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)

COMMUNISM IN MOTION PICTURE INDUSTRY 155 because he presents not a systematized philosophy but the nnaginative reconstruetion of a sector of human experience. Indeed, most people do not think with thorouKhguing hjgic. We are all acquainted with Jews who understand the necessity of fighting fascism, but who do not see the relationship between fascism and their own discrimination toward Negroes. We l<now Negroes who fight discrimination against themselves, but are anti-Semitic. I am acquainted with the curator of a museum who has made distinguisiied contributions in his scientific field, but who sees no contradiction between his veneration for science and his racist attitude toward Negroes. Out of these same human failings many artists are able to lead an intellectual life that often has a dual character. Ideas which they may consciously hold or re.iect do not always seriously affect their field of work where, operating like a scientist upon specific material, they sometimes handle an aspect of human experience with passionate honesty in spite of the fact that the very implications of what they are writing may contradict ideas they consciously hold. For instance, in sections of Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck writes a veritable poem to revolution. Yet we would be making an error to draw conclusions from this about Steinbeck's personal philosophy or to be surprised when he writes Cannery Kow with its mystic paean to Bohemianism. Similarly we can point to John Galsworthy, a successful, wealthy, middle-class Englishman. As a thinker, Galsworthy may not have understood the meaning of the plirase "class justice." But as an artist, honestly and earnestly recreating what he saw in English society, be wrote two plays, the Silver Box and Justice, which gave a searing portrait of class justice in human terms, and which no socially conscious, theoretically sagacious, left-wing writer of today has come within 200 miles of equaling. Unless this is understood, the critics on the left will not be able to deal with the literary work of their time. Writers must be .judged by their work and not by the committees they join. It is the job of the editorial section of a magazine to praise or attack citizens' committees for what they stand lor. It is the job of the literary critics to praise the literary works only. The best case in point, although there are many, is James T. Farrell. Farrell is, in my opinion — and I have thought so ever since reading S'tuds Lonigan over 10 years ago — one of the outstanding writers in America. I have not liked all of his work equally, and I don't like the committees he belongs to. But he wrote a superb trilogy and more than a few short stories of great quality, and he is not through writing yet. Studs Lonigan endures and is read by increasing numbers. It will endure, in my opinion, and deserves to. But if, in my opinion, Farrell is to be judged solely by his personality or his political position, then the New Masses is left in the position of either ignoring his work or attacking it. Let's face it. Isn't this exactly what has happened? Farrell's name was a bright penant in the New Masses until he became hostile to the New Masses. Very well ; for his deeds or misdeeds as a citizen, let him be editorially appraised. But his literary work cannot be ignored, and must not be ignored. And, if Engels gave high praise to the literary work of Balzac, despite his truly vicious political position, is not this a guide to the New Masses' critics in estimating the literary woi'k of a whole host of varied writers — Fari-ell, Richard Wright, someone else tomori'ow? What is basic to all und'-rstanding is this: There is not always a commanding relationship between the way an artist votes and any particular work he writes. Sometimes there is, depending upon his choice of material and tlie degree to which he consciously advances political concepts in his work. (Koestler, for instance, always writes with a political purpose so organic to his work that it affects his rendering of character, theme, etc. He must be judged accordingly.) But there is no inevitable, consistent connection. Furthermore, most writers of stature have given us. great works in .spite of philo.sophic weaknesses in their works. Doestoyevsky, Tolstoy, and Thomas Wolfe are among many examples. All too often narrow critics recognize this fact in dealing with dead writers, but are too inflexible to accept it in living writers. As a result it has been an accepted assumption in much of left-wing literary thought that a writer who repudiates a progressive political position — • leaves the intellectual orbit of New Masses, let us say — must go down hill as a creative writer. But this is simply not true to sober fact, however true it may be in individual cases. Actually it is impossible to predict the literary future of Richard Wright at this m^)ment. At this moment he takes political positions which seem to many to be fraught with danger for his own people. He may continue to do so. But Black Boy, whatever its shortcomings, is not the work of an artist who has gone down hill. It is to the credit of the New Masses that it recognized this in dealing with the book. Equally, it is impossible to predict now the future literary achievements or failure of James Farrell, of