CREEDS AND SPOTLIGHTS

Again comes an outburst from the entrant terrible of contemporary literature. In the current issue of Menckeniana, Sinclair Lewis levels a loaded pen at "Sell Conscious America". Returning from the new Magna Americana on the left bank of the Sethe, he is ready to place another Maine Street beside those of the maligned Middle West. There is little difference, in his opinion, between the multiple masses of the mediocre who are content with the Sunday suppliments and those who fill Paris with their now conventional caprice. The self consciousness of the one matches that of the ether. "To have to choose between literary baseball fans and the Boy Scouts of Dadaism" is, to quote Mr. Lewis, rather difficult.

The American people are in truth, forcing existence to become a continual observance of creeds. The gentleman of the smoking compartment must air his doctrine of motors and money, while the intellectual sniffs and tries to read his Proust in comfort. There can be no blended tastes, no unconventional tastes. The only individuality allowed is offered by inebriacy, and even that has its creed. Every action is timed and tried in the effort for an effect when the spotlight of public opinion is turned upon the individual. Not what one likes but what he must like, what is going to save him, self conscious mortal that he is, from the contempt of his world--that is alone important.

Such addiction to creedal living cannot lead to any sweetness or much light. Quite the contrary, it has tended to make America a land where freedom is foresic and rights are reserved by referendum. Perhaps at some golden future time, even Americans will realize that capable actors become used to the spotlight.