(Temperature, 105 degrees Fahrenheit.) One
rather marvels that he has never attempted a novel. It would have been
as bad, perhaps, as "Love Among the Artists," but certainly no bore. He
might have given George Moore useful help with "Evelyn Innes" and
"Sister Teresa": they are about music, but not by a musician. As for me,
I see no great talent for fiction _qua_ fiction in these two volumes of
exotic tales. They are interesting simply because Huneker the story
teller so often yields place to Huneker the playboy of the arts. Such
things as "Antichrist" and "The Woman Who Loved Chopin" are no more, at
bottom, than second-rate anecdotes; it is the filling, the sauce, the
embroidery that counts. But what filling! What sauce! What
embroidery!... One never sees more of Huneker....
Sec. 8
He must stand or fall, however, as critic. It is what he has written
about other men, not what he has concocted himself, that makes a figure
of him, and gives him his unique place in the sterile literature of the
republic's second century. He stands for a _Weltanschauung_ that is not
only un-national, but anti-national; he is the chief of all the curbers
and correctors of the American Philistine; in praising the arts he has
also criticized a civilization.
Pages:
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213