John Dos Passos is one of the few living American writers who is a world figure. Abroad, his books are sometimes cited as criticisms of American capitalism and as novels which expose American claims and propaganda. At home, Dos Passos is now regarded by some of his former admirers as a man who has made a complete turn, and has abandoned liberalism for the extreme right; he has gone from The New Republic to The National Review. In consequence, he is regretfully considered as writing in a state of rigor mortis, and tears—mostly of the crocodile variety—are shed for him. He is a source of shame and danger to the Madison Avenue psychological warriors who would defeat the Kremlin by selling the USA as though it were the biggest cake of perfumed soap in history; his books are not very useful to the People-to-People geniuses and cannot be sent through the gaping holes of the Iron Curtain with as much success as can stamp kits and hobbycraft chat. And he cannot be cited as a novelist of the liberal spirit, fighting reaction and perpetuating the New Deal spirit. Therefore, he is a good man gone wrong. And a good man gone wrong is, ipso facto, unworthy of consideration as a man of letters. Dos Passos' liberalism has so decayed that his lifetime of work is not as important as two short stories and one wooden novel by Lionel Trilling. His credentials as a writer might just as well be taken away from him and he might best be forgotten. He is no longer one of us. He cannot write anyway because the new critics do not study him and Mark Shorer probably would not approve of him.
Thus the level of concern for a writer in this Republic after it has come of age, lost its innocence, become a world leader. Thus the destiny of any man who is guilty of the sin of disillusionment. You must be for something, because in both the liberal and the conservative camps, there is no political future for one who is not for something. After some decades of trying, we have failed even in convincing our friends that a novelist does not necessarily have to be for, and that a writer should not be judged in terms of immediate political considerations. It is in vain. Philistinism and self-righteousness are too numerous to be destroyed.
