OUTSTANDING NOVELS
Rodell, Katherine
Outstanding Novels THE CATCHER IN THE RYE, by J. D. Salinger. 277 pp. $3. THE STRANGE CHILDREN. by Caroline Gordon. Scribner. 303 pp. $3.50. MISTER JOHNSON, by Joyce Cary. Harper. 261 pp....
...MELVILLE GOODWIN, U. S. A., by J. P. Marquand...
...In any case the book does not make that rather vital point clear, and so it is neither satisfying nor believable...
...Viking...
...Perhaps the greatest disappointment to me of all these books was J. P. Marquand's latest...
...I think perhaps it is because Marquand never quite decided himself whether his general was a fool or a hero, a precocious child playing with dangerous toys or a real human being...
...It is not the obvious story that the title and the first chapter might lead you to expect, for Mrs...
...I kept feeling that there must be some point to it all that I just didn't get...
...That refreshing sense of the abundance and joy of life is the most pleasant and individual characteristic of Joyce Cary, and this, I think, is Cary at very nearly his best...
...Knopf...
...It is written as though by an adolescent boy, and the author's understanding is so great, and his ear for schoolboy language is so acute that the sense of identification with the principal character is almost miraculously achieved...
...That doesn't seem to be what Mann had in mind...
...It is an utterly charming story of an African clerk, and although it ends in an almost inevitable tragedy, it is so gay and warm that it is a delight to read...
...Reviewed by Katherine Rodell IT SEEMS to me that publishers make a mistake in bringing out so many of their "important" books at the same time in the fall...
...scope than the Salinger book, and while perhaps it does not have the brilliance and the immediate impact, it is beautiful and evocative...
...Greene seems to be saying that since love and hate are reverse sides of the coin (new thought for the week), hating God and practically everybody else is probably a good sign...
...Hobson is too clever for that...
...I gather that the woman renounced carnal love as the result of a hasty bargain made with God, and becomes in effect a saint—but certainly she never gets a moment of happiness out of her conversion, and her effect on her husband and her erstwhile lover is hardly conducive to a belief in infinite goodness...
...when Anatole France did this sort of thing it was gay and definite anti-clericalism...
...But this novel, Melville Goodwin, U. S. A., about a regular army general, just doesn't come off...
...It is considerably more ambitious in...
...It is a slight story, but so well done as to constitute a minor masterpiece...
...However, I do want to say more than "Read this" about The Catcher in the Rye...
...This is a remarkably unconvincing argument, and it certainly makes a gloomy and unhappy book...
...This is an extraordinary book, sensitive and perceptive...
...The Celebrity is the sort of competent, craftsmanlike, slick job that we have come to expect of Laura Hobson...
...The Strange Children is another book written from the point of view of a child—this time a precocious nine year old girl—but not in the child's vocabulary...
...The reader is forced to choose among a number of authors and titles when, if they were presented a few at a time, he might well want to read them all...
...Simon and Schuster...
...THE HOLY SINNER, by Thomas Mann...
...Johnson would be a clear third...
...596 pp...
...But although it is well done throughout, it is all on the surface—like a glossy print of a not-very-important scene —undoubtedly true, but lacking impact...
...It is extremely successful in catching the feeling of confusion and sometimes of terror of a child trying to interpret an adult world, along with the occasional, almost uncanny clarity and precision of a child's observation...
...While it is much easier to read than much that Mann has written, I found the humor labored, the satire dull and heavy...
...308 pp...
...3.75...
...Thomas Mann's exercise in retelling a medieval fable, The Holy Sinner, left me completely confused...
...336 pp...
...If I were to rate the above list of books in the order of my own preference, Mr...
...THE CELEBRITY, by Laura Z. Hobson...
...Little, Brown...
...THE END OF THE AFFAIR, by Graham Greene...
...And it is hard for the reviewer who wants to keep up with the tide to do more than to say, "This is good," "Read this," "Don't bother with this now...
...While no all-out admirer of Marquand's, I have always felt that as an observer and reporter of a certain segment of society he has few peers...
...240 pp...
...It is enormously interesting and literate and well worth reading...
...I have rarely met three such cheerless characters as the three principals in Graham Greene's The End of the Affair...
...but whatever he did want to convey eluded me, and I didn't feel the book was worth writing—or reading—just to re-phrase an old story...
Vol. 15 • December 1951 • No. 12
