The New Compassion in the American Novel

The present decline of compassion (which also is the decline of tragedy) began in an odd and relatively innocuous way. It started with the vogue of the lovable bums, and at first it was no worse than a foolish romanticizing of the scalawag: a beery, brass-rail sentimentality. This pattern was not completely new we see a bit of it in all the classical picaros but never had it been so elaborated as it began to be in the thirties. It had charm and appeal, at times, dealing good-naturedly with human foibles. It is possible to look affectionately upon such people, as with Wilkins Micawber, if you keep your head and don't elevate a mood into a philosophy. Some writers, especially those talented men William Saroyan, in The Time of Your Life, and John Steinbeck, in several books from his early Tortilla Flat to his recent Sweet Thursday, developed the lovable bums into the fallacy of "the beautiful little people" which almost always meant the shiftless, the drunk, the amoral and the wards of society. A corollary was implied: if you didn't love these characters, you were a self-righteous bigot, hard of heart by contrast to the author's compassion and love for the common clay