Hearings regarding the communist infiltration of the motion picture industry. Hearings before the Committee on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives, Eightieth Congress, first session. Public law 601 (section 121, subsection Q (1947)

154 COMMUNISM IN MOTION PICTURE INDUSTRY astically. But if the work, no matter how hich in human insight, character portrayal, and imagination, seems to imply "wrong" political conclusions, then it will be indicted, severally mauled, or beheaded, as the case may be. Let me give a recent example of this unhappy pattern: When Lillian Hellman's magnificent play. Watch on the Rhine, was produced in 1940, the New Masses* critic attacked it. When it appeared, unaltered, as a film in 1942, the New Masses' critic hailed it. The changed attitude came not from the fact that two different critics were involved, but from the fact that events had transpired in the 2 years calling for a different political program. This work of art was not viewed on either occasion as to its real quality, its deep revelation of life, character, and the social scene, but primarily as to whether or not it was the proper "leaflet" for the moment. There is an opposite error, corollary to this: New Masses' critics have again and again praised works as art that no one — themselves included — would bother to read now, 10 years later. In fact, it once even gave a prize to such a book. This is not due to the fact that those who have written criticism for the magazine have personally been without taste or intelligence or integrity. The evil lies in the abandonment of taste because a shallow approach does not permit it. Literary taste can only operate in a crippled manner when canons of immediate political utility are the primary values of judgment to be applied indiscriminately to all books. Again, from this type of thinking comes that approach which demands of each written work that it contain "the whole truth." An author writes a novel, let us say, about an unemployed Negro during the depression. The central character, after many harsh vicissitudes, ends by stealing and is sent to the penitentiary. If a book with this content were to be richly rendered, it might be highly illuminating in its portrayal of an aspect of Negro life in America. But, again and again I have seen such works, justifiably confined to only one sector of experience, severely criticized because they do not contain "the whole truth." Upon examination this "whole truth" reveals itself to be purely political. The narrow critic is demanding that the novelist also show that some unemployed Negroes join the unemployed councils, etc. This demand, which I have seen repeated in varied ways in the pages of the New Masses, rests upon the psychological assumption that readers come to each book with an empty head. They know nothing, understand nothing. Therefore, all they will ever know of Negro life in America must be contained in this book. Therefore, if the author has omitted to say that some unemployed Negroes join organizations, it is a deficient book because it doesn't contain "the whole truth," and it doesn't properly fill the total vacuum of the reader's mind. The creative writer, respecting this type of criticism, is faced with insuperable diflficulties. He is confronted with thie apparent obligation of writing both a novel and an editorial that will embrace all current political propositions remotely touching his material. Whether or not his character would join the unemplo.ved council is of not matter ; whether or not the material and artistic concept of the book forbid the exa^irnaticn of otner clinracters — that, too, is of no matter. By hook oi' crook the ni;iterial must he so rendered that the whole polit.cal "truth" of tiic scene is made visible, and the empty-handed reader is thereby won to new horizons — Q. E. D. This is not a method by which art can be made rich, or the artist freed to do his most useful work. Let those who deny this ask working writers. From this narrow approach to art another error also follows rather automatically. If, in actual practice — no matter how we revere art — we assume that a writer making a speech is performing the same act as writing a novel, then we are helpless to judge works written by those who make the "wrong" sort of speeches. Engels was never bothered by this problem. For instance, he said of Balzac — I paraphrase— that Balzac taught him more about the social structure of France than all of the economists, sociologists, etc., of the period. But who was Balzac? He was a Royalist, consistently and virulently antidemocratic, anti-Socialist, anti-Communist in his thinking as a citizen. In his appreciation of Balzac, Engels understood two facts about art: First, as I have already stated, the writer, qua citizen, making an election speech, and the writer, qua artist, writing a novel, is performing two very different acts. Second, Engels understood that a writer may be confused, or even stupid and reactionary in thinking — and yet it is possible for him to do good, even great, work as an artist — work that even serves ends he despises. This point is critical for an understanding of art and artists. An artist can be a great artist without being an integrated or a logical or a progressive thinker on all matters. This is so