v · Section 8

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One such fine vessel, richly-freighted, made port at last, in 1921, the _Alice Adams_. To praise this novel, the first in which Mr. Tarkington made an entirely successful passage, is easy; to discriminate in regard to it is difficult, for the simple reason that Mr. Tarkington’s past work has made such a performance incomparable. Here was a man who in his greatest feats had always shown corresponding blemishes. _The Flirt_ had been spotted with melodrama (as if the drama of Cora and the mordancy of Hedrick did not serve to tarnish any artificial sheen). _The Turmoil_, more skilfully constructed than _The Flirt_, suffered an entire loss of the detachment which Tarkington preserved toward Cora Madison; and instead of a pitiless portrayal we had a modern morality play. _The Magnificent Ambersons_ was afflicted with a pulled-around ending. But in _Alice Adams_ all of these defects were met and adjusted; the movement was natural and not “plotted”; no moral underlay the exposed incidents; Mr. Tarkington was impartial without being in the least unsympathetic. Then why discriminate? Surely, _Alice Adams_ has everything! Not at all.

No author’s one book ever has, I suppose; and in finally achieving the symmetry and truth and grace of _Alice Adams_ there was the sacrifice of a nervous force which animated, in a varying extent, all three of the earlier novels. One must learn, in criticism, to value above all else what can only be called “vitality,” whether in painting, or sculpture, music or literature. This mysterious but indispensable flame burns with a different intensity in individual writers. In Mr. Galsworthy, for example, it is low in novels, somewhat higher, at times, in plays; but relatively low throughout his work. In Mr. Tarkington, I cannot help feeling, it is higher in _The Flirt_ than in anything else he has written; for savage and powerful as are the stories of _In the Arena_, the material is something that the author touches with his foot, rather than shapes with his hands. Indeed, this instinctive repugnance in Mr. Tarkington, as inveterate in him as in so many American writers, is one of the strictest limitations on his art. In older cultures than ours in America, where it is well understood that admission to the human race cannot be denied by some to others, a Balzac or a Conrad or even a Dickens can write with the same manifest vitality of almost anybody, however inhumanly horrible--as, for example, the “incorruptible” Professor and mad anarchist in Conrad’s tale of _The Secret Agent_. In the case of Tarkington, Mr. Holliday has cleverly observed the type of material in which our writer’s vitality is most evident--the memorable procession of drunkards in his stories, the unmatched darkeys of the stable alleys, the large number of Tarkington characters vocal with song.

As to plays: the man doesn’t regard them as his “real trade.” All the earlier ones were written in collaboration, usually with Harry Leon Wilson; and Tarkington, with an engaging candour, admits at once that the great cost of a theatrical production must be met, if possible, by filling the house. Writing alone, he has given the stage such utter ineptitude as _Poldekin_ and such delicious comedy as _Clarence_. He now writes a play, usually, because a particular producer wants one with a particular actor in mind. In his book-length fiction he is unrestricted, unless the engagement in advance of the next couple of novels for serial publication may have its oblique effect. After all, it must be very difficult, knowing that your next two books are first to be placed before a certain large constituency of women readers, not to select your material “according” and not to mould it imperceptibly somewhat nearer the--supposed, suspected, or ascertained--hearts’ desire of all those ladies.