Show Literary Emancipation of the West This is a decidedly interesting article ar-ticle from the pen of Hamlin Garland in the October Forum Among other things Mr Garland says Commercially Com-mercially the West rushes toward the future Cities rise with velocity hitherto Cites erto inconcievable Literary horizons also are changing with almost equal swiftness While Boston and New swifness Whie York are debating which has the most literary men the West and the South are rising to say Pool your issues good friends youll soon need each others aid to maintain your hitherto unquestioned domination over American Ameri-can literature Boston has easily maintained its supremacy as a literary half century centre for more than a through such Illustrious writers as Emerson Em-erson Hawthorne Whittier Longfellow Longfel-low Holmes and Lowell New York was second Philadelphia third The school of book poets is losing power and with the change in literary creed Boston has lost its high place New York today claims to be and Is the literary centre of America And yet New York is in danger of assuming too much Run over the list of the leading magazinewriters of the last ten years and see how many of them are products of the West and South I Is not so much a victory of New York over Rnsfnn it is the risinc to literary power of the whole nation I will r hard for New York to maintain main-tain supremacy with a nation of seventy sev-enty millions of people The rise of Chicago as a literary centre is a question ques-tion of but a short time There are scores of young writers just rising to power in the West They need a channel for utterance it will come and they will speak Chicago is much more American than New York or Boston The literature which is springing up in the West is a literature not of books but of life I draws its inspiration from original contact with men and with nature Further on he says The American city of broadest culture cul-ture is henceforth to be that where the broad free currents of American life daily ebb and flow The East takes an essentially aristocratic and un American position They look positon upon western life from their library or their car window therefore their position as critics of Western journalism or of what American literature should lterature consist con-sist is based olely on their being the occupying claimants of the glory of the great men of this centurys literature |