Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise, by David Graham Phillips

Not that, when he sometimes discussed the writing of it withme, I was in sympathy with it. I was not. We always were truthful toeach other.But when a giant molds a lump of clay into tremendous masses,lesser men become confused by the huge contours, the vastdistances, the terrific spaces, the majestic scope of the ensemble.So I. But he went on about his business.I do not know what the public may think of "Susan Lenox." Iscarcely know what I think.It is a terrible book–terrible and true and beautiful.Under the depths there are unspeakable things that writhe. Hisplumb-line touches them and they squirm. He bends his head fromthe clouds to do it. Is it worth doing? I don't know.But this I do know–that within the range of all fiction of all landsand of all times no character has so overwhelmed me as thecharacter of Susan Lenox.She is as real as life and as unreal. She is Life. Hers was theconcentrated nobility of Heaven and Hell. And the divinity of theone and the tragedy of the other. For she had known both–thisgirl–the most pathetic, the most human, the most honest characterever drawn by an American writer.In the presence of his last work, so overwhelming, sostupendous, we lesser men are left at a loss. Its magnitudedemands the perspective that time only can lend it. Its dignity andausterity and its pitiless truth impose upon us that honest andintelligent silence which even the quickest minds concede isnecessary before an honest verdict.Truth was his goddess; he wrought honestly and only for her.He is dead, but he is to have his day in court. And whatever theverdict, if it be a true one, were he living he would rest content.ROBERT W. CHAMBERS.BEFORE THE CURTAINA few years ago, as to the most important and most interestingsubject in the world, the relations of the sexes, an author had tochoose between silence and telling those distorted truths besidewhich plain lying seems almost white and quite harmless. And asno author could afford to be silent on the subject that underlies allsubjects, our literature, in so far as it attempted to deal with themost vital phases of human nature, was beneath contempt. Theauthors who knew they were lying sank almost as low as the nastynicepurveyors of fake idealism and candied pruriency who fanciedthey were writing the truth. Now it almost seems that the day oflying conscious and unconscious is about run. "And ye shall knowthe truth, and the truth shall make you free."There are three ways of dealing with the sex relations of menand women–two wrong and one right.For lack of more accurate names the two wrong ways may becalled respectively the Anglo-Saxon and the Continental. Both arein essence processes of spicing up and coloring up perfectlyinnocuous facts of nature to make them poisonously attractive toperverted palates. The wishy-washy literature and the wishy-washymorality on which it is based are not one stage more–or less–rottenthan the libertine literature and the libertine morality on which it isbased. So far as degrading effect is concerned, the "pure, sweet"story or play, false to nature, false to true morality, propagandist ofindecent emotions disguised as idealism, need yield nothing to theso-called "strong" story. Both pander to different forms of the samediseased craving for the unnatural. Both produce moral atrophy.The one tends to encourage the shallow and unthinking inignorance of life and so causes them to suffer the mercilesspenalties of ignorance. The other tends to miseducate the shallowand unthinking, to give them a ruinously false notion of the delightsof vice. The Anglo-Saxon "morality" is like a nude figure salaciouslydraped; the Continental "strength" is like a nude figure salaciouslydistorted. The Anglo-Saxon article reeks the stench ofdisinfectants; the Continental reeks the stench of degenerate