Page:Points of View (1924).pdf/233



For the realistic novel which enlarges and quickens our consciousness of the world we live in—especially for the novel in which the characters, setting, and "problems" possess a genuine representative value—I have an almost insatiable appetite. Since the New Year's night when I sat up till two o'clock feasting on Main Street, exulting from chapter to chapter in my sharpening sense of the characteristics of my countrymen, I have read many more or less satisfactory tales of provincial life, more or less inspired by the man from Minnesota; yet few of them have prevented my dropping off to sleep at my customary hour. The fictional gleaners in the small towns have not gone into the field with the gusto of discoverers. They have appeared rather to regard Main Street as a harvest which any industrious writer could duplicate by driving Mr. Lewis's mowing machine along the parkings of any midwestern small town and gathering up the results with an ordinary hay rake. "Yes," one began to mutter, "still another bale of that midwestern hay. The second crop is not up to the first." There seemed to be little more to say about the small town,