But, "I am
not a regionalist. I am a realmist. I write about realms of
democracy and realms of the spirit." Those realms include
The Woodpile, The Grindstone, Blueberries, Birches, and
many other features of the land North of Boston.
To an extent, any writer anywhere must make his own
world, no matter whether in fiction or nonfiction, prose or
poetry. He must make something out of his subject. What
he makes depends upon his creative power, integrated with
a sense of form. The popular restriction of creative writing
to fiction and verse is illogical. Carl Sandburg's life of
Lincoln is immeasurably more creative in form and substance
than his fanciful _Potato Face_. Intense exercise of his creative
power sets, in a way, the writer apart from the life he is
trying to sublimate. Becoming a Philistine will not enable a
man to interpret Philistinism, though Philistines who own
big presses think so. Sinclair Lewis knew Babbitt as Babbitt
could never know either himself or Sinclair Lewis.
J. F. D.
_The time of Mexican primroses_
1952
_1_
A Declaration
IN THE UNIVERSITY of Texas I teach a course called Life
and Literature of the Southwest.
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