Memories of a Literary Life

...But he found a true teacher in the now largeh forgotten A M D Hughes, a man so dedicated to the art that he had little leisure for scholarly pursuits At 24 Allen was able to make do with 15 dollars a week (it was 1935) If his success as a precocious writer didn't exactly turn his head (he was keeping alive so that he could write his own fiction), it did bnng him in touch with other writers around Birmingham Auden, Louis MacNeice, Henry Green, John Hamp-son, Reggie Smith, Olivia Manning A true critic, he never despised those with or without reputations Instead, with discriminating appreciation he examined (and in these memoirs vivifies) such unfashionables as Wyndham Lewis as well as accepted "greats" like Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, E M For-ster, Auden, and V S Pntchett (all of them still somewhat in fashion, I hope)?plus John Hampson, John Mair, John Raymond, L H Myers (whom I must read), Edwin Muir, Conrad Aiken, and so many others regrettably almost forgotten In fact, Allen's index contains many of the most highly regarded (or unjustly neglected) writers of our time He does not brag about his wide-ranging literary friendships, however On the contrary, he is too modest Auden, for example, whom he saw often (and hilariously recollects spending Thomas Mann's money at a wedding party and eating a sawdust-covered piece of ham), he labels an acquaintance In addition, he is tenderly critical of his close colleagues MacNeice and L P Hartley (whom he recalls "darting forward to greet me with hand outstretched and head slightly to one side," and whose too-little read books he scrutinized) About his good fnend Graham Greene there's much that is revealing (though I like most his quoting Malcolm Mugger-idge's statement "Where Graham is, sin stops") Similarly telling is his comparison of Greene, Green and Auden, who shared a bleakness that avoided descending into blackness, a trait perhaps best captured in his characterization of Green (whom he also knew well) as "always very funny and always both gay and sad " Allen is equally engrossing on Dylan Thomas, who with Auden made him realize his limitations as a poet, and on Roy Campbell and Wyndham Lewis?mirror images of himself whom he admired and disagreed with But some of his brightest pages are devoted to less recent men, to D H Lawrence, the "greatest" writer of our century, and to H G Wells and Arnold Bennett, two underrated figures He doesn't confine himself to British literature His informed remarks on Lionel Trilling, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Lewis Mumford, and Mary McCarthy reflect his familiarity with both sides of the Atlantic His walk down New Grub Street took him to Coe College, Vassar, the Universities of Washington and Kansas, and elsewhere before depositing him in an English chair at the University of Northern Ireland He is excellent on Iowa "culture" and the other American places he has taught...

...Peggy was wearing the clothes in which I'd first met her, which I suppose must be called the walking-out uniform of the Red Cross, with a flash saying Physiotherapy on her shoulder London was full of men and women in uniforms bearing strange flashes In a pub in Rosslyn Hill a man pointed at Peggy's and said 'What's thaf Where is if' I explained that Physiotherapia was the 44th or possibly the 45th member of the newly formed United Nations, was to the east of Yugoslavia and contiguous with it, a tiny, rarely visited and fertile country on the flanks of the Massage Mountains This statement was received with complete trust " There is so much else here that one longs for more space I hate to think that there are millions of people who will not read Walter Allen's delightful book of memories...

...And he is no less entertaining on Harvard snobbery than on provincial universities in England, on being reluctantly heroic during air raids, or on how blissful life was in 1935 despite the poverty Allen's apercus on literature, jobs and friends are always memorable Thus, the hero of Henry Roth's Call It Sleep, a book he helped get established in England, is "in a state of aspiration approaching ecstasy " Reading for MGM at three dollars a report to survive to him seemed "a very humble position in the civil service of the Kingdom of Heaven " Of an obscure English clergyman he said in tribute "A good man who was at ease with his goodness and made you at ease with it too " Allen writes well of rich and poor, radicals and conservatives One can fault him only for being too reticent about himself and a few of the others he discusses Yet he is capable of considerable personal wit I especially liked this passage about his wife, Peggy, whom he married during his stint as an air raid warden during World War II...

...and the proposal appealed to me, so that the next lour or five years I was so busy reading novels of the past two centuries for my book and new ones for the New Statesman that I had no time to write one of my own " The research resulted in The English Novel, Tradition and Dream (about the modern novel since Joyce) and The Short Story in English—the best postwar histories of our language's fiction All are required or recommended texts in the American and British schools where, ironically, Allen was not invited to teach until he had published them These pathbreaking books are so good that one hesitates to lament what fate drove Allen to Yet I, for one, regret that his journalistic labors have left him time to write only six novels The fine Innocence Is Drowned and his favorite, Dead Men Over All, amply demonstrate that he is much better than most contemporary novelists (My own preference is Three Score and Ten, known in England as All in a Lifetime) Fortunately, Allen is now writing another novel He is a good poet, too, though with characteristic modesty and judiciousness he deems the poems he wrote after reading W H Auden "pale carbon copies' of the 20th-century poet he admires most As I Walked Down New Grub Street is in many respects as valuable as Allen's critical works No other autobiography I am familiar with so vividly traces the downs and ups of literary journalism, a career that requires persistence, perception and monk-like devotion although it pays even less than college teaching Young Walter got an early start in his metier at an "advanced" Birmingham grammar school, w here he learned Latin and haunted libraries, reading widely in everything Before long he was writing articles tor popular weeklies like John O'London s at about eight dollars a throw Alter Oxford haughtily rejected him, he went to theUniversitv ot Birmingham and wondered why famous scholars like Ernest de Selincourt read yellow ed pages about long-dead writers while harrumphingly ignoring Auden...

...Memories of a Literary Life As I Walked Down New Grub Street By Walter Allen Chicago 277 pp $15.00 Reviewed by Harvey Curtis Webster Author, "After the Trauma" AFTER WALTER ALLEN had walked somewhat more than halfway down New Grub Street, John Baker of Phoenix, then a new publishing house, suggested that he write a one-volume study of the English novel "Universities were full of people who knew more about Scott and Dickens than I did,' Allen recalls thinking, prompting him to ask why Baker didn't seek out an academic for the task " 'And tell me,' retorted Baker, who among the academic is to chance his arm by going out on a limb with a book like this'' 1 couldn't name one...

...T S Eliot and James Joyce...