The Little Review, January-February 1916 (Vol. 2, No. 10)Various
General
The Little Review, January-February 1916 (Vol. 2, No. 10)
Various
Literature, Modern -- 20th century -- Periodicals
LITTLE REVIEW—how _could_ you do it? You who have hitherto held so
bravely to the tenets of beauty and truth in thought and expression,
held to them courageously through storms of adverse criticism, consent
to print descriptions of the bestial abnormalities of the scum of
mankind! If _you_, who profess to look to a higher, better realization
of life, consent to crawl in the gutter with the vermin, what can we
expect of the lesser publications?
You have polluted an edition of your magazine; it is true that flames
will destroy the manuscript, but what of the hideous memory that
remains? Take heed—LITTLE REVIEW; remember that cleanliness is akin to
godliness and—look to your soul!
_Florence Kiper Frank, Chicago_:
May I call your attention to the fact that Mr. Edward J. O’Brien, in his
annual review of the year’s fiction, not only lists all the stories
printed in THE LITTLE REVIEW during 1915 among those possessing
“distinction,” but double-asterisks (verb) the three sketches of Ben
Hecht’s published under the title “Dregs.” This in the chaste and
genealogical Boston Evening Transcript! And, following to the best of my
ability Mr. O’Brien’s rather vague reference to and nebulous listings of
the stories to be published in his anthology, _The Best Stories of 1915
and Year Book of American Fiction_, I can but come to the startled
conclusion that Ben Hecht’s three stories are all to be reprinted in the
estimable collection. Good for Ben Hecht, THE LITTLE REVIEW, and Mr.
O’Brien’s catholicity of judgment! Some of us there are who like to have
our opinions backed and bolstered by authority. And what more august
authority than the printed word of Boston. Some of us—but of course not
your insurgents. Perhaps Mr. Hecht will resent congratulations. I tender
them, nevertheless—with apologies. Good stuff, Ben Hecht! Do us
some—more of them.
_Sada Cowan, New York_:
I’m truly grateful to your reviewer who found my play, _The State
Forbids_, “negative as literature.” If he had found it bad architecture
or mediocre sculpture I should have been less pleased.
Play making, to my mind, is not a form of literature (even though its
medium chances to be words) but it is an art of spacing ... focusing ...
building. Structure upon structure! Foundation. Ornament. Design. An art
as distinct from other forms of word utility as color medium is from
plastic art. Drama is related to literature only in so far as all arts
are inter-related. No more than this. By drama I mean, of course, plays
intended (at least in the writer’s mind) for production. These alone are
plays. For one reason or another they may never reach the boards, but
they must have lived in the writer’s fantasy as things produced. _Desk
drawer dramas_ are not plays.
I believe that the hope of the modern drama lies in the artist who can
learn to look upon himself as a builder ... a _maker_ and not a writer
of plays.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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