III. Translations. 505




INTRODUCTION


I was talking the other day to Alfred Coppard, who has steered more
successfully than most English story writers away from the Scylla and
Charybdis of the modern artist. He told me that he had been reading
several new novels and volumes of short stories by contemporary American
writers with that awakened interest in the civilization we are framing
which is so noticeable among English writers during the past three
years. He asked me a remarkable question, and the answer which I gave
him suggested certain contrasts which seemed to me of basic importance
for us all. He said: "I have been reading books by Sherwood Anderson,
Waldo Frank and Ben Hecht and Konrad Bercovici and Joseph Hergesheimer,
and I can see that they are important books, but I feel that the
essential point to which all this newly awakened literary consciousness
is tending has somehow subtly eluded me. American and English writers
both use the same language, and so do Scotch and Irish writers, but I am
not puzzled when I read Scotch and Irish books as I am when I read these
new American books. Why is it?"

I had to think for a moment, and then the obvious answer occurred to me.
I told him that I thought the reason for his moderate bewilderment was
due to the fact that the Englishman or the Scotchman or the Irishman
living at home was writing out of a background of racial memory and
established tradition which was very much all of one piece, and that all