have a sort of primitive power by comparison with which the orthodox
native materials of fiction seem often pale and dusty. The older
Americans, settled into smug routines, lack the vitality, the industry
of the newcomers. They are less direct and more provincial; they are
bundled up in gentilities and petty habits; they hide behind
old-fashioned reticences which soften the drama of their lives. With the
newer stocks an ancient process begins again. Their affairs are
conducted on the plane of desperate subsistence. Struggling to survive
at all, they cry out in the language of hunger and death; almost naked
in the struggle, they speak nakedly about livelihood and birth and
death. Sooner or later the immigrants must be perceived to have added
precious elements of passion and candor to American fiction.


2. THE REVOLT FROM THE VILLAGE

_Edgar Lee Masters_

The newest style in American fiction dates from the appearance, in 1915,
of _Spoon River Anthology_, though it required five years for the
influence of that book to pass thoroughly over from poetry to prose. For
nearly half a century native literature had been faithful to the cult of
the village, celebrating its delicate merits with sentimental affection
and with unwearied interest digging into odd corners of the country for
persons and incidents illustrative of the essential goodness and heroism
which, so the doctrine ran, lie beneath unexciting surfaces. Certain
critical dispositions, aware of agrarian discontent or given to a
preference for cities, might now and then lay disrespectful hands upon
the life of the farm; but even these generally hesitated to touch the
village, sacred since Goldsmith in spite of Crabbe, sacred since