In this fiery letter to Margaret Roberts, Thomas Wolfe laments materialism, but on the grounds of “disgust” and not moral “indignation.”
[Asheville, N.C.?]
[September, 1922?]
…Coming home this last time I have gathered enough additional material to write a new play—the second fusillade of the battle. This thing that I had thought naïve and simple is as old and as evil as hell; there is a spirit of world-old evil that broods about us, with all the subtle sophistication of Satan. Greed, greed, greed—deliberate, crafty, motivated—masking under the guise of civic associations for municipal betterment. The disgusting spectacle of thousands of industrious and accomplished liars, engaged in the mutual and systematic pursuit of their profession, salting their editorials and sermons and advertisements with the religious and philosophic platitudes of Dr. Frank Crane, Edgar A. Guest, and The American Magazine. The standards of national greatness are Henry Ford, who made automobiles cheap enough for us all, and money, money, money!! And Thomas A. Edison, who gave us body-ease and comfort. The knave, the toady, and the hog-rich flourish. There are three ways, and only three, to gain distinction: (1) Money, (2) more money, (3) a great deal of money. And the manner of getting it is immaterial.
Among the young people here there is one who spends two-thirds of his time in the drug store, and who announces boldly, and as a kind of boast, that he is going to “marry money.” This boy’s father is…an honest, industrious, straightforward sort of man who walk to his work every morning with a tin dinner-pail swinging from his hand. Meanwhile the boy rides through the streets of the town, in pursuit of his ambition, in a spick-and-span speedster which he has enveigled from these hard-working people… Another boy, of good but common stock, who had all his advances repelled to within a few months back, with contempt or indifference, has unlimited money and with a part of it has purchased an expensive roadster, like a foolish fellow. Now they cluster about him like flies, and feed upon his bounty.
These are but mean and petty things, which I could multiply indefinitely. But what of the darker, fouler things? What of old lust and aged decay, which mantles itself in respectability, and creeps cat-footed by the stained portals of its own sin? What of the things we know, and that all know, and that we wink at, making the morality we prate of consist in discretion? I assure you I am not barren in illustrations of this sort. The emotion I experience is disgust, not indignation. Moral turpitude on the physical basis does not offend me deeply—perhaps I should be sorry to confess it—but my attitude toward life has become, somehow or other, one of alertness, one which sustains and never loses interest, but which is very rarely shocked or surprised by what people do. Human nature is capable of an infinite variety of things. Let us recognize this early and save ourselves trouble and childish stupefaction later. I desire too much to be the artist to start “playing at” life now, and seeing through a rose or vinous haze. Really I am un-moral enough not to care greatly how the animal behaves, so long as it checks its behavior within its meadow. The great men of the Renaissance, both in Italy and England, seem to me an amazing mixture of God and Beast. But “there were giants in the world in those days,” and they are soon forgiven. What do their vices matter now? They have left us Mona Lisa. But what of this dull dross that leaves us only bitterness and mediocrity? Let pigs…
[a portion of the letter is missing here]
I suppose the alarmist means that the time will come when the strength of our national life will wither and decay, just as all preceding national lives have served their times, and have withered and decayed, and passed on. But what is there in this either to surprise or alarm us? Surely a nation has no greater reason to expect imperishability than has an individual. And it is by no means certain that a long life, whether for man or nation, is the best one. Perhaps our claim to glory, when our page is written in the world’s history, will rest on some such achievement as this: “The Americans were powerful organizers and had a great talent for practical scientific achievement. They made tremendous advances in the field of public health, and increased the average scope of human life twelve years. Their cities, although extremely ugly, were models of sanitation; their nation at length was submerged and destroyed beneath the pernicious and sentimental political theory of human equality.”
I do not say that this is utterly base of mean or worthless. It will be a very great achievement, but it has left no room for the poets. And when the poets die, the death of the nation is assured.
Well, I have returned to all this at midnight. The fires of the hearth have burned to warm, grey cones of powder. There is a roaring in the wind to-night, the streets are driven bare, and my “autumn leaves” are falling already upon the roof in a dry, uncertain rain. The annual taint of death is in the air.…
[the remainder of the letter has been lost]