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Three Worlds by Carl Van DorenReview by: Amy LovemanThe North American Review, Vol. 242, No. 2 (Winter, 1936/1937), pp. 400-402Published by: University of Northern IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25114821 .

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400 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

that has been so obfuscated by leftist critics, who have been at

pains to make the term, propaganda, as elastic as possible. Mr. Tate is final when he says that "the school preoccupied with what is called economic determinism of literature is in

the direct line of descent from the crudely moralistic allegory of the Renaissance." It is too much to hope that the propaganda argument will cease to be a King Charles' head in critical

discussion, because there is no widespread desire to fix the

meaning of the term. Mr. Tate however has fixed it for those who dislike vagueness, and in time the meaning he gives will

prevail over the critical disorder of the day. That is a consider

able achievement in definition, one which incidentally Mr.

Farrell, who also has a chapter on propaganda, would particu

larly benefit by studying.

By coincidence each of the three authors under review has a

chapter on Humanism, and each, even Mr. Farrell indirectly, is more indebted to this belabored school than is acknowl

edged. And of the three attempts at criticism only Mr. Eliot has succeeded in pinning down the subtle errors of the New

Humanism.

GORHAM MUNSON

THREE WORLDS. By Carl Van Doren. Harper's, $3.00

HAD CARL VAN DOREN been born thirty years earlier

instead of in 1886 his autobiography might well have

been interesting but it could have had little of the significance as literary history which it now possesses. For it was given to

him and his generation, as but rarely to the men of any period, within the short span of fifty years to see an order of living dissolve and change not once but twice, and to enter in middle

life on a world divorced in many of its attitudes of mind and

social beliefs from that which gave them birth. The three

worlds of Mr. Van Doren's title are that pre-War world which, in the light of the present conflict and confusion, wears so

engaging an aspect of security, the world of battle, and the

recent world of the depression. Through them all Mr. Van

Doren has gone his way, an intelligent, temperate, eager ob

server, an American born of sturdy American stock, bred to

the soil but forsaking it when the aroused intellect made farm

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BOOK REVIEWS 401

and small town seem binding on the ranging mind, a Manhat

tanite since, but a Manhattanite whose urban outlook has

inevitably been tempered by the experience of his Middle Western youth.

The stream of Mr. Van Doren's life ran straight and strong. A happy boyhood lived in the intimacy of a family circle

singularly united, which knew laborious days but nothing of

want or suffering and which, when the exertions of the farm were over, found exhilaration in books and talk; years as

student and teacher at the University of Illinois, reading

voraciously and widely and taking fire from the companion

ship of Stuart Sherman; marriage and children; removal to

New York and teaching at Columbia, editing the Nation and the Century, the headship of the Brearley school, the chairman

ship of the Literary Guild, lecturing, writing, meeting the men and women who were making the literature of the time ?

these made the tale of Mr. Van Doren's years. Through his

pages pass many of the leading literary figures of his day ?

Edwin Arlington Robinson, whom he had early discovered for

himself and to whom he brought ease by his selection of

Tristram for the Literary Guild; Sinclair Lewis from whom he

prints revelatory letters which, written in umbrage, inaugu rated a lasting friendship; Elinor Wylie, whose personality enchanted him as much as her work stirred his enthusiasm;

H. L. Mencken, Ludwig Lewisohn, his own brother Mark, a

dozen others make their exits and their entrances.

But Mr. Van Doren's book is no mere chronicle of persons; it is the portrait of an age. It is literary America he is recording rather than literary Americans, and a national temper that has shifted from the optimistic serenity of the nineties to the

despondency and confusion of the depression years. A genera

tion, a social revolt, have waxed and waned in the years that

lie between Mr. Van Doren's Urbana days and the present. "All the sad young men," who in the opening twenties looked

upon their country and their elders with disillusioned eyes, who preached a crusade against the complacency which had

gone to war in the belief that once it was over and the world

had been made safe for democracy the old order of living could be resumed, are young no longer and not only their youthful ness but their violence has passed away. The new freedom they

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402 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

won and brandished so challengingly is a matter of course to a younger Young Generation which alas, has drunk of a

despair which they, coming in the aftermath of battle to be

sure, but on the upward curve of a false prosperity, were

spared. Looking back upon them Mr. Van Doren can say: "The Younger Generation was nothing more than a generali zation."

For the youth that followed on the war-cradled generation, that youth so tragically caught in the wake of the boom, he

has nothing but compassion ?

compassion and a robust belief that from the suffering of the present the national stamina

must emerge vigorous as of old. Mr. Van Doren went down into a slough of despond of his own during the depression

years, and, on the analogy of his own recovery of faith in truth and liberty, ventures to hope for a restored America. But

whether as a prophet he is right or wrong, as an analyst of the decades that have made the sum of his fifty years he is per suasive and enlightening. On his three worlds he has turned a perceptive mind and has consistently brought to bear on his

interpretation of them the resources of a well stored intellect and a temperament steady rather than exuberant. As a critic his distinction has perhaps most lain in the fact that he has held himself freer of exaggeration of feeling and expression than most of his fellows, and that his criticism, if less brilliant than some, has been invariably informed, balanced, and good tempered. If he has never thrown himself with passion into the

economic and political controversies that have raged in the

literary and broader world of his day, he has never been

oblivious of the forces making for change about him. As a

journalist he has drawn on the resources of the scholar, and as a scholar he has shown the journalist's appreciation of values.

Never a crusader, or a breaker of new ground, his very de

tachment from causes and the equable temper of his mind

have made him always a trustworthy commentator. Seen in

the light of his retrospect, America of the past fifty years falls

into the perspective of national history. It is a retrospect

thoroughly illuminating and interesting. AMY LOVEMAN

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