FICTION & CRITICISM
Hayes, E. Nelson
Fiction & Criticism by E. Nelson Hayes THE protaganist of the proletarian novel of the Thirties, like the heroes of the classical and medieval epic and the romantic novel, lived in a world of...
...3.95), in which a Russian-born newspaperman is falsely accused of being a Communist...
...In a different way, the same can be said of Gabriel Fielding's In the Time of Greenbloom, in which a sensitive adolescent suffers a terrible tragedy, drifts away from people and from life, only to be drawn back into the current by a wonderful and noble eccentric...
...6.50) is a wisely pedestrian biography of an extraordinarily versatile writer, pamphleteer, and politician of Catholic spirit and catholic interests...
...A useful antidote is American Writing Today (New York University Press...
...He inhabits that "vast and silent landscape" of the mind into which he leads young John, and from which issue the works of the imagination...
...Winnett realistically sets the problem, but he dares no solution: his protagonist eventually "clears" himself by striking a Navy officer who is spreading the lie, and by threatening to sue the whole town—an odd combination of melodrama and appeal to abstract justice...
...Even issues which would seem to demand heroic decision are treated as too complex to admit of the simple solution which is characteristic of the Gordian-knot approach...
...There is always the danger, as West notes, that we may "enjoy pap, its softness, its blandness, and its digestibility...
...we easily lose sight of the important in the overwhelming flood of 10,000 new books a year...
...311 pp...
...Finally, mention should be made of two new and excellent biographies of major British writers...
...he is a stylist who fuses material and theme and language into a meaningful unity of deep sincerity...
...3.75), has given us a hero of this time and place in the figure of a cynical, embittered, yet life-loving editor of a Southern newspaper who has for years coasted on his reputation as a liberal, committed himself on no great issue, spoken neither for man nor for himself...
...The Supreme Court decision on segregation forces him to a deadline decision in which his sense of the immense importance of people is re-asserted...
...Swiggett thickens the syrup by coyly telling us that a good marriage—the durable fire— builds character and success, and this gives him a chance to sweeten the book with legitimate sex...
...How does one fight such a charge...
...246 pp...
...Either of these novels, with their outcast people, might be of any time, of every place...
...366 pp...
...The issue is plain...
...3.50) and In the Time of Greenbloom by Gabriel Fielding (Morrow...
...Much book reviewing and literary criticism in this country is rather tame, because many a reviewer finds it to his advantage to speak well or not at all, and many a critic has substituted scientific jargon for expression of opinion and taste...
...These unsigned essays and reviews, most of them sympathetic, cover virtually every phase of writing, publishing, book buying, and reading in the United States today, with backward glances at some of the more important writers and traditions of the past...
...In the introduction he justifies his "negative criticism" by rightly remarking that too much publishing today is big business, with little concern for abstract ideas or artistic excellence...
...Fiction & Criticism by E. Nelson Hayes THE protaganist of the proletarian novel of the Thirties, like the heroes of the classical and medieval epic and the romantic novel, lived in a world of uncomplicated ethical values and moral decisions...
...One is The Sea Dreamer by Gerard Jean-Aubry (Doubleday...
...Paul Darcy Boles, in Deadline (Macmillan...
...4.50...
...This novel, excellent in its many and varied characterizations, forceful in its violent plot, and evocative in its turbulent style, points to a number of problems relating to the status and stature of the hero in much contemporary fiction...
...In contrast to such fiction are novels like The Assistant by Bernard Mal-amud (Farrar, Straus and Cudahy...
...407 pp...
...Among them is Frank Swinnerton, whose companion volume to The Georgian Scene, the newly published Background with Chorus (Farrar, Straus and Cudahy...
...433 pp...
...A close personal friend to whom Conrad willed his personal papers, M. Jean-Aubry has presented his subject in such a light and manner as to explain the physical and psychic origins of his subjective art of tenderness and irony, of raw nature and subtle social relationship...
...In the atmosphere of suspicion and conformity in which, according to Winnett, we are all "wired" to each other, heroes cannot exist...
...3.95) creates in Louis Adar an American primitive not unlike Eugene Gant of Look Homeward, Angel...
...This is especially so when one reads too many contemporary books...
...Peter W. Denzer, writing of that era and partially in that tradition, in The Last Hero (Holt...
...A physical and emotional giant, Louis searches for a creed in which to believe, a program to put into action...
...It tells a story of subtle ironies and many levels, as a young Gentile who has robbed a Jewish grocer in a slum district becomes his assistant and brings a brief prosperity...
...The excuse for lack of forthright-ness and courageous action is that decisions are no longer simple, therefore equivocation and compromise are virtues...
...Greenbloom is the very essence of non-conformity...
...319 pp...
...West's range of interests and knowledge is remarkable, from Charles Evans Hughes to Greek myths, from Machado de Assis to Dickens, and he writes with enviable ease and sureness...
...Such an issue is central to Hurricane Season by Ralph Winnett (Reynal...
...it is survival of all mankind, black, white, and every color...
...Sharp wit, sure judgment, and complete honesty are also found in Anthony West, a young British novelist who reviews now for The New Yorker...
...3.75) is an entertaining and instructive blend of personal reminiscence, thoughtful criticism, and barbed comments on some of the literary giants and midgets of England between 1900 and 1917...
...552 pp...
...Some of his finest pieces have been collected as Principles and Persuasions (Harcourt, Brace...
...This, at least, seems to be the theme of The Durable Fire (Houghton, Mifflin...
...4.75...
...Swinnerton is at his best when he speaks his worst, and through it all we come to glimpse more of the transitional spirit and experimental mood of the period than in many more formal histories...
...Not finding it among his family, with their faith in science, education, and money, he lives for a time among the laborers of his cousin's factory...
...4.50), edited by Charles Angoff from a special issue of the London Times Literary Supplement...
...Thus is the reporter gratefully readmitted to polite society by those who formerly and joyfully slandered him...
...245 pp...
...4.50...
...He is called upon to make a decision—that of denouncing a thoroughly unethical business proposition—and he holds his position by not doing so...
...236 pp...
...Equivocation and compromise have taken its place...
...He is a kind of St...
...While undoubtedly the same is true in Great Britain, a vigorous, often virulent tradition from the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries is continued today by many English: writers...
...Boles has written an important, perhaps a major work of fiction, not only because he will not defend compromise, but also because his convictions and loves give flame to his words...
...their tight provincialism and parochialism, and their unwillingness to risk forming a union, drive him to an extreme of individualism and freedom, and an unknown and undetermined future...
...Malamud writes convincingly and compassionately of his people...
...Francis who becomes a Jew—an un-heroic hero...
...he is caught stealing and thrown out, only to return after the final illness of the owner to keep the store alive and with it something of the Jewish spirit...
...321 pp...
...The first is a tender novel about little people, their hopes and dreams and loves, their disappointments and failures and sorrows...
...254 pp...
...4), in which author Howard Swiggett reports the success of a good man, Stephen Lowry, in big business...
...There is a failure of the moral nerve...
...Low-ry learns that Continental Industries Corporation has a brain, a heart, and a soul, and that so long as one accepts its fundamental goodness, his security is assured...
...Heroism has become suspect...
...Often self-exiled from the bourgeoisie, he was identified completely with his adopted class and against its "enemies," and his actions were unequivocal, even heroic...
...His book is a great joy as it speaks of and for the fundamental human condition, without the slick hypocrisies which would teach us to be less than human and little more than well-adjusted machines...
...The Life of Hilaire Belloc by Robert Speaight (Farrar, Straus and Cudahy...
Vol. 21 • July 1957 • No. 7
