This classical portrait of the latter-day American æsthete is being modified under our very eyes. He is no longer in 1927 what he was in 1924. And of what will to-morrow be made? The American æsthete, model 1927, is much less bothered with erotica than his predecessor, and like the husky child who beats his nurse, he is strong enough to shake off the foreign yoke. Even in literature alliances have been broken, if we are to believe Mr. William Carlos Williams, who published (in France naturally and in a _de luxe_ edition) his delicious collection of improvisations called “The Great American Novel.”[61] In the tone of the inner monologue, and with a fanatic passion which does not exclude humor, Mr. Williams makes a plea of “America for Americans” in literature. Europe is nothing to us. Simply nothing. Their music is death to us. Do not imagine I do not see the necessity of learning from Europe--or China, but we will learn what we will, and never what they would teach us. America is a mass of pulp, a jelly, a sensitive plant ready to take whatever print you want to put on it. We have no art, no manners, no intellect--we have nothing. We water at the eyes at our own stupidity. We have only mass movement like a sea. But we are not a sea. Europe we must--we have no words. Every word we get must be broken off from the European mass. Every word we get placed over again by some delicate hand. Piece by piece we must loosen what we want. What we will have. Will they let it go? Hugh. But William Carlos Williams has faith in America. According to him, the art of to-morrow, American art _par excellence_, will be of the “flamboyant” type. America is seeking new openings for her aspirations. Is she as much of a Philistine as she is supposed to be? The American who lives a model and edifying life (three meals a day, breakfast in bed, new paper on the walls), that American at times emigrates to the circus _en masse_, as Whitman used to say, to watch men, women and animals executing exquisitely impossible tricks. What could be more “flamboyant” than the trapeze man being projected into the air, and the tiger jumping through man-made hoops, or the elephant upholding his full weight by balancing his front legs on bottles? What could be more “flamboyant” than the painted clown, eternal symbol of the human race, laughing in order not to cry, and grimacing while making a thousand grim jokes with small men all around him accomplishing their marvelous feats?