page_0006

6.

and splashy sentences which have neither beginning nor end. I cannot
think that that is any kind of prose. In our fathers' and grandfathers'
days there were, no doubt, many faults in popular writing; it was
often turgid and falsetto and stiff, but it did have some kind of shape
and structure. It was a language, even though it might often have been
a dead language. It did convey a meaning, even though it might have
been a shallow meaning. But a good deal of the writing popular today
contains no meaning at all.

This danger, I think, is particularly great across our southern
border. The United States have a very great speech - the English
tongue with certain vigorous differences, and I have always delighted
in American literature. I think Huckleberry Finn one of the great books
of the world. I rejoice in the vividness and vigour of American
idioms. But it seems to me that there is a danger today, in that
great country of the written word for popular consumption becoming so
dilapidated that, like the language of barbarian tribes, it
may soon be incapable of expressing anything but the most elementary
emotions. Take, for example, the talk and the captions in the cheaper
kind of American film. It is simply baby talk, though it is somewhat
corrupt and perverted baby talk. It may be all very well for the purpose
for which it is generally used, but if its influence spreads there
is a danger of the whole speech becoming so disintegrated that it will
be incapable of expressing any strong passion or any serious thought.
It will bear the same relation to a proper language as jazz bears to
great music. "Say, cutie, where're you getting to?" is not the same
thing as "O Mistress mine, where are you roaming?"