Books: Artist v. Citizen

PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS AMERICAN —Matthew Josephson—Harcourt, Brace ($3).

U. S. artists sometimes worry about U.S. art, wonder why it is not bigger & better, why so many U. S. artists have been expatriates, literally or in spirit. Critic Josephson here collects a formidable array of case histories: James Whistler, Lafcadio Hearn, Stephen Crane, Ambrose Bierce, Henry James, Henry Adams, Henry Harland, Stuart Merrill, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein.

Critic Josephson thinks the "humanities" are "threatened" by our machine civilization, has taken the case of the artist as "a...