"Why is there," Mr. Tarkington asked in turn, "no group like Homer (wasn't he a group?) in Greece? There may be, but if there is just such a modern group it would tend only to repeat the work of the Homeric group, which wouldn't be interesting to the rest of us. "The important thing is to find a group unlike Longfellow, Whittier, Lowell, Emerson, and Thoreau. That is, if one accepts the idea that it is important to find a group." Mr. Tarkington's criticisms of the modern American city have been so severe that I expected him to tell me that all writers should live in the country. But again he surprised me. In reply to my question as to which environment was more favorable to the production of literature, the city or the country, he said: "It depends upon the nerves of the writer. A writer can be born anywhere, and he can grow up anywhere." There has recently been considerable discussion--Professor Edward Garnet and Gertrude Atherton have taken a considerable share in it--on the relative merits of contemporary English and American fiction. I asked Mr. Tarkington if in his opinion the United States had at the present time novelists equal to those of England. "That is unanswerable!" he answered. "Writers aren't like baseball teams. What's the value of my opinion that _The Undiscovered Country_ is a 'greater' novel than _A Pair of Blue Eyes_? These questions remind me of school debating societies. Nothing is demonstrated, but everybody has his own verdict." Until I asked Mr. Tarkington about it I had heard only two opinions as to the probable effect on literature of the war. One was that which William Dean Howells tersely expressed by saying: "War stops literature," and the other was that the war is purifying and strengthening all forms of literary expression. But Mr. Tarkington had something new to say about it. "What effect," I asked, "is the war likely to have on American literature?" "None of consequence," he answered. "The poet will find the subject, war or no war. The sculptor doesn't depend upon epaulets." Mr. Tarkington is so inveterate a writer of serials, and his work is so familiar to the readers of the American magazines, that I desired to get his expert opinion as to whether or not the American magazines, with their remarkably high prices, had harmed or benefited fiction. His reply was somewhat non-committal. "They have induced many people to look upon the production of fiction as a profitable business," he said. "But those people would merely not have 'tried fiction' at all otherwise. Prices have nothing to do with art." Mr. Tarkington had some interesting things to say about that venerable mirage, the Great American Novel. I asked him if that longed-for work would ever be written; if, for example, there would ever be a work of fiction reflecting American life as _Vanity Fair_ reflects English life. He replied: