A fine silver thread

Mr. Tuttleton's new collection of fifteen essays focuses on what Henry James called "the imaginative faculty under cultivation," the quality that makes for important literature. The subjects here range from Washington Irving to Louis Auchincloss, with stops along the way for considerations of Cooper, Poe, Howells, James, Henry Adams, Edith Wharton, Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, and Conrad Aiken. Mr. Tuttleton assesses the influence and accomplishments of literary radicalism in the twenties and investigates the treatment of women in the American novel between the two world wars. The effects of ideology are a dominant motif, supported by the author's customary banquet of information based upon his close reading of American literature and criticism. He is not reluctant to exercise taste - "a dirty word nowadays...but it conveys aesthetic judgment." And he rejects ideology, propaganda, or protest writing masquerading as literature.