THE publication of a new novel[1] by Mr. Floyd Dell has for the second time within a week set me to reflecting ironically on this thought: "What a crew of political subversives our literary radicals are becoming!"
Suppose you are an impressionable young person, and suppose the current drastic criticism of American civilization has convinced you that our "bourgeois" society is uninteresting and unlovely—humdrum, hidebound, and tedious to the yawning point. You turn to writers who are busy making ideals for the younger generation. You turn to two of our novelists who, like their master, Mr. H. G. Wells, regard the novel as a branch of social dynamics, and what guiding beam is thrown on your pathway?
Mr. Sinclair Lewis, who was once thought to be tainted with Socialism, and who certainly has a rare talent for presenting human beings as members of organized society—Mr. Lewis has at last given us in "Arrowsmith" a novel which presents a clear-cut ideal and suggests a way out of the vulgar stress of a competitive money-making society. But what a way out!—to renounce the world for the quest of pure truth in the laboratory—a way prescribable only to solitary remorselessly energetic individuals dedicated to the
- ↑ This Mad Ideal, New York, 1925.
