Indeed, let us take heed and diligently improve
our native talent, lest a day come when the Great American Novel make its
appearance, but written in a foreign language, and by some author who--
however purely American at heart--never set foot on the shores of the
Republic.
CHAPTER III.
AMERICANISM IN FICTION.
Contemporary criticism will have it that, in order to create an American
Literature, we must use American materials. The term "Literature" has, no
doubt, come to be employed in a loose sense. The London _Saturday Review_
has (or used to have until lately) a monthly two-column article devoted to
what it called "American Literature," three-fourths of which were devoted
to an examination of volumes of State Histories, Statistical Digests,
Records of the Census, and other such works as were never, before or
since, suspected of being literature; while the remaining fourth mentioned
the titles (occasionally with a line of comment) of whatever productions
were at hand in the way of essays, novels, and poetry. This would seem to
indicate that we may have--nay, are already possessed of--an American
Literature, composed of American materials, provided only that we consent
to adopt the _Saturday Review's_ conception of what literature is.
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