Page:Points of View (1924).pdf/142

 satirical foot with a bad taste in their mouths, and for a whole generation occupy themselves with malicious caricatures of their mistress, Life.

We midwesterners, for whom the centre is Chicago, have now for a good many years been falling ever more and more deeply in hate. There has been some rivalry at other centres, but I think it may be said that we now excel all the rest of the country in the special vision which attends this passion. Whatever can be seen under the intense glare of animosity, we are revealing to the critical inspection of our countrymen.

Authors in our locality feed on lion's marrow. We are partial to a fierce and sanguinary symbolism. There is a real propriety in the general acceptance of the slaughterhouse as the chief symbol of our spiritual activities. As a midwesterner to whom Chicago has decisively said "thumbs down," I often think, for example, with what veracity and power Carl Sandburg has represented literary criticism in the city under the figure of a hunky sweeping blood from the floor of the shambles at a dollar and a half a day.

It is consistent with our special literary vision and temper that we are making peculiarly our own a new type of novel. There are three main stages in the fictional treatment of the "sex interest." In the first stage we have the novel of courtship, which ends at the altar, with soft candlelight falling on the rosily tinted altarpiece, "Marriage." In the second stage, we have the novel of conjugal adventure,