RÉGIS MICHAUD CONTENTS Foreword vii I The Case Against the Puritans 3 II How Nathaniel Hawthorne Exorcised Hester Prynne 25 III Henry James, Edith Wharton, William Dean Howells and American Society on Parade 47 IV Theodore Dreiser as a Bio-Chemist 71 V Theodore Dreiser and the American Tragedy 102 VI Sinclair Lewis and the Average Man 128 VII Sherwood Anderson or When the Dreamer Awakes 154 VIII Sherwood Anderson on This Side of Freud 181 IX James Branch Cabell and the Escape to Poictesme 200 X James Branch Cabell on the High Place 221 XI Reinforcements: Willa Cather, Zona Gale, Floyd Dell, Joseph Hergesheimer, Waldo Frank 238 XII Ulysses’ Companions: Robert McAlmon, Ben Hecht, William Carlos Williams 257 Index 285 THE AMERICAN NOVEL TO-DAY CHAPTER I _The Case Against the Puritans_ The last fifteen years have seen a complete revolution in old American literary ideals. There has been a new efflorescence of poetry known as the “new poetry” movement. On the stage, after the attempts of William Vaughn Moody to renew the American drama, by fusing together realism and symbolism, Eugene O’Neill appeared and showed originality in his lyric dramatizations. In criticism, talents of the first order were revealed. The din of battles, the eagerness of controversies bear witness to the existence of an intensive, intellectual life in the United States to-day. Romanticism _versus_ classicism, progress _versus_ tradition, or, to speak the language of the country, radicalism _versus_ conservatism, waged a strenuous battle for their respective ideals. Messrs. Mencken, Van Doren, Rosenfeld, Van Wyck Brooks, Frank Harris, on the left wing, Paul Elmer More, the late Stuart P. Sherman, Irving Babbitt, W. C. Brownell, on the right, have made a sport of intellectual polemics and appreciation. American criticism is not content with gliding on the surface of authors or problems. It goes straight to moral problems and shows a keen intuition of technics.