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the peering, puttering analyses of subject, the apprehensive discrimination
Probably there is no real danger that any novelist who is worth his salt will be made place-conscious in an inhibiting degree by any grotesque maunderings about nativeness, though the novelist may find diversion in studying place-consciousness as a factor. It may be that as a factor he might find it to have the weight of more than a joke. In his serious moods he may conclude that the peering, puttering analyses of subject, the apprehensive discrimination between this and that spot, this and that character, as perfectly or imperfectly “American”, was never more futile, never more antipathetic to the hungers of the world than at this hour.
— Alexander Black, “What’s in a Place?” (with sketches by Esther Brock Bird), The Bookman 54:6 (February 1922) : 534-541 (540)
the same essay appears in Black's collection The Latest Thing and Other Things (1922) : 195-210
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Alexander Black (1859-1940), “author, photographer, newspaper man, and the inventor of the pre-cinema ‘Picture Play’ which debuted in 1894.”
wikipedia
see also the beautiful family website at alexanderblack.com
Esther Brock Bird (1879-1963), NGA
aside —
the second of two instances in same volume of The Bookman