The 'Unmeaning' of Life
ANCOFF, CHARLES
The 'Unmeaning' of Life The Treasures of Darkness. By Cornelia Jessey. Noonday. 310 pp. $3.50. Reviewed by Charles Angoff Author of "In the Morning Light," "Journey to the Dawn," and other...
...Indeed, there are some passages dealing with the fierce hatred between mother and daughter that make one think of some of the Russian masters of the macabre...
...Not many other books have so well, and in so brief a space, recorded the color and sadness and loneliness of the between-the-wars era...
...It's just as if you wanted to play God...
...Her strength lies rather in the delineation of character—her Helena, one suspects, will not soon be forgotten?and in the grasp of situation...
...one of the other characters in this novel says of her: "Trouble with you is you pity everything too much...
...The tense domestic tangle culminates in the murder of Clementina, the full implications of which are handled with amazing skill by Mrs...
...It is, in some ways, a truly remarkable study of a woman—and in American literature, which is so deficient in memorable female characters, this is a considerable achievement...
...The Treasures of Darkness is a fairly short novel...
...She had a heart as big as Times Square...
...Reviewed by Charles Angoff Author of "In the Morning Light," "Journey to the Dawn," and other books Altogether too many of the "little magazines" have become alien to the life of the world and retreated into a literary monasticism that has little to contribute to the enlightenment of our time...
...You can over do pity just like anything else...
...And not many books have yielded such truly fascinating female characters as Clementina and Helena, who rub shoulders with Sister Carrie and Jennie Gerhardt and Maggie, a Girl of the Streets...
...In places it is too abrupt, some of the minor characters are poorly realized, and toward the end Mrs...
...Not that The Treasures of Darkness belongs with the latter's works...
...The so-called Philistines of the marketplace—of the more popular periodicals and even newspapers—are far more truly alive than the editors and writers of many of the "advanced" magazines...
...Helena Honey was a child of that most lost of all lost periods in our history: the period between the two World Wars...
...On top of that, Helena had a poignant family problem...
...The Treasures of Darkness is such a book...
...Altogether, a novel that can be read by mature people—and that is something to be thankful for these days...
...Jessey gets so involved in large metaphysical and ethical problems that she is difficult to follow...
...And frequently these small publishers come up with a work that is striking in its freshness and vigor, and far more worthy than a score of heavily advertised books offered by more established firms...
...Finding so much "unmeaning" in the life about her, she sought for "meaning" in carefree embraces in bed with one man after another, in radical movements that promised one or another form of emancipation?and in the end, of course, she found herself in a cold, lonely vacuum, with faith in almost nothing and utterly bewildered...
...And yet, there is an astonishing amount of life and revelation and sheer excitement in it...
...Fortunately, many of the small book publishers are still performing their ancient and honorable function: publishing fiction that the bigger houses think is not commercial...
...Clementina was jealous of Helena for occupying so central a position in the affections of the other children, and she was jealous of her for having won the affections of her husband, Jud...
...Her mother was a lusty, anarchistic woman in whom "jealousy was a genius...
Vol. 37 • May 1954 • No. 22
