RECENT FICTION
Rodell, Katherine
Recent Fiction THE TROUBLED AIR. by Irwin Shaw. Random House. 418 pp. $3.75. THE MORNING WATCH, by James Agee. Houghton Mifflin Co. Co. 120 pp. $2.25. THE SEASON OF THE STRANGER, by Stephen...
...It • might make a series of sketches, or perhaps one-act plays, but it does not make a novel—which is a pity, because it is an important subject, and Shaw has a real gift for creating scene and mood...
...The ¦L Troubled Air, is a troubled and troublesome book...
...It is extremely well-written, extremely interesting in subject matter (it deals with an American teacher in a Chinese university, in love with a Chinese girl...
...time: just before the last war), and somehow extremely unreal...
...Becker...
...THE SEASON OF THE STRANGER, by Stephen Becker...
...The Season of the Stranger, by Stephen Becker, has been hailed by Harper's as one of their "finds", which means that they consider it something very special indeed...
...Shaw's protagonist is a decent, good-hearted, supposedly intelligent man who is actually more naive, more gullible, and more confused than even his worst enemies would stipulate...
...This apparent paradox comes about, I think, because Shaw is such an intensely honest man himself that he lets us into his own questionings and fumblings and wonderings...
...There are scenes and incidents of sharply defined clarity, but the whole thing is essentially un-thought-out...
...I think it would have been kinder to forget it...
...in fact, the whole book reads in a sense like notes for a novel...
...This is all very well, but it is extremely confusing in a novel...
...The question of the young American's reaction to the older culture of Europe scarcely seems pressing at the moment, and the love story, which is here of predominate importance, is marked by that curious innocence which makes Lewis' exploration of amatory affairs so inconclusive and unconvincing...
...James Agee's The Morning Watch is all scene and mood—a marvelous recreation of the reaction of a young boy to an intensely religious experience, and of youth's absolute inability to sustain the conventional mood of exaltation for more than a brief period...
...It is superbly written, and, although short and unpretentious, is full of overtones and aftertones...
...WORLD SO WIDE, by Sinclair Lewis...
...There is a quality to the writing and to the presentation that I can only call feminine (with all apologies to Mr...
...Unfortunately, he seems not to have come to any conclusion as to what position to take, or, more important, what criteria to apply, so that his liberal becomes almost a caricature of the fuddy-duddy types excoriated by more black-and-white minded writers...
...Reviewed by Katherine Rodell TRWIN SHAW'S new novel...
...It is the extension and the refinement of the Katharine Mansfield technique so that nothing real seems important...
...I think there is no doubt that Becker has a real literary gift...
...Random House, 250 pp...
...278 pp...
...I shouldn't wish to say that this book realizes it...
...Harper & Brothers...
...unfortunately it is applied to a set of circumstances where the actual events are far more important than the reactions of the characters...
...As for Sinclair Lewis' last and posthumous book, I think the best that can be said of World So Wide is that it is better than Kingsblood Royal, and perhaps some others of his later works...
...Let us remember Lewis for Main Street and Babbitt and Ar-rowsmith—and even Elmer Gantry, if you must—and forget these later, tired-er works...
...Shaw has tackled the problem of the position of the liberal in the current anti-Communist crusade—a theme which needs and deserves exploring...
...It does nothing to enhance his reputation, however, and isn't even interesting summer reading...
Vol. 15 • August 1951 • No. 8
