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Show "It la Not Literature, but It Is the Seed of a Literature to Be" By CLEMENCE DANE, in International Book Revew. It is easy to sneer at these Wild West writers, but I am not sure that their stuff isn't in some sense literature already. They have, at any rate, some of the qualities that belong to the best literature To begin with, they are amazingly direct. They take up their pen and tell the story just as it flashed fresh-minted from their imagination. They begin at the beginning, go on until they get' to the end, and then they stop. Their language is distinctly unusual; they, so to speak, "6lang along" in the first words that come handy; they are not writing, they are telling a story, a story of Homeric "he-men" who ride, shoot, wrestle and die in every conceivable fashion against a background- of rustlers, cattle kings, Canadian trappers, farmers, gamblers and bootleggers. boot-leggers. ' " These Wild West, earth-to-earth tales are quite obviously based in intention in-tention on real happenings of today, yesterday, and the day before, retold at second or third hand and beglamoured by the sort of primitive romance that appeals to the average man. The hero wins out because he is big and strong. The villain loses because he is strong and bad. The women are shadows, rewards of valor, no more, and are generally drawn with tip-toe attempts at "refined" writing. Regarded as literature, it is as negligible and awe-inspiring as a newborn new-born child. It is not literature, but it is the seed of a literature to be. |