmising that the crowd was entertaining the delegate from Germany and discussing indemnities.
Some persons were not quite fair in criticizing the shortcomings of President Wilson at Paris. It was easy to seize upon "open covenants" and to demolish his sincerity by pointing out the secrecy with which negotiations were carried on. It is sentimentally satisfying to every liberal and radical in the world to declare that all the walls should have come down and to continue this criticism by suggesting that the Arms conference ought to have been taken out of the Pan American Building and transferred to Tex Rickard's arena on Boyle's Thirty Acres, or the Yale Bowl. The notion is fascinating because it permits the possibility of cheering sections and enables one to picture Henry Cabot Lodge leaping to his feet every now and again and asking all the men with the R. R. banners (Reactionary Republicans) to join him in nine long rahs for the freedom of the seas. The delegates, of course, would be numbered so that the spectators could tell who was doing the kicking.
It is appealing and we wish it could be done that way, but it is not sound. We all know how bitter and destructive are legal battles which have their first hearing in the newspapers. We also remember how tenacious have been many of the struggles between capital and labor just so long as the leaders of either side were talking to each other across eight-column headlines instead of a table.
One may counter by calling to mind various evil things which have come to the world from the tops of tables, but we must insist again upon stressing the point that these were not tables which supported food and drink. In Paris various points were lost to democracy because the supporters of the right were outstayed by the champions of evil. In our little club room it would be hard to put such pressure upon anybody. He would need to do no more than shout for the waiter to fill up his mug again and intrench himself for the evening. The most attractive thing about our suggestion is that though it sounds like frivolous foolery it actually is nothing of the sort. We are willing to accept modifications, but the scheme would work. We have seen the pacifying effects of food and drink upon warring factions too many times not to respect them.
Once, at a dinner we heard Max Eastman talk across a table to Judge Gary and both enjoyed it. We do not mean to suggest that the two men arose with all their previous ideas of the conduct of the world changed. Judge Gary did not offer, in spite of the eloquence of Eastman, to curtail the working day in the mills of the United States Steel Company, nor did the editor of The Liberator promise that thereafter he would be more kindly disposed in writing about universal military training. But both men were disposed to listen. Gary did not rush to the telephone to summon a Federal attorney, and there was no disposition on the part of Eastman to call the proletariat up into immediate arms. The most friendly thing which anybody ever said about Mr. Wilson's League of Nations came from those opponents of the scheme who called it "nothing but a debating society."
Talk is lint for the wounds of the world. The guns cannot begin until the statesmen have had their say. Any device which provides a pleasant place and an audience for the orators in power is distinctly a move to end war. The trouble with ultimatums is not only that they are ugly but that they are short. If certain gentlemen from Serbia could have been brought face to face with other gentlemen from Austria and empowered to thrash it out the dispute between the two nations would by no means be settled by now, but it would still be in a talking stage.
Arguments must be fostered and preserved. It may be a little tiresome to hear premiers saying, "Is that so?" to one another, but the satisfaction derived from such exchanges is enough to keep the conflicting parties from seeking a blood restoration of national egos. Food and drink are not only the greatest instigators but the best preservers of free speech in the world. Undoubtedly everybody in his time has heard some toastmaster or other insult a prominent citizen a few feet away in a manner which would be unsafe on the public highway and nothing has happened. It has been passed off as something wholly suitable to the occasion. As we listened to Max Eastman talk across the table to Judge Gary we wondered whether anybody would have even thought for a moment of sending Debs to jail if he had only had the good fortune to talk from behind a barricade of knives and forks. These are the ultimate and most effective weapons of all peaceful men. With one of each in front of him even a revolutionist may bare his heart and still be safe from the bayonets of the military.
Of course, the value of the weapons is not unknown to the conservatives as well. Many a rampant reformer has gone to Washington and has seen his ideals drown one by one before his eyes in the soup. For years England managed to muddle along with Ireland by inviting nationalists out to dinner. With the spread and development of civilization the price of pottage has gone up. To-day we can afford to laugh at poor ignorant and deluded Jacob who let his pottage go for a mess of birthright.
In the light of these admissions it would be impossible to contend that all the ills of the world could be solved by the device of international beer nights. Even well fed men are not perfect. Alcohol is benign, but it does not canonize. Schemes would go on even over demitasses. There would be stratagems and surprises. And yet to our mind the stratagem, even of a statesman, can never be so potent for harm in the world as the stratagem of a general. Diplomacy is an evil game, chiefly because it has been so exclusive. Our little club would be large enough to admit all the delegates of the world. The only house rule would be "No checks cashed."
We have no idea that the heart of man is not more important than his stomach. The world will not be made over more closely to the heart's desire until we are of a better breed. But while we are waiting, friendly talks about a table may count for something. We might manage to swap a groaning world for a groaning board. There is sanction for hope in the words of the song. We know, don't we, that it's always fair weather when good fellows get together with a stein on the table. All America needs, then, to make the world safer for democracy is the stein and the good fellows.
XXXII
ART FOR ARGUMENT'S SAKE
All editors are divided into two parts. In one group are those who think that anybody who can make a good bomb can undoubtedly fashion a great sonnet. The members of the other class believe that if a man loves his country he is necessarily well fitted to be a book reviewer.
As a matter of fact, new terminology is coming into the business of criticism. A few years ago the critic who was displeased with a book called it "sensational" or "sentimental" or something like that. To-day he would voice his disapproval by writing "Pro-German" or "Bolshevist." Authors are no longer evaluated in terms of æsthetics, but rather from the point of view of political economy. Indeed, to-day we have hardly such a thing as good writers and bad writers. They have become instead either "sound" or "dangerous." A sound author is one with whose views you are in agreement.
So tightly are the lines drawn that the criticism of the leading members of each side can be accurately predicted in advance. Show me the cover of a war novel, and let me observe that it is called "The Great Folly," and I will guarantee to foreshadow with a high degree of accuracy just what the critic of The New York Times will say about it and also the critic of The Liberator. Even if it happened to be called "The Glory of Shrapnel," the guessing would be just as easy.
The manner in which anybody says anything now whether in prose, verse, music or painting is entirely secondary in the minds of all critical publications. Reviewers look for motives. Symphonies are dismissed as seditious, and lyrics are closely scanned to see whether or not their rhythms are calculated to upset the established order without due recourse to the ballot. Nor has this particular reviewer any intention of suggesting that such activity is entirely vain and fanciful. He remembers that only a month ago he began a thrilling adventure story called "The Lost Peach Pit," only to discover, when he was half through, that it was a tract in favor of a higher import duty on potash.
A vivid novel about the war by John Dos Passos has been issued under the title "Three Soldiers." One of the chief characters was a creative musician who broke under the rigor of army discipline which was repugnant to him. Nobody who wrote about the book undertook to discuss whether or not the author had painted a persuasive picture of the struggle in the soul of a credible man. Instead they argued as to just what proportion of men in the American army were discontented, and the final critical verdict is being withheld until statistics are available as to how many of them were musicians. Those who disliked the book did not speak of Mr. Dos Passos as either a realist or a romanticist. They simply called him a traitor and let it go at that. The enthusiasts on the other side neglected to say anything about his style because they needed the space to suggest that he ought to be the next candidate for president from the Socialist party.
Speaking as a native-born American (Brooklyn – 1888) who once voted for a Socialist for membership in the Board of Aldermen, the writer must admit that he has found the radical solidarity of critical approval or dissent more trying than that of the conservatives. Again and again he has found, in The Liberator and elsewhere, able young men, who ought to know better, praising novels for no reason on earth except that they were radical. If the novelist said that life in a middlewestern town was dreary and evil he was bound to be praised by the socialist reviewers. On the other hand, any author who found in this same middle west a community or an individual not hopelessly stunted in mind and in morals, was immediately scourged as a viciously sentimental observer who had probably been one of the group which fixed upon the nomination of President Harding late at night behind the locked doors of a little room in a big hotel.
The enthusiasm of the radical critics extends not only to rebels against existing governmental principles and moral conventions, but to all those who dare to write in any new manner. There seems to be a certain confusion whereby free verse is held to be a movement in the direction of free speech.
Novels which begin in the middle and work first forward and then back, win favor as blows against the bourgeois idea that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points. Of course, the radical author can do almost anything the conservative does and still retain the admiration of his fellows by dint of a very small amount of tact. Rhapsodies on love will be damned as sentimental if the author has been injudicious enough to allow his characters to marry, but he can retain exactly the same language if he is careful to add a footnote that nothing is contemplated except the freest of free unions. A few works are praised by both sides because each finds a different interpretation for the same set of facts. Thus, the authors of "Dulcy" were surprised to find themselves warmly greeted in one of the Socialist dailies as young men who had struck a blow for government ownership of all essential industries merely because they had introduced a big business man into their play and, for the purposes of comic relief, had made him a fool.
Class consciousness has become so acute that it extends even beyond the realms of literature and drama into the field of sports. The recent "battle of the century" eventually simmered down into the minds of many as a struggle between the forces of reaction and revolution. It was known before the fight that Carpentier would wear a flowered silk bathrobe into the ring, while Dempsey would be clad in an old red sweater. How could symbolism be more perfect? Anybody who believed that Carpentier's right would be good enough to win, was immediately set down as a profiteer in munitions who would undoubtedly welcome the outbreak of another war. Likewise it was unsafe to express the opinion that Dempsey's infighting might be too much for the Frenchman, lest one be identified with the little willful group of pacifists who impeded the progress of the war. Eventually, the startling revelation was made by the reporter of a morning newspaper that he had seen Carpentier smelling a rose. After that, any belief in the invader's prowess laid whoever expressed it open to the charge, not only of aristocracy, but of degeneracy as well. After Dempsey's blows wore down his opponent and defeated him, it was generally felt by his supporters that the eight-hour day was safe, and that the open shop would never be generally accepted in America.
The only encouraging feature in the increasingly sharp feeling of class consciousness among critics is a growing frankness. Reviewers are willing to admit now that they think so and so's novel is an indifferent piece of work because he speaks ill of conscription and they believe in it. A year or so ago they would have pretended that they did not like it because the author split some infinitives.
One of the frankest writing men we ever met is the editor of a Socialist newspaper. "Whenever there's a big strike," he explained to me, "I always tell the man who goes out on the story, 'Never see a striker hit a scab. Always see the scab hit the striker.'"
"You see," he went on, "there are seven or eight other newspapers in town who will see it just the other way and I've got to keep the balance straight."
There used to be a practice somewhat similar to this among baseball umpires. Whenever the man behind the plate felt that he had called a bad ball a strike, he would bide his time until the next good one came over and that he would call a ball. The practice was known as "evening up" and it is no longer considered efficient workmanship. That is, not among umpires. The radical editor was not in the least abashed when I quoted to him the remark of a man who said that he always read his paper with great interest because he invariably found the editorial opinions in the news and the news on the editorial page. "That's just what I'm trying to do," he exclaimed delightedly. "I'm not trying to give the people the news. I'm trying to make new Socialists every day."
It is to be feared that even those writers who have the opportunity to be more deliberate than the journalists have been struck with the idea that by words they can shape the world a little closer to the heart's desire. Throughout the war we were told so constantly that battles could be decided and ships built and wars decided by the force of propaganda, that every man with a portable typewriter in his suitcase began to think of it as a baton. There was a day when a novelist was satisfied if he could capture a little slice of life and get it between the covers of his book. Now everybody writes to shake the world. The smell of propaganda is unmistakable.
With literature in its present state of mind critics cannot be expected to watch and wait for the great American novel or the great American play. Instead they look for the book which made the tariff possible, or the play which ended the steel strike.
