Some of the best work of John G. Neihardt is also some of the least well known--his critical essays. During a period of just over 30 years, from 1911 until approximately 1942, Neihardt wrote more than twenty-five hundred reviews and essays, writing for such respected newspapers as the New York Times, Minneapolis Journal, and St. Louis Post-Dispatch. In these reviews and essays, we get a glimpse into the literary philosophy that shaped Neihardt’s poetry and fiction as well as a sense of how he responded to the writers of his day.
For now, though, readers of Neihardt have access to only a few of his critical essays: a couple contained in the reader The Giving Earth, the two lengthier essays in Poetic Values, and the out-of-print Laureate Address. I’ve been working to gather for publication some of the best of Neihardt’s critical essays, and we’re giving you just a taste here of what’s to come.
Lori Utecht
From the Minneapolis Journal, June 27, 1917, p. 3, Neihardt wrote the following about The Job, by Sinclair Lewis:
Here is set forth, with a patient accumulation of detail, the story of an ambitious small town girl, who, after the death of her father, goes with her mother to New York city, lured by the usual romantic dreams. After a long and sordid struggle with things as they are, she achieves an income of $4,000 a year and a second husband--the latter, presumably permanent. Probably as many as 10,000 stories with practically the same plot have been written, and nearly all of them either insufferably sentimental or indecent. The present novel is decidedly neither.
In writing a realistic story such as this, first hand knowledge of life having been granted, everything depends upon the author’s sense of proportion, which appears to be highly developed in Mr. Lewis. The Job may be described as a pictorial criticism of an individualistic society which is based upon an industrial system conceived as an end in itself rather than as a means to human welfare. His characters, presented with extraordinary vividness and economy of means, are readily seen to be logical products of a civilization (if the term may be used with justice) which has set itself the task of toiling prodigiously to satisfy the unnecessary desires which it is constantly creating. The Job is at once a tragic and ludicrous picture of a world that has made the radical mistake of prizing money (the representation of things) above things--a world worshipping a monstrous delusion.
We doubt if Mr. Lewis’ work may be ranked as literature in the strict sense of the term; for literature is concerned with the enduring truth, the ethos of life as distinguished from the pathos. Here the emphasis is placed, as in all “realistic” fiction, upon the fact, which is essentially transient. One does not produce a great piece of sculpture by making a cast from a human figure; nor does one produce literature by making a studiously exact copy of contemporary life. Nevertheless, we believe that the value of The Job is great. From some such book as this, posterity will understand us of the 20th century and our ephemeral institutions, which have seemed to us not only permanent, but representative of an astounding “progress.” And if such records are to be left, now is the logical time for their appearance, because we have only recently passed the culminating point of the individualistic regime. In the year 1917 we stand upon a watershed of history, looking back upon individualism and forward to some form of collectivism under state control. For Europe, August, 1914, marked the turning point. For us in American the crisis came in April of this year. The change may be slow or rapid, but it has begun. This state conceived as a superbeing will wax, the power of the individual will wane: and Mr. Lewis has done an important thing in that he has given one man’s view, necessarily fragmentary, of an age that is passing.
In the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 13, 1926, p. 13, in a column entitled "'The Irresistible Truth' and Mr. Cummings," Neihardt discusses e. e. cummings' Is Five:
Last year the Dial Award for distinguished service to American letters was given to Mr. Edward Eastlin Cummings; and so, say his publishers, recognition was paid to “one of the most astonishing careers in American literature.” “Within a brief five years,” we are further assured,” “E. E. Cummings has won ranking with the foremost living poets.”
In the old days when poets were still hopelessly unscientific in method, the product of a poet was regarded as the matter of chief importance in judging the poet’s significance. Poetry was then composed by a deplorable hit-and-miss method: and though some rather creditable poems were created--even so early as Homer--the happy result seems to have been largely accidental. If, by any chance, a given poem awakened in men a sense of beauty and awe, it was held to be successful. There was then no better way of judging.
Now that the world has at last become modern--and how strange it seems that men never lived in modern times before!--all that is altered. No poet worth his salt would attempt to achieve a reputation in these days without a special theory of technique. It is the very first matter to go when you discover that you are affected with the divine afflatus.
Mr. Cummings’ theory is as simple as it is ingenious. “I can express it in 15 words,” he tells us, “by quoting the Eternal Question and Answer of burlesk, viz, ‘Would you hit a woman with a child?--No, I would hit her with a brick.’ ” “Like the burlesk comedian” adds Mr. Cummings, “I am abnormally fond of that precision which creates movement.”
Here is brick number 36. See if you can catch it without considerable movement:
ta
hip
popot
amus Back
gen
teel-ly lugu
bri ous
eyes
LOOPTHELOOP
as
fathandsbangrag
It must not be supposed that there is anything easy about writing such poetry. It is very hard for Mr. Cummings to make poetry, even by his simple theory. “I should prefer to make almost anything else,” he confesses, “including locomotives and roses.” As a matter of fact, so the author assures us, it is precisely with “locomotives and roses that the poems are competing. They are also competing with elephants and with El Greco.”
It is in the light of the latter statement that one should read the following exquisite lyric. Compare its sprightliness with that of an elephant:
Jimmies’ got a goil
One remembers, however, that there are highbrows who insist upon profundity in poetry. These may complain of a too blatant obviousness in the simple wood-note wild that Mr. Cummings has achieved in the two lyrics quoted. But our poet is limited to no such lilting airs. As a matter of fact, he can, and frequently does, soar beyond human comprehension when he lets himself go. In addition to roses, locomotives and elephants, Mr. Cummings tells us, he sometimes competes with Niagara Falls. No doubt he did so in the following torrential poem:
life hurl my
The chief point in Mr. Cummings’ theory has been withheld thus far, in the belief that it could not possibly be appreciated until something of the poet’s astonishing quality had been displayed. Here is the point: “Ineluctible preoccupation with the Verb gives a poet one priceless advantage: whereas non-makers must content themselves with the merely undeniable fact that two times two is four, he rejoices in a purely irresistible truth (to be found, in abbreviated costume, upon the title page of the present volume).”
Eager for this “irresistible truth,” we turn to the title page, which reads as follows, “E. E. Cummings Is Five.”
How much a simple sentence may explain!
In the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Monday, January 31, 1927, p. 15, Neihardt reviewed Wild Honey by Frederick Niven:
Frederick Niven is said to have had some hobo experiences in the Northwest; and in view of the fact that there have been thousands of hobos, there is nothing particularly striking about the information. In “Wild Honey” he tells of some trips he once made with two bindle-stiffs known as Hank and Slim. The opening chapter induces the reader to hope for much entertainment from these “two queer men”: but nothing manages to happen, and expectancy wears out with the turning of the pages.
There is a curious notion abroad to the effect that if you have ever been a hobo--and not a few of us have--you are qualified to write a whoppingly good book: but there seems to be a mistake somewhere.
Once upon a time there was a soaring tree aloof in violet air upon the shoulder of a lonely mountain, let us say; and, being tall, it caught the music of the master winds when lesser trees were silent; and in the hushed nights with its head among the stars it was a holy thing to see. It is cut down now, and part of it is the paper upon which these mild and inconsequential adventures have been recorded by human labor that might have been used in the potato patches of the country.
| John G. Neihardt |