Hoosac”) to Hemingway (“I hate tyranny and, I suppose,rngovernment…. No larger unit than the village can exist withoutrnthings being impossible”).rnWhen in 1898 a confused William McKinley ignored thernsound Ohio advice of his front-porch advisors Mark Hanna andrnWilliam Rufus “Good” Day and plunged us into war withrnSpain, a wide variety of men of letters opposed our splendid littlernmisadventure, among them William Dean Howells, MarkrnTwain, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Hamlin Garland, and WilliamrnGraham Sumner. They were a politicallv diverse lot, rangingrnfrom the mild Ohio socialism of Howells to Professor Sumner’srnYale laissez-faire capitalism, and though Theodore Rooseveltrncalled them “unhung traitors,” they were patriots of the Republicrnwho despaired at “seeing the America of my youthfulrndreams vanish from mv sight,” in E.L. Godkin’s plangentrnwords.rnFour decades later the imperial reveries of the Roosevelt ofrnOyster Bay were materializing under his fifth cousin fromrnHvde Park. This time, even more American writers went intornopposition: Sherwood Anderson, e.e. eummings, KathleenrnNorris, Theodore Dreiser, William Saroyan, Louise Bogan,rnEdgar Lee Masters, Henry Miller, Henry W. Clune, SinclairrnLewis, Samuel Hopkins Adams, and Dwight Maedonald,rnamong others. How perfect that Lewis, Anderson, and Masters,rnthe Midwestern trio that led what was (mistakenly) termedrn”the revolt from the village”—in fact each sought to revive thernvillage—were isolationist defenders of the old America.rnMasters, the crotchety elder of the bunch, could have toldrnthem vhat was in store for those who object to a holy war. I’hernSpoon River poet had had a picturesque Illinois boyhood thatrnendowed him with a confident Americanism. As a lad. Mastersrnhad known Lincoln’s law partner, William Ilerndon, and JohnrnMcNamar, the man who dumped Ann Rutledge into melancholyrnAbe’s lap. Cussedly independent. Masters became a vituperatirne critic of Father Abraham and a poetic champion ofrnhis state’s unfavorite son, Stephen Douglas. His hostile Life ofrnLincoln (1931) provoked critical vitriol, which spattered thernpoet’s oeuvre; his reputation, already tarnished by his unevenrnwork since Spoon River Anthology in 1915, sunk to the level ofrnEdgar Guest.rnSure, Masters could be sour and splenetic, but he was also arnsentimental Jeffersonian who as a young man loathed thernSpanish-American War and insisted that his hero WilliamrnJennings Brvan “hold America to its noble path, its primal vision.”rnForty years later the primal vision was dimming, andrnMasters slipped into senectitude, bitter about the leitmotif ofrnAmerican history, that of the good guys—Douglas and Bryanrnand Masters—losing, time after time, and getting clobbered byrnthe history books withal.rnNot all of these writers who fought and mourned the Republic’srndemise were of a high order. Samuel HopkinsrnAdams, for instance, the feistv muckraker of Lake Owasco, fitsrnVernon Parrington’s assessment of William Cullen Bryant:rn”He may not have been a great poet, but he was a great American.”rnSuch a description also applies to Kathleen Norris, thernprolific ladies’ novelist who spoke frequently at America Firstrngatherings. Mrs. Norris spent her girlhood among the redwoodsrnin Mill Valley, California, where, as she describes in herrncharming autobiographical sketch Noon (1925), her fatherrn”read us the Declaration of Independence and the GettsburgrnAddress, and talked to us of the glories of our own nation.”rnOf our own nation. What a pregnant locution. It was ourrnnation, these writers knew, and they were not afraid to raiserntheir xoices when the political leadership acted foolishlv orrnmalevolentl)’. Sinclair Lewis would have scoffed at Norris’srnclaim that “the happiest life in the world” was “the life ofrnAmerican women in a small American town,” but that is becausernhe seriouslv believed that Gopher Prairie, which he lovedrnbevond measure, should be an American Athens. The deeentralistrnpopulism implicit in Mrs. Norris’s formulation providedrnthe only real alternative to the New Deal. Its political expressionrnwas articulated by such men as Senators Burton K. Wheeler,rnGerald P. Nve, and Hiram Johnson; it looked to the plainsrntowns and tidy villages, to the shopowners and farmers and artisansrnand anvone else who, like Edmund Wilson, “thinks uprnhis own notions and signs his own name.”rnThe might- cities were falling, and the dreams had taken tornthe hinterlands. From Carmel, Robinson Jeffers wrote:rnBut for my children, I would have them keep theirrndistance from the thickening center; corruptionrnNever has been compulsory, when the cities lie at thernmonster’s feet there are left the mountains.rnThe specter of regimentation bothered even the more perceptiverninterventionists. Playwright Maxwell Anderson, a reluctantrnhawk, warned that “participation in a modern war means dictatorship,rneven for us, and the abrogation of our liberties. Dictatorshipsrnare hard to get rid of, liberties are hard to win back.”rnAnderson was an ornerv Pennsylvanian. His Pulitzer Prizewinningrnplay Both Your Houses (1933) featured a fresh youngrncongressman so naive he makes Frank Capra’s Mr. Smith lookrnlike Dan Rostenkowski. The honest tvro quiekh- learns thatrn”the sole business of government is graft, special privilege andrncorruption.” Despite his rough baptism he remains an optimist,rnconvinced that sooner or later the People will revolt, butrna wiser hack delivers a prescient postscript: “Thev’re just learningrnto pay taxes,” he says of the suckers beyond the Potomac.rn”In a few more years you’ll really give ’em taxes to pay.” Andersonrnwas a peculiarly American sort of crank who refused tornfill out his Social Security application on the grounds that it infringedrnupon his rights as a freeman. (Governments are “runrnby pimps who get kicked out of hothouses for picking the customers’rnpockets,” a rebel soldier says in the playwright’s superbrn1934 verse drama. Valley Forge.)rnMaxwell Anderson learned firsthand the narrowing limits ofrndissent in the brave new Republic. His original script forrnKnickerbocker Holiday (1938), a collaboration with Kurt Weill,rncontained numerous pungent references to FDR until his fellowrnmembers of The Playwrights Company—rugged recusantsrnall, they would tell you, carefree bohemian seekers of therntruth—pressured him to soften the satire. So toothless was hisrnreised script that the President himself heartilv enjoyed arnD.C. production of the play. Anderson did, however, refuse tornattend a cast party at the White I louse—the ultimate humiliationrnfor a proud heterodox man.rnAnderson-like submission was never an option for an obstreperousrnArmenian boy from Fresno, William Saroyan. As arnlad he was a dreamy foe of nationalism; his early stoxy Antranikrnof Armenia rages against the futility of war: “It is always people,rnnot nations, because it is all one nation, the living, so why . . .rnkill one another?” Yet he was also a proud son of the diaspora.rnCarol Marcus, the snotty deb who married Saroyan twice andrnDECE.MBER 1993/17rnrnrn