This Majestic and Terrible Failure..."

...The style is colloquial, even paced, never flashy...

...it is inwardly appropriated and cannot be confused with cultivated exhibitionism...

...Trained as we are in the school of ideologicaJ,Ariting which makes free use of sociology, philosophy, Psychiatry, it is hard to believe...

...The exception noted above, "A Day's Work," is a magnificent example of virtuosity...

...the effect is a total one, the reason for its being something of an enigma...

...r "rIff her "Note- on Writing," printed in the New Directions for 1940, Kutherine Anne Porter entered the following: "R's talk for some reason reminded me of Gorky's estimate of Tolstoy—as a man who loved God and peasants, hated women and literature----He could love God, his invincible LeansWerable ally...

...But this disparagement of n "point a* view" in no way prevents her from writing brilliantly about people in politics...

...This being so, the emphasis in her writings upon memory and feeling is significant...

...In the stories of Miss Porter such apocalyptic judgments are absent, being properly reserved for special agony of creative giants, and for pity (possibly the most brutal emotion ef the past two decades) she has substituted that charity born of understanding, and especially of the understanding of set's self and its violent presumption in daring to be charitable...

...the second looked upward to assimilate art with apocalyptic judgment and final communion...

...In her Notes we read that writing "Is a way of life and a mode of being which cannot be divided from the kind of human creature you were the day yon were born...

...Wryly enough, it is the most ambitious effort, "The leaning Tower," which, despite fine sections, is most disappointing...

...What the European scene witnessed was the deprivation of character, the engulfing of personality by the social background, the dissolution of the private and reflective, the abolition of even those tensions which might make up a tragedy...

...Miss Porter has only contempt for "Political" writers snd disparages the celebration of the topical: "There are «ertain aspects of current life and certain kinds of people not worth writing about, but their stories are most often » be found in the newspapers...

...Bell, but he will continue writing for The New Leader, and w-j wish him good luck in his now field...

...In Miss Porter's fumblings one senses a jarring note of tourist-smugness, ample proof that she is not at all at home...

...We are deeply sorry to lose Mr...

...In that activity, too, there emerges that "revelation of implicit character" which is the serious writer's prime concern...

...It is a tale of pre-Nazi Germany, attempting to capture the mood which (rave birth to a grotesque honor, and she fails because the subject-matter is recalcitrant to her special style...

...XhERE are eight short stories in this new collection along with the novelette that supplies the title of the volume...

...Only w hen Sll this is understood can we appreciate the fall enormity of her statement that sll her/stories are "known by heart...

...The theme of irremediable defeat is transferred to an urban setting, the protagonists being an elderly Irish couple ground down by poverty, hate, gned, bafflement...

...U, ironically, just this ability to "look level" which has in the put hindered Mia* Porter from achieving the widespread recognition she to obviously oawrve...

...But women and literature have destinies of their own »nd proved to be unconquerable antagonists...

...Feeling is those attributes of sensitivity, and awareness—unique in each individual—which help define the world he chooses to live in...

...and peasants, his humble inferiors waiting for him to teach them the truth...

...The many stories- of childhood and • adolescence, innocently nostalgic to the superficial reader, are terrifying descriptions of the "decayi of behavior" among i80*!growing up in this century^whicb « juxtaposed ironically (for this is its •ourct) to the generation of grand-^therr^BnTts~"assured habit of mind about all the important appearances of life...

...The first looked down at its subject matter, alternately, with a comprehen-nvt satisfying pity or a despair born of revulsion...

...He has^ contributed frequently on various^ subjects, ranging from labor politics to international cartels...

...But if this habitual organization of response M discarded we can see how right she is...

...In the early 'SO's-the days of taking sides, . shallow devotion—she gave us "Flowering Judas," a brilliant analysis of the devastation of personality in the political matrix when confronted with the uncontrollable rower agencies that are inevitably germinated...

...God and peasants: Tolstoy could look up, look down, but he could not look level...

...With one exception they are excursions into the world of her childhood, the world of finding things out, the world of Southern gentility in dissolution, bewildered yet grimly stubborn...

...Memory is the search for that "undistracted center of being," the radical disclosure of identity through an effort (primarily moral) at historical analysis, from which—and only from which—authentic repesentation can issue...

...The critic is forced to fall back upon such indefinables as controlling intelligence, sensitivity, the patient care with which the theme is developed, etc...

...Yet, Miss Porter would have us believe that her writing has been an attempt to "understand the logic of this majestic and terrible failure of the lije of man in the Westen world...

...Ever since her Irst story was pub M the early 'M'a, there have ,,,r tee maia current* that between ukb have fairly preoccupied the in tjpieat Jiterery talent...

...the stream of "teeial *c©nseieusneas" a la Steinbeck gad "social realism" as in FarreH, nd the stream ef the myth-making eseeaseiees with Us imitations of gsfka end Its surrealist proclivities...

...Miss Porter's aesthetic purpose, if I . understand it correctly, is to redeem literature as a private, reflective activity . which, through the grace of technical exposition, becomes socially shared...

...As in most of Miss Porter's writings the reasons for excellence are largely incommunicable...

...Irving Kriilol is a young writer living in Chicago where he edit* Enquiry, a jonmafaf radical thought.]_ r—r— DANIEL BELL TO LEAVE —=» The New Leader announces, with profound regret, that Daniel Bell has resigned from our editorial staff to take an editorial position with another publication...

...Bell served from December, 1941, to date as our managing editor...

...It is far superior to any analogous story by James T. Fariell, lacking his obsessive compulsion that results in a frantic cruelty, and is all the more effective for its measured tone...

...or she comprehends in a way most suitable for literature, intimately, personally, imaginatively distilling it out of Hperience...

...The best of these, to my mind, is "The Downward Path to Wisdom," a pungent delineation of a child's introduction to the disharmony and„ frustration that features the universe of personal association...

...Those who are looking for general principles of aesthetic structure will certainly be disappointed...

...One thing is sure: behind that seemingly effortless flow of words is sn almost unbelievabley scrupulous attention to the medium of communication...

...She would have artistic expression rooted in personality, from which it has been divided (originally for the convenience ef the critic, but afterwards for the moral Sue of the artist) since the turn of the ntury...

...The newspaper life became the real life, extensive, objective, omnivorously political...