Part III

Reaction

I. [The War and Liberalism: The reaction developed a many-sided attack on the liberalisms of the preceding period. The older intellectuals had abandoned French equalitarian democracy, but set as their goal economic democracy; the younger intellectuals attacked the principle of democracy, the ideal of industrialism, the culture of the middle class]

II. [The Attack on Democracy: A return to the eighteenth century spirit of aristocracy. Purveyors of current disgusts]

I. [Philosophical: H. L. Mencken--a Nietzschean critic. A cynic who grows witty over American failure]

II. [Biological: The falsity of the perfectionist philosophy derived from Locke. Not environment but heredity--the isolated germ existence before birth]

III. [Psychological: The discovery of morons. Primitive drives--sex, hunger--keep men children. Nevertheless behaviorism a denial of the aristocracy of the biological argument, holding with Locke that environment is determining]

III. [The Attack on Industrialism: A comprehensive movement that enlists first-class minds--intellectuals, poets, novelists, dramatists]

IV. [The Attack on the Middle Class: Sinclair Lewis;[502] Zona Gale;[503] Evelyn Scott]

V. [New Philosophies]

I. [Economics: Denial of the finality of economic law: A pragmatic view--Mitchell]

II. [Political Theory: A decline of the program of industrial democracy]

III. [Science: A rejection of the law of causality and a weakening of the authority of science]

VI. [New Literary Fashions]

I. [In fiction, impressionism and expressionism--Sherwood Anderson[503]]

II. [In biography: The impressionism of psychography]

III. [In war fiction:[503] A brutal realism and frank pacifism]

Addenda 323

Naturalism in American Fiction 323

1. Stephen Crane 328

2. Frank Norris 329

“McTeague” 330

“Vandover and the Brute” 332

“The Octopus” 332

Sidney Lanier 334

The Incomparable Mr. Cabell 335

The Problem Novel and the Diversion from Naturalism 346

Jack London: The Novelist of the Proletariat 352

Upton Sinclair 353

Theodore Dreiser: Chief of American Naturalists 354

Sinclair Lewis: Our Own Diogenes 360

Sherwood Anderson: A Psychological Naturalist 372

A New Romance 372

1917-1924 373

I. The Small Town in Fiction 373

William Allen White: A Son of the Middle Border 374

Booth Tarkington: The Dean of American Middle-Class Letters 375

Dorothy Canfield (Fisher) 375

II. The Realistic Small Town and the New Naturalism 376

Zona Gale--The Transition from Romance to Realism 377

Donn Byrne 377

Robert Nathan 378

Joseph Hergesheimer: A Sophisticated Romantic 379

III. Certain Other Writers 381

Edith Wharton--The Genteel Tradition and the New Plutocracy 381

Willa Cather: Epics of Women 382

IV. Some War Books 384

John Dos Passos 384

E. E. Cummings 385

Thomas Boyd 385

Laurence Stallings 385

V. Youth in Revolt--Certain Purveyors of the Hectic 385

F. Scott Fitzgerald 386

Stephen Vincent Benét and Floyd Dell 386

Ben Hecht 386

Ole Rölvaag’s _Giants in the Earth_ 387

The Short Story 397

A Chapter in American Liberalism 401

Bibliography 415

Index 421

Footnotes

[493] This is given in full, as Professor Parrington left it, with those parts not completed by him in brackets. Some revision has been made for the parts he completed, but notes have been added to the text to show his original intention. For some of the bracketed headings after Part II of Book II some material is given in the Addenda from other work of Parrington’s.--_Publisher._

[494] See “Naturalism in American Fiction,” in the Addenda--lecture notes including Crane and Norris.

[495] See Addenda for lecture notes on Lanier.

[496] See Addenda for magazine article on Cabell.

[497] See “A Chapter in American Liberalism,” the last of the Addenda.

[498] See _Ibid._

[499] See Addenda, “The Problem Novel and the Diversion from Naturalism.”

[500] See Addenda for brief notes.

[501] See Addenda for notes of lecture on Dreiser.

[502] See Addenda for reprint of pamphlet on Lewis.

[503] See Addenda for brief notes.