The World of Van Wyck Brooks

...Be bad bean struck by the train of abases that followed in their wake, and, ia order to assail the results, he assailed ta« causes—in ao far as theae were literary causes...

...For whatever ether abdication Mr...

...Yet this objection *nd the even mora serious objection thst *• authors err in hsving Finnegsn •Bend part of the night in a waking state do not detract from the value of the splendid overall job...

...E»en if it ia true that the function of * literary Baedecker like this is explanatory rather than critical, the authors, I think, might without harm have been less adulatory and more critical...

...It is no small offense sera hast the community ef the arte whea a critic who derives much ef his authority from his moral evangelism (for this was true ef the early, and ef tho middle-rears, Brooks) must admit te himself that hia original fame had ac hollow a base...

...no matter h*w direct th* encounter...

...Brooke' aad abdication from everything he representee) to American letters ia the early twenties, a curiously ecpiatory motif, a public purging...

...if anything, it wa* hia mystical faith in the wisdom of ?**' Ii ill Hint, the IxdJvideel cta-eeienca* tasoittea aad lifnlhliaj ttiii) syjaa Urn apart mm* tart am avowed coldnsaa towards "democracy" a prior ntgation...

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...For while Pec's personal aberrations srt treated with understanding and some sympathy, th* same quality ef understanding i* never extended to the writing itself...

...A* for Mr...

...Brooki' earner law psycho-*n**ytie techniques which made hia Ormmu *f Mmrk tP**» «*• MWtiona], ^wlmpimod dlarnoitic atudy it waa...

...A SKELETON KEY TO FINNEGANS WAEE should ,'h' history and not at all a hoax...

...Van Wyck Brooke hat found to be better than thi* world...

...of Jtffereen, it la en sack g pajaanr level and it se skaliewiy imitative of Gilbert Chlnard'* evaluation that it hardly bears much examination, although one l* aom.what * tart led kg th* •at aaaerUon that Jefferaon "ami derived hia idea* by aa mean* from the French thinkers and hi* mind bad been wholly formed at home...

...of team personal feelings of guilt—which oaj are urged to accept at its fsea value as "literary criticism...

...Bat then, the hie-terian read* hia materiala, too...

...It is a great compliment to them to point out thst their work stimulates each reader to make his own "kty"-i.the per-tonal, individual appreciation of the original work of genius...

...k anrt After an introductory section on the generi plan^ of the booh ana another giving a specimen analysis of the first four paragraphs aeian...

...Yet, if I read tht linaa truly, there ia ia Mr...

...The strange, self-imposed imperative suggests an additional atone, meat for the perhaps snobbish refusal of hia American heritage made by the young Harvard expatriate, living in England, when he wrote Tat Win* of th* Puritan...

...Ont feels that, as often as not, it is not the world of Washington Irving we are surveying, but rathtr, the world that Mr...

...Brooks' penitential offerings for the heresies of his youth...

...Nothing could have proved more clearly the toughness and reality of th* American tradition than the patent fact that Poe wa* outaide it...

...The best answer is that Joyce, a fanatic about artistic unity, has deliberately chosen to give us a work without exposition or without the connective tissue that forms s psrt of the ordinary novel or poem...

...e ThUS...

...the authors present us with a skillful fonden*ation.of tn* main outlines of the work taction by section, in which certain "alivers of meaning are shaved off" in sues, a way that they present a sequence...

...By Jo.eph (an.pl.elt and Henry Morton Rohimon...

...M50...

...But Finnegan* Wake, s poem rather than a novel, is not for every kind of reader, any more than, say, Fault is or, to fake a work more comptrable in merit, Burton* Anatomy of Melancholy...

...fiey all believe with ley** and Eliot that "life ia a dark little pocket...

...MacLeish and Mr...

...Brooks erects his own literary epitaph as a critic...

...Ober.in Co,.eg...

...Ia tht fragmentary, somewhat coy areeeatation of his personal, social, and artistic beliefs which he hung upon the Aleettiah Action of the tweed-lov-kaJhfenythiarmuatached Oliver Alls ton, froths staled quite clearly "as a young sua at . . . (Allaton Brooks) had attacked the romantic American classics...

...It may be for this reason that two-thirds of Th* World of Washington living ia not even literary history but lather a kind of highly picturesque and entertaining digest of biography, sociology, political analysis as well aa a history of ideas and of sensibility...

...Italics nine...

...Brooks' pilgrimage into the past, however, Is aeea ia the sections on Pee...

...Recently, he has added the Marxist critics to his list, although it was not so long ago thst Mr...

...Ia addition, wt are told, Olivtr A Ms ton had "to learn to love his country," for he had loved Europe too well in hia youth...

...he is become a twentieth century Washington Irving with a "social consciousness...

...The Key tttelfdoe* not pretend to be definitive...

...Brooks has made, however much he has ceased te be the critic, be haa bec**a* the historian by honest "•*as...

...If we had a play that was printed up without speakers' names and with all divisions run together, we should have a similar kind of thing—except that Joyce has had greater warrant for doing what he has done than would such a playwright...

...knst of all ia it a substitute for the richness of the original...

...Brook*' tfM.alsa...

...In dealing with th* forty years from 1800 to the period which he has already ireatsd in Th* Flowering of Now England, Brooke is unconsciously limited by the limitations of the literature that was beginning to take form...

...HI* Anal judgment la that "There wa* something infantile in Poe, as in sll the Symbolists who followed him in Franc* and else where____So American literature Aowed past Poe, without dislodging him indeed, but without evtr being diverted or seriously affected by his presence...

...For over ten years now, the outward form of thia sin-offering haa become aa ever more insistent, almost hysterical, demand for the writer to "root himself," to ally himself on the side of "primary literature" (literature which works to "regenerate" one's country, which deals with themes of "courage, justice, love and mercy") and a crutty, sometimes bitter refusal to understand the whole drift, method and meaning of the very literary movements which Mr...

...Brooke' cultural nationalism haa lad him to read into history what he would lihe te be true for th* present, for te say Jefferson's mind was formed at heme is to overlook the content ef an eighteenth century Virginia gentleman'* education...

...This description of 1802 was partly true for the forty years Brooks considers...

...Brooks were the two most decorative and vocal wooden horses manipulated by the League ef American Writer*/ ft* "coterie writer?' repreeent th* "death drive" aa opposed to tho "life drive' at the "primary writers" like Whittier and Victor Hage...

...Th* boat measure of Mr...

...It is almoat as if, taken aback by the isiuence and prestige brought by The Win* of th* Puritan...

...Brooks' own progressive retreat further and further into a kind of tonal antiquarianism...

...He had ridiculed Emer tea, Longfellow, Whittier and Bryant...

...He is in error when he says that Jefferson, Whitman, Emerson and Lincoln are part of the "American prophetic tradition" with "mystical faith in the wisdom ef the people.'' Emeraee, for one, had no mystical faith ia the wisdom of the people...

...He deea go directly te source*, a* reada tho literature,, jeuraala, paper* aad diaries oa which hi* record it baaed...

...In 1802, when the 20-yeai old Washington living wrote some newspaper pastiches under the name of Jonathan Oldstyle, "there was so little writing of a literary kind that they were at once reprinted in other journals...

...Brace and Company...

...It teams a pity that those who will baatit moat by this handbook, the ones who have never read very far in the work itself, are just thoae least able to appreciate the job that Campbell snd loMaaon have done for them...

...The World of Van Wyck Brooks By VIVIENNE KOCH TMi WOULD Or WASHINGTON HVISO By Van Wyck Brook...

...On* deea net feel, except with aome ef the mere camples Igare* like Jefferson aad Pee, thst he ha* accepted aeeeadary ¦ourrea at estimates...

...The ordinary reader may wonder why any book at til should ever need a key...

...We have, then, in Th* World of Wash-ington Irving another one of Mr...

...Brooks, himself, to enthusiastically sanctioned in his "enlightened" youth...

...Occasionally, aa in the magnificent narrative chapter on Audubon (together with the one on Lewis and Clark the best things in the'book), he strikes a note of infectious and authoritative enjoyment which It ia foolish to resist...

...Now, just as you could sit down and puzzle out the play if the characters and ideas were sharp enough, Campbell snd Robinson have pieced together the expository skeleton of Finnegan* Wake...

...ear tad he regret thia, although As r*fn(Ud now and th*n that he had net really road tho** poet* flrat...

...And, perhaps unconsciously attempting to justify the position he has in recent yesrs represented, Mr...

...Joyce for the Masses By EDWARD FIESS A SKELETON KEY TO FINNEGASS WAEE...

...America'* Coming *f ig«, and his critical leadership of the S*ven Art...

...wW he mil f to be the American put Un-jjtftirr there Ma riaka in turning ,**a ktr...

...And with thia last sentence Mr...

...it ia against this bach-drop of vales* that wa must a** Fa* World at H aahlmgtom Irving, a ditValt teak, if on* it te judge fairly, becaase of th* espinea, inrlnaive reading of late lath and early 19th contary material* a pern which it ia grounded...

...There is much else that Is curious snd pleasant to know to be found in this book, although it lacks focus (in spite of the frantic efforts in the laat chapter to build a case for Amerlca'a becoming "more aware of herself" In the forties as manifested by tht "intensity" in sll tht arts) and yielda little that It memorable...

...Brooks were plagued by conscience in the secret knowledge thst at had not truly understood, nor even read what he was rejecting, whst the climate made It possible for him to reject, perhaps, tee glibly...

...Brooks falls into some major confusions in evaluating the past...

...The enormity of his increasing divorcement from twentieth-century writing is suggested merely by a brief enumeration of those whom he aubsumes under his category of "coterie writers" (a euphemism for those he dislikes) : Proust, Janes Joyce, T. S. Eliot, Hemingwsy, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, the French Symboliats (19th and 20th century), the Dadaists, the "Southern" critics, the "metropolitan gangs," the Expatriates, Vvor Winters and many others...

...For instance, they might have admitted that •*rre parts of the work are either dull •r ailly, aa are sections of Milton and Rkbelais, that some of Joyce's finest sifts, like his amazing linguistic versa-tihty *ad Wa ability to plan elaborately, way bring disadvantages with them, that Joyce may have pushed his medium too and that the study of Vinntgan* Wake is in danger of becoming a cult (from which, indeed, this K*y nobly tries "> rescue that study...

...Harcourt...

...He wa* even outside the main atream of the human tradition...

...Still, one feels that it is not the paucity of the literary materiala that has made this book into the colorful catch-all it is, but lather Mr...