ABSTRACT
Most of the men and women of promise who have contributed to the brilliance of recent American literature have shown an unfortunate tendency, after a splendid beginning, to go backwards or to stand still. Their promissory notes have not matured. Ernest Hemingway has not advanced from the powerful sketches of In Our Time, though A Farewell toArms was an admirable novel. What is true ofMr. Hemingway is true of most of his contemporaries and of their immediate elders in American literature. Few of them have shown any true development. William Faulkner is a noteworthy exception. He has developed steadily and impressively, and has become in a very few years an important figure in contemporary fiction. On the face of the papers, he may become the most important.
