ABSTRACT
The effects of this influence [Proust] were not only marked in writers who had been directly exposed to it-writers so diverse as Mr. Ernest Hemingway and the usually orthodox Mr. Louis Bromfield, who had long lived in Paris-but spread to others who, like Mr. William Faulkner and Mr. James Cozzens (vide his recent novel, A Cure ofFlesh) , have, so far as I know, passed nearly the whole of their lives in the United States. What that effect is will be recognized only by those familiar with the Proust substance cum Joyce or Stein method-that sensation of looking at characters a great way off, whose voices and gestures seem remote, yet who are brought physically close to us by a powerful glass which serves simultaneously as a screen between their and our reality. This method is not conducive to popularity, particu-
lady where the personages and the scene retailed are otherwise unfamiliar; and I am inclined to think that one of the most important of contemporary American novelists, Mr. Faulkner, has failed of wide appreciation in this country becauseso much ofhis work produces that particular sensation.
