Since what seems the original publication of The Scarlet Letter , the book reviews of Orville Prescott have made gaudy the otherwise impeccable greyness of The New York Times. Until now he has been spared criticism on the ground that, since few people seriously interested in writing read him, he can neither harm nor help a literary reputation.
This is certainly true, but a great many people who don't read books do read the Times. With a Prescott as view-finder, their picture of American literature is distorted, to say the least. My own objection to Orville Prescott is not so much his style J. Donald Adams' words are winged by comparison nor his ignorance of the more sophisticated critical strategies he tells you the plot, anyway , but his identification with what he thinks to be his audience: the middle-aged, middle-class, moderately Affluent American woman who lives in Darien, New Canaan, Scarsdale, a region bounded on the south by the Theatre Guild, on the north by Womrath, on the west by Barry Goldwater and on the eats byβ¦oh, well, you name it.
Prescott knows these ladies are interested in sex; he also knows that they stand firmly united in condemning all sexual activity not associated with marriage. Grimly, they attend each Tennessee Williams play so that they can complain furiously in the lobby that this time Williams has gone too far! And of course the next play Williams writes they will all be back on deck, ready to be appalled again.
Now it is true that The Girls as Helen Hokinson nicely called them sound like this. It's expected of them. They don't want any trouble from one another and they have such an obvious vested interest in the Family that any work which seems to accept or, worse, celebrate non-Family sex presents them with a clear conflict of interest which they must resolve, at the very least, by certain ritual noises of dissent.
But Prescott has missed the point to The Girls. Though they must flap when the Family as an idea seems endangered, they do read more books than anyone else; they try to educate themselves politically and aesthetically; they are remarkable open-minded to new ideas and, all in all, more tolerant of life than a great many of the husbands whose days are spent trying to make it up the ladder, lips pressed lovingly to the heel of the shoe on the next rung above.
