Abstract

The Usable Past
Krutch, Joseph Wood | February 14, 1934 issue

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In Oscar Wilde's day it was still being said that America had no past. Two generations later Van Wyck Brooks was compelled to realize that the U.S. was at least two hundred years old, and he varied the complaint. What was lacking, was a usable past. Today the trouble seems to be that there are too many pasts and that the proponents of one will have nothing to do with the others. In the first of these pasts, it is observed that the American artist is gradually freeing himself from the limitations of puritanism and winning in the process a richer life of both thought and feeling.

See Also:

UNITED States -- History; WILDE, Oscar, 1854-1900; BROOKS, Van Wyck; ARTISTS -- United States; PURITANS; UNITED States
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