ABSTRACT
Yet there was an element in the contemporary journalistic criticism which saw in the book qualities of social rather than individual inclusiveness. Writing in the New York Herald, James L.Ford objects to the form of the book on the grounds that
This is not offered as praise; John Cowper Powys, however, is ready to hail a new Homer on the same grounds:
Both writers base their case not on the novel’s idiosyncratic or autobiographical qualities, but on its supposed representativeness as an impersonal transcript of modern American life.
