Lives and Letters

...In this respect, the novella "The taking strolls across enemy lines...

...In that (still neglected) one hand, he wishes to remain distant from the security of his world...

...almost report-like account of a retired German doctor who takes his daughter to But for all the time Andersch spends German businessman who buys a manor Oxford, where she is to begin as a student, Andersch very well conveys the . on these characters and for all his at- house on the west coast of Ireland and in tempts to give them substance, they his isolated setting confronts the empti- man's sense of guilt and loss as he leaves somehow never truly spring to life...

...On the other, he cant events from his own life: his youth- nical skill was on display, as his conwishes to interest us in their lives...

...Beatrice which enabled him to bear his dark fits of very beginning of my meeting her, but gassed herself and her pet mouse twenty depression...

...He describes the lived those who helped create a literature ture who collectively embody what boys, what their tarIe meant to them, and that was distinctly American-Paine, might be identified as an American spirit...

...He was an expert all understanding...

...editor of the New Age...

...Doctor Schefold, fly Disappearance in Providence is that the subjects warrant somewhat more an art historian who has the odd habit of more successful, though far less ambiti- passion...

...The author con- "A Morning at the Seashore...

...them "the literary underworld," and Raymond Radiguet...

...character through symbols, atmosphere Like Orage, Murry was a self-made intel- Koteliansky, including two moving triand poetic evocations of mood...

...were due to that Adelphi and author of books on Swift, it was Orage's attraction to mystical doc- terrible unhappiness when an individual Blake and Keats, is now mainly remem- trines, combined with Murry's ineptitude human being, realizing his difference, is bered as the treacherous friend of Law- and Kot's passion for all things Russian, made every moment, by everything, to rence and the charming but irresponsible which impelled Katherine to seek salva- see his loneliness...

...though WinDincklage's offer to surrender and the which the narrator tries in vain to resur- terspelt, for all its faults, is an impressive argument it stimulates-does not possess rect his dead past, and in the anecdotal technical achievement, both books are the urgency it should...

...novel related by a world-weary journalist from his characters, treating them in a In a number of stories Andersch al- who probes his past while on a visit to cold, objective manner, as figures in a ludes or refers directly to several signifi- Berlin, the full range of Andersch's techvast moral drama...

...Carswell has made some valuable dis=coveries among the private papers o vation and concentrated emotion...

...in which quite disappointing when measured fronts, but is unable to adequately solve, a typical family man on vacation strays against Andersch's previous work, Efa very tricky stylistic problem...

...In this account of a forces who is puzzled and disturbed by a Better House" is a cold, objective, Dincklage's plan...

...Virginia Woolf called Lewis and the teenage prodigy, satirical density...

...stories in the players, all military men, and given a detailed portrait of Captain Kimbrough, worlds, and the remoteness seems quite book, it is "Daughter," the gentlest, the Georgiatborn head of the American appropriate to the subject matter...

...the extent of her suffering I realised only years later...

...this is one of the reasons, at least, why style complements, even enhances,the Though this collection is a good (if the central action of the book- theme, as it does in the title story, in unremarkable) one and...

...ing, mixture of dramatic detail and corporal whose bitterness and frustration Again that odd sense of distance is very philosophical reflection...

...On the too far not only from the beach but also raim's Book...

...She is the lectual and capable editor, who had a butes to Katherine from Dorothy Brett only one whose fame rests securely on crippling strain of mysticism and was (her friend and Murry's lover) and from her literary work...

...This detail, precise phrasing, delicate obser- missionary tone, the mannered precis- regimen killed her in less than six weeks...

...16 March 1979: 151 Katherine Mansfield, the central fig- later career (only five years separated tion from the fraudulent and ruthless ure of this group, was closely connected The Necessity of Communism from The Gurdjieff...

...the struggle to sharply with the coolness and control ex- most, if not all, of the pieces focus on achieve freedom in an oppressive world...

...And ness of his existence...

...Brett wrote in 1922: "One loves came from a similar colonial Gorky, and as the friend and collaborator her passionately, because it is impossible background, were bisexual, suffered in this work with Katherine, Lawrence, to do otherwise...

...But here it often transforms the narrative of a wartime deate, undisciplined nature contrasts works to the author's advantage, for serter into a meditation on...

...The Tumbleweeds: Somersaulting Up While the notion of national character and Out of the City Streets, by Frederick Johnson...

...Orage's assistant, chief connecessary to hold us for an extended Jeffrey Meters tributor and mistress was Beatrice Hasttime...

...was the first to Castle, for example, or the collateral publish Pound, Mansfield, Muir, Campaign in Musil's The Man Without New Directions, $15, 307 pp...

...The following book should have been never indulgent-and his easy, informal included in the Brotherhood Books List of scholarship make for a remarkable jourMarch 2. Dennis Vellucci ney...

...But working at cross purposes...

...For unlike those classic novels BEATRICE HASTINGS, MIDDLETON cious and now over-rated coterie of in which an action or event is prolonged MURRY, S.S...

...Literary underworld Winterspelt might be described as a novel of suspended action, and this, un- LIYEi AND LETTERS: they provide a lively contrast to the fortunately, results in another major A.H...

...He heightened this authority his many friends, perceived: "Her divituberculosis at age 34 in Gurdjieff's Insti- with an honorable and upright character, sion and `secret sorrow' I felt from the tute at Fontainebleau in 1923...

...color to engage us...

...Here Andersch bring about a tragedy and whose passion- much in evidence...

...Naturalism is constantly at war here with abstraction...

...world he attempts to project seems vague finement as a POW in the United States...

...Dincklage's decision and the end- His interesting, perceptive book con- ings, a talented satirist and fiery feminist, less discussions and negotiations it cerns five representatives of a par- who never wore drawers and later had sparks simply do not have enough ticular kind of literary life in the first half love affairs with Modigliani, Wyndham metaphorical, philosophical, or even of this century...

...Since he his desertion from the German army dur- there was more: color, lyricism and keeps so aloof )-from his creation, the ing the Italian campaign, and his con- above all, a strong sense of involvement...

...clever but not creative...

...Even least profound and adventurous, that is the most affecting...

...hibited by other characters...

...what happened to each in later life...

...14 and ville, Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, are passed from one generation to up) Longfellow, Dickinson, Twain, etc...

...A. R. Orage, the gifted and left unresolved (K's quest in The John Carswell, ed...

...ous...

...Dylan Qualities), Winterspelt lacks the weight Thomas...

...ORAGE, KATHERINE MANSFIELD, wealthy, well-educated but rather preproblem...

...husband of Katherine...

...And clearly that her flaws...

...Hulme, Aldington, Read and...

...10.00 OHN DEEDY begins the preface to is somewhat extraneous to Deedy's purThe author, a professional acrobat, J Literary Places: A Guided Pilgrim- pose and is a subject he wisely ignores, gave up his career in 1953 to become a age, New York and New England with there emerge from the concise biogsocial worker in a Pueto Rican neighbor- the modest claim that his book is "no raphies that are the substance of each hood on New York's West Side...

...Her finest stories present a In Point Counter Point Huxley ex- noxious odors of the beasts (a traditional quintessential event, and contain subtle coriated Murry's style-"the dignified Caucasian cure for tuberculosis...

...Carswell motes that all five figures, a few months before her death...

...It isn't ful communistic activities which eventu- stantly flowing narrative moved with long before we realize that Andersch is ally led to his imprisonment at Dachau, great ease back and forth in time...

...There he trained five boys who developed a suc- more than its title"-a guide to the liter- chapter shared purposes and themes cessful tumbling act and eventually per- ary shrines of the Northeast where once among the creators of American literaformed on national TV...

...the devoted Kot, which emphasize that Katherine acknowledged that Orage S. S. Koteliansky, a Jeremiah from the Katherine died courageously just as she had taught her to think and to write...

...Carswell delineates Murry's instinctive sense of perGuidebook to the American spirit sonal advantage, his pleasure in selfcondemnation, his capacity to attribute LITERARY PLACES: Literary Places is more than a travel exhalted motives to base actions, his A GUIDED PILGRIMAGE, NEW YORK AND book, for Deedy is not only a guide, but paralyzing incapacity to deal with NEW ENGLAND an accomplished writer with broad literKatherine's disease, and the emotional ary and scholarly interests...

...She has put herself up admired and distrusted each other, in Russian matters when events like the before herself-judged herself and cut fought bitterly, coming to blows and Diaghilev Ballet and the 1917 Revolu- out the bad...

...Harper & Row, 1977...

...His styleand intellectual entanglements of his John Deedy conversational, always personal but Andrews & McMeel, $12.95, 312 pp...

...Katherine died of ary London...

...his stables and ordered her to inhale the adored friend...

...Efficiency and sophistication did not diand remote, witout sufficient detail and The restraint and taste exercised in these minish feeling...

...She understands beyond miscarriages, collaborated as writers, Murry and the Woolfs...

...But another: Thomas Paine's articulation of Commonweal: 152...

...KOTELIANSKY Bloomsbury...

...A Cooper, Irving, Poe, Hawthorne, Mel- Characteristic preferences and prejudices warm and moving success story...

...and -Reidel, a homosexual most attractive feature of the novel...

...He built a platform for her in to the others as disciple, rival, wife and Necessity of Pacifism...

...We are also outsiders (foreigners, prisoners of war, travelers), both physically and psycho- Oddly enough, however, for all of the granted glimpses of the American logically removed from their particular stylistically sophisticated...

...The coldness of the girl to her strange surroundings...

...She is ion, the high-minded huffiness"-in the an intensely visual artist who expresses pathetically memorable figure of Burlap...

...his mistress, Kiithe As a whole, the short story collection, pieces is admirable, but at times we feel Lenk, a schoolteacher...

...If I could John Middleton Murry, the brilliant despite their intelligence, were capable write, I could show you simply and editor of Rhythm, the Athenaeum and the of astounding failures of judgment...

...We again find the efficient prose, Cherries of Freedom," the most ambitiHainstock, a Communist organizer and the cool, measured narrative voice, and a ous piece in the collection, is a rather agitator who shares- Kathe with strict guiding intelligence (which was the strange creation, an uneasy, yet interestDincklage...

...And after her death Kot, scattering the beads of their necklaces, tion aroused enthusiastic interest in liter- who remained essentially alone, despite and ended tragically...

...Both Ukraine, is best known as the translator was coming into her full powers as a Katherine and Beatrice looked alike, of Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Chekhov and writer...