He was altogether out of step with the 1890’s; but now a new generation has come, and all our young intellectuals are cold and objective and cynical, agreeing that pity is a mistake and life nothing in particular. They leave to me the unpleasant task of holding uninvited post-mortems over the ardent unhappy dead.
Let me put it briefly: that some day there will be yet another generation, which will realize that no man can get along without a religion, least of all the creative artist. It will not be the Methodist religion, but it will be something that gives young geniuses a reason for taking care of themselves and their gifts.
There was one religion which Stephen Crane adopted for a period of two weeks. He was a Socialist for that long—so he explains in a letter; but he met two other Socialists, who told him his doctrines were wrong, and then fell to quarreling as to which of the two was right. I say: Oh, young Stephen Cranes of the future, judge truth by the tests of truth, and not by our personal frailties and follies!
CHAPTER CV
THE CALIFORNIA OCTOPUS
The mind of America at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century was controlled by elderly maiden aunts and hired men of privilege; and it seemed that behind the scenes of our national life some evil jinx was operating to keep us in this double thrall. There arose five independent and original-minded artists, and here is what happened to them: Stephen Crane died of tuberculosis at the age of twenty-nine, Frank Norris died of appendicitis at the age of thirty-two, David Graham Phillips was killed by a lunatic at the age of forty-four, O. Henry died of alcoholism at the age of forty-eight, and Jack London killed himself at the age of forty.
Frank Norris was born in California in 1870, the son of well-to-do parents. All through his childhood and boyhood he liked to tell stories and make sketches; he wasn’t sure which he liked to do best. He studied art in Paris for a couple of years, and published a long narrative poem at the age of twenty. Then he came home and tried to learn something about writing at the University of California, but without success. He took a graduate course at Harvard, and here he wrote “McTeague,” his first successful novel.
He had been absorbing Zola, and set out to apply the Zola method to America. He is going to give you the brutal reality of life, he is going to write about big animal men with heavy muscles and prominent jaws, and broad-bosomed women with large quantities of alluring hair. He is going to give you the great open spaces, and also the sordidness and smells of cities—as much as America can be got to stand. The theme of “McTeague” is avarice, and we see a dentist’s office with a big gold tooth for a sign, and all through the tragic story we run upon the motif of gold in everything from sunsets to decorations.
Then came “The Octopus,” and here we are in outdoor California, dealing with crude people and nature on a large scale. “The Octopus” has two themes. It is the Epic of the Wheat, and we see the great unfenced plains upon which wheat is raised wholesale, and the golden flood of grain on its way to feed the millions in the cities, a torrent of food so vast and heavy that it symbolically suffocates a man on its way. And then there is the railroad, the Octopus which has seized the wheat country and is devouring the settlers. I read this novel before I read anything of Zola’s, and so I got the shock of a great discovery. I was one of many youngsters who were set on fire. Here was power, here was a new grasp of reality; this was the way to write novels!
Also I was horrified and bewildered: could it be that things like this happened in America? Could it be that railroads set themselves up as the ruling power in a community, that they defeated the laws, deprived people of their homes and drove them into exile or outlawry? You see, I was the naive and innocent product of American public schools and of Mr. J. P. Morgan’s university; I really thought that I lived in a democracy, and under the protection of a Constitution. At that very time I was raising campaign funds and helping to elect the president of our university—mine and Mr. Morgan’s—as a “reform” mayor of New York City!
I tried to find out about this railroad Octopus, and there was no way to find out. It was a dark secret of American life, crushed completely underground. There was no literature about it, nothing in the newspapers or the magazines, no books or pamphlets in the library of the great university. Now, twenty-three years later, I can tell you of a book in which you may read the life-story of one of these men of the San Joaquin, who were driven to outlawry by the Southern Pacific Railroad. The name of the man is Ed Morrell, and Jack London made him the hero of a novel, “The Star Rover.” They caught him finally and put him in prison, and that is the story he tells in his book, “The Twenty-fifth Man,” one of the most appalling narratives ever penned by a human being.