Such
books as these authors have written are not the Great American Novel,
because they take life and humanity not in their loftier, but in their
lesser manifestations. They are the side scenes and the background of a
story that has yet to be written. That story will have the interest not
only of the collision of private passions and efforts, but of the great
ideas and principles which characterize and animate a nation. It will
discriminate between what is accidental and what is permanent, between
what is realistic and what is real, between what is sentimental and what
is sentiment. It will show us not only what we are, but what we are to be;
not only what to avoid, but what to do. It will rest neither in the tragic
gloom of Turguenieff, nor in the critical composure of James, nor in the
gentle deprecation of Howells, but will demonstrate that the weakness of
man is the motive and condition of his strength. It will not shrink from
romance, nor from ideality, nor from artistic completeness, because it
will know at what depths and heights of life these elements are truly
operative. It will be American, not because its scene is laid or its
characters born in the United States, but because its burden will be
reaction against old tyrannies and exposure of new hypocrisies; a
refutation of respectable falsehoods, and a proclamation of
unsophisticated truths.
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