12/CHRONICLESntion of novelty as a literary theme. If in the traditionalnEuropean novel, characters tend to move in an environmentnalready discovered and subdued by law, class hierarchy,nand established custom, experience for Americans isnan entity actively sought as destinahon and quarry, andynamic and elusive state of both being and perpetualnbecoming which needs to be tracked down, grappled with,nand brought under the control of the will and imagination.nBy the same token, dramatic conflict in the European novelnhas classically been generated within the givens of thenestablished culture. Hell is indeed other people and theninstitutions they have created to force indiidual needs intonharmony with communal interests, while the resolution ofnconflict is most often attained through the achievement ofnsome more or less satisfactory mediation between individualnand community. So the European novel again and againncomes to rest in serenity and reconciliation, reminding usnthat salvation may perhaps be found only in an enlightenednand usually chastened realignment of personal desire withnpublic necessity.nThe American novel tends by contrast to remain in anstate of uncompromiscd adversary motion. Its charactersnmove on or walk out at the end rather than regain admissionnto the social fold. The thrust of our imagination is resolutelynkinetic, and the driving impulse is to seek salvation innescape from community and in the confrontation of unknownnpossibility. It is not surprising that we have come tonendow the search for new experience with mystical andnsacramental meanmg. To leave behind the known and,nbecause known, commonplace reality is to inest in thenpromise of finding an “elsewhere” that will provide a secondnchance for being and consciousness, a regeneration ofnsensibilitv in the discoverv of the authentic sources of thenself • • • .nCooper’s intrepid and simple-minded frontiersmen, Melville’snseagoing pioneers, Hemingway’s seekers after thenholy communion of precise language and true emotion,nFitzgerald’s oddly ascetic sentimentalists of wealth andnglamour—all are fantasy projections of an essentially religiousnview of experience, a belief in the possibility of somenform of beatific transcendence to be achieved throughnsubmersion in elemental nature, the exploration of instinctualntruth, or the discoxery of an earthly paradise of infinitenrichness and perfect beauty. It would seem that the experiencenof the frontier along with its attendant myths foundednon such ideas as that the corruptions of civilization can benleft behind, that there exist inexhaustible territories of freshnchallenge and adventure to be conquered, that the meaningfulnlife is a continuous romantic pilgrimage into thenvirgin unknown, and that man is most noble as a pilgrim innthe wilderness and closest to God when he is closest tonnature—these have all obviously done much to programnour psychic expectations just as they have helped to form ancentral thematic preoccupation of our novels.nBut there has also been a contrary impulse at worknbehind the American novelistic imagination, and it maynwell derive from what remains of one of the originalnfunctions of the novel as a form, which was to providencritical and satirical commentary on the excesses of thenmedieval romance. For even as our novels have expressed,nand often seemed to celebrate, our romantic fantasies andnnnaspirations to transcendence, they have also served—as anrule through the indirections of irony, metaphor, andnambiguity—as stern moral monitors of them. If there was anstrong mythic and mythologizing dimension to the frontiernexperience, there was also an even stronger dimension ofnpractical reality, physical hardship, privation, and dangern—the inescapable limitations imposed by the environmentnupon the flights of the pioneer imagination, The conquestnof the wilderness may have depended upon the existence ofnthe dream of an earthly paradise, but survival in thenwilderness depended upon the development of a hardy andnaltogether disenchanted pragmatism. Americans, we know,nhave never been at ease with the schizophrenia thusninduced in them, and many of our most important novelsnhave recorded with powerful intensity the anguish andnfrustration it has caused.nFrom the first genuinely American fiction of Coopernthrough the fables of Vonnegut, the pattern has repeatedlynbeen one in which romantic aspiration or a certain idealisticnvision of reality is subjected to the test of experience andnshown to be empty pretense or illusion, founded on falsenvalues or meretricious hopes rather than on premises whichntake into account the practical necessities and the frailties ofnthe human condition. The Ur-figures are of course Cooper’snLeatherstocking and Melville’s Ahab, both of whomnare men obsessed with an idea of godliness and personalnpurity and who pursue it in the conquest of, or escape into,nthe sanctity of nature. Leatherstocking is overtaken andnfinally destroyed by the evils of the ci’ilization he wasnpresumptuous and innocent enough to try to flee, whilenAhab presumes beyond the limits of human power and isndefeated by a force that is both natural and cosmic.nTwain and James were both champions of the naturalnmoral sense, that innate power of knowing right from wrongnwhich Thomas Jefferson believed to be part of the commonnproperty of all mankind. But both writers also knew thatnsuch a sense is a fragile weapon for survival in a world innwhich the universal possession of this sense is, in actualnfact, proven again and again to be itself an illusion. InnTwain’s case it is the adult world into which one day Hucknand Tom, like Holden Caulfield, will have to grow up. FornJames, the continuing metaphor is the society of Europe innwhich Isabel Archer’s and Lambert Strether’s trustingnAmerican ingenuousness is educated into a sullied comprehensionnof the nature of evil and the necessity for personalnresponsibility. The emphasis in Fitzgerald is not dissimilar.nGatsby’s virginity of heart, oddly augmented by the illegalitynof his business enterprises, is despoiled by the greaternbecause morally lawless power of the Buchanans’ carelessnessnand cynicism, their better understanding of the expedientnways of the world. In Faulkner, a society basing itsnvision of itself on certain assumptions about a half-mythic,nhalf-actual heritage of honor and nobility is overcome bynthe barbarous, wholly pragmatic Snopeses and their ilk,neven as it is eaten away from within by false pride, bloodnguilt, and decades of duplicity perpetrated in the name ofnhonor.nThe list could be extended, but significantiy enough,nappropriate examples become scarcer as we approach closernto the present time. While it is true that the 20th centurynhas been remarkable for the accelerating vengeance withn