Publisher Sees Anglo--Saxon Literature Headed by United States--Finds Writers of Pre-War Vintage Losing to Youth

"A strong literary movement which will put the United States at the head of Anglo-Saxon literature is now rising," stated Harrison Smith, a member of the publishing house of William Faulkner.

"A generation of English writers of pre-war vintage is dying out rapidly. Today, many older writers have obviously become part of their own period as they do not reflect the extraordinarily changed conditions in modern life. It is difficult to find in the younger English writers the sort of intense seriousness and vitality that is in the younger American authors. Writers like Dos Passes, Hemingway, Faulkner, are for the first time being accepted seriously in Europe as well as in America. It was Sinclair Lewis," winning the Nobel prize that gave Europe its first appreciation of the fact that Americans had something to say. Men like William March, Halper, Thomas Wolf, Claire Spencer, the author of an astounding novel, "Gallows Orchard," and a dozen others are making a literary future for America. The years of experimenting with form are almost at an end, classicism is returning, and simplicity and a straight-forward narrative is found to be the most powerful weapon at the writer's command.

Mr. Smith optimistically feels that the time has come for the writer, painter, and artist. The young man in college should not be ashamed in asking for support from anyone in the first years of his struggle. His works should be deeply serious; he should turn his back on the motion picture and popular magazine, and financial rewards will follow easily enough. Sinclair Lewis made much more money last year than the president of the United States.

When asked about G. B. Shaw, Mr. Smith replied that the American public is fascinated by a name and does not discriminate between a brilliant past and a dull present. It is fairly obvious, he continued, that Galsworthy had little to add in his later years to the reputation that the Forsy the Saga had established, that the world left the prolific H. G. Wells behind a decade ago, and that Shaw, in spite of his amazingly brilliant mind, has little to contribute to the thought of today.