Abstract
The long and bitter European battle about the commitment of literature—Art for Art's Sake in this corner, roman engage or Socialist Realism in the other one—never threw more than a pale reflection in the United States. If we prized our artistic freedom, Walter Goodman once warned us in the New York Times, we'd realize that "true artists" live outside and above the world of politics. Louis Auchincloss sternly pointed out to us that Henry James never had a worthwhile thought about politics or economics and was "simply and totally a master of fiction." And Archibald MacLeish has quoted an editor of the (old) Atlantic Monthly as stating that no black novel could be true art because by its very nature it had to be "protest writing."This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.
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