Experiments In The Visual Arts (the Invention

The Fascinating Thing To A Dispassionate Observer About The Structure Of Life In The Soviet Union Is That In Their Efforts To Produce An Unknown That We May Let Its Ideologists Call Socialism The Communist Dictators Have Produced A Brutal Approximation Of Monopoly Capitalism, A System That Has All The Disadvantages Of Our Own, With None Of The Palliatives Which Come To Us From Surviving Competition And From The Essential Division Of Economic And Political Power Which Has So Far Made It Possible For The Humane Traditions Of The Western World To Continue.

I Think We Are All Of Us A Pretty Milky Lot, Without Tea-table Convictions And Our Radicalism That Keeps So Consistently Within The Bounds Of Decorum . . . .i'd Like To Annihilate These Stupid Colleges Of Ours . . . Instillers Of Stodginess.

The People Of This Country Are Too Tolerant. There's No Other Country In The World Where They'd Allow It... After All We Built Up This Country And Then We Allow A Lot Of Foreigners, The Scum Of Europe, The Offscourings Of Polish Ghettos To Come And Run It For Us.

Women Hock Their Jewels And Their Husbands' Insurance Policies To Acquire An Unaccustomed Shade In Hair Or Crêpe De Chine. Why Then Is It That When Anyone Commits Anything Novel In The Arts He Should Be Always Greeted By This Same Peevish Howl Of Pain And Surprise? One Is Led To Suspect That The Interest People Show In These Much Talked Of Commodities, Painting, Music, And Writing, Cannot Be Very Deep Or Very Genuine When They So Wince Under An Unexpected Impact.

The Enormous Room Seems To Me To Be The Book That Has Nearest Approached The Mood Of Reckless Adventure In Which Men Will Reach The White Heat Of Imagination Needed To Fuse The Soggy Disjointed Complexity Of The Industrial Life About Us Into Seething Fluid Of Creation. There Can Be No More Playing Safe.