As the courts free more and more books from the contraband shelf, there is not much left in literature that can consistently be banned, says Harvard professor and critic Harry Levin. Here he assesses what the new candor in literature could mean to the critic and to the reader.
Pierre Emmanuel’s article in the August Atlantic, “Americans as Students,” seems to have occasioned some searching of hearts among our educators. One of them, HARRY LEVIN,while Chairman of the Department of Comparative Literature at Harvard, was largely responsible for the invitation that enabled Mr. Emmanuel to gather his impressions. Meanwhile Mr. Levin, as exchange professor at the Sorbonne in 1953, has had a chance to make some counterbalancing observations.
One of the most gifted critics and teachers of our day, HARRY LEVIN is a Professor of English and Chairman of the Department of Comparative Literature at Harvard University. In earlier issues he has written for us on James Joyce and other moderns: this fresh evaluation of Marcel Proust will serve as an invitation to new readers and as the introduction to The Letters of Marcel Proust, Edited and Translated by Mina Curtiss, a volume which is to be published by Random House this winter.