Warren as Critic
WEALES, GERALD
Warren Seleoted Essays. By Robert Penn Warren. Random House. 306 pp. $4.00. IN THE PREFACE to Selected Essays, Robert Penn Warren says that the collected pieces "represent certain continuing...
...Warren Seleoted Essays...
...No o,ne, I suppose, has any illusions about the objectivity of criticism these days...
...In some hands, criticism takes on a literary value that both embodies and transcends the critic's ideas, but for a direct contact with Warren as creator (not as teacher), the reader had better go to the novels and poems...
...The entire last section of the analysis of the Coleridge poem is a discussion of the two processes of creation and appreciation, which justifies what he has to say about the poem, which justifies even his differences with other critics, without ever demanding complete allegiance for himself and his interpretation...
...In trying to save Eudora Welty from Diana Trilling's charge of obscurity, he says that "we do not get any considerable emotional impact unless we sense, at the same time, some principle of organization, some view, some meaning...
...it sometimes fills the reader with impatience rather than certainty...
...contributor, "Reporter"Commentary ness of modernism (hence Warren's emphasis on "The Bear"), and Katherine Anne Porter as a woman whose use of irony is a refusal to accepted handed-down formulae about life...
...In the opening section of the essay on Frost, Warren takes the reader by the hand and leads him haltingly through "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," a jourpey that is neither as dangerous nor as uncharted as Warren's careful steps imply...
...For me, it is a limitation...
...Y. Herald Tribune Now at your bookstore $3.75 PANTHEON BOOKS 333 Sixth Avenue, New York 14, N. Y. Illlllllllllllllllllffl December 1, 1958 is that the critic (and he asks it of himself) be aware of his own methods and be systematic and responsible in their use...
...To some people it may be a virtue that this criticism is interesting for its subject matter more than for its author...
...Bristles with spice and humor.' —N...
...Warren has apparently learned in the classroom—as who has not— that even the most obvious points are uncertain and that the true starting-point for a dash into a poem or novel is several yards before the official start...
...Morris has made a serious survey, greatly enhanced by a wry sense of humor...
...Full of wit, wisdom and good writing...
...the brief longing for a scientific critical method has died down...
...No critical method, he says over and over, explicitly and implicitly, has a pipeline to final interpretive truth...
...It dates from 1935, from the publication of Of Time and the River, whereas the rest of the volume is a product of the Forties, of Warren's years at the University of Minnesota...
...This results not from an attempt to make the authors fit a pattern, but from the kind of attention that Warren's own personality and interests inevitably bring to the works he discusses...
...Warren, as reader, is happily willing to experience the emotional impact and he is aware of the effect of style as such, but as a critic he is primarily concerned with the underlying "principle of organization...
...All that he asks lllilllllllllllllllllllllll By the author of ISLAM INFLAMED James Morris SOUTH AFRICAN WINTER "Brings a refreshing perspective to the clicheridden subject of apartheid...
...Except for the opening selection...
...It is as careful as the others in marshaling the evidence for its assertions, but it generates a kind of excitement that the other essays do not...
...More than that, no critic, since "critics are rarely faithful to their labels," is able to work solely within a particular method...
...That there should be family resemblances between the essays is hardly surprising...
...The volume is spotted with such remarks as this one in the Conrad essay: "In these matters there is not, and should not be, an ultimate 'reading.' a final word and orthodoxy of interpretation...
...In the preface, he comments on the differences amo,ng critics, even those who are forced to wear a common label (the New Critics), and shouts "Vive la diff?rence...
...Balanced against Warren's excessive demonstration is his primary virtue, his ability with and insistence on a discussion of ideas and literary forms with a minimum of critical jargon, a style that dips occasionally almost to folksiness but generally moves comfortably on a level of ordinary, but precisely used, speech...
...often, particularly in the Porter essay, the reader is forced to hang onto a point long after it has been made...
...elsewhere, Warren repeats himself to make certain that an idea has stuck...
...This may be good pedagogy, but unfortunately it is not always a virtue in an essay...
...It becomes apparent, as one reads the Selected Essays, that Warren is attracted to a certain kind of attitude, that there is a resemblance among the authors he discusses...
...One does not come away, however, with a feeling that the volume should be read for Warren's sake...
...Selected Essays can be comfortably recommended to anyone who is looking for insights into any of the authors under discussion, but it is not an unmixed pleasure in itself...
...Whether he is attempting an analysis of a single work, as in the detailed consideration of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, or a general summation of an author's work, as in the contributions on Faulkner and Hemingway, Warren begins his work by searching out what he calls, in the notes to the Coleridge analysis, the "basic line" (the philosophy, the attitude, the stance) that he sees running through an author's entire work...
...One comes away from the Warren volume with the sense of a man who is genuinely concerned with literature and ideas and of a critic who believes that that concern is communicable beyond the area of specialization...
...As a result, he offers Hemingway as a man in search of certitude in a godless world, Faulkner as a man who celebrates the common bond of humanity against the dehumanizing destructive as Critic Reviewed by Gerald Weales Department of English, U. of Penn...
...Pure and Impure Poetry" (one of the best in the volume), the essays deal with the work of a particular author...
...Warren is aware of this...
...Intelligently organized, eloquently written...
...I found that I was indifferent to some of the essays, those dealing with authors whom I knew only slightly, and Warren was not sufficiently intriguing to send me back to the authors themselves...
...Warren is generally careful, quiet, patient, building his points quotation by quotation, interpretation by interpretation...
...Not only are they the product of one man's mind, but, with a few exceptions, that mind treats the same kind of subject with the same approach and in the same tone of voice in essay after essay...
...Y. Times Book Review "A sparkling report on a dreary situation...
...Sometimes the process is too slow, too patient...
...The Wolfe review, which is a pleasure to read, particularly if one shares Warren's conclusions, is as out of place in tone as it is in time...
...IN THE PREFACE to Selected Essays, Robert Penn Warren says that the collected pieces "represent certain continuing interests and developing notions," that they "are cut from the same bolt of goods...
...The only essay in the collection which seems not to belong with the other is the harsh and justifiable comment on Thomas Wolfe...
Vol. 41 • December 1956 • No. 45
