The Writer in America Author:Van Wyck Brooks "Poets and novelists and critics are the pathfinders of society: to them belongs the vision without which the people perish." So Van Wyck Brooks believed. But in the course of his long and amazingly productive life, he came to the conviction that both the nation and its writers were betraying the hopes he held for them. In one of his last work... more »s, THE WRITER IN AMERICA, Van Wyck Brooks loosed a withering blast at those writers who had, he felt, failed to attain maturity. While attacking the "cult of youth" which established a tradition of adolescence in American writing, he defined the traditions of American literature and called out for a liberal humanism with a positive set of values. The New York Herald Tribune said of this controversial book, "Whoever today has the courage to say these things, we ignore at our own risk."« less