90
PARTISAN REVIEW
protagonist and he is thrust abruptly into them; and he doesn't stay in
them very long before the book: ends! Thus there is little opportunity for
the development of character, and little chance to dig into the problems
familiar to revolutionary youth today. The book is done in the technique
of a Hollywood talkie or a drugstore novelette-although, of course, it is
decidedly different from such confections by virtue of its fresh writing
and realistic handling of material.
Even the events which make up the story of
You Can't Sleep
Here
do not seem to be typical of the experiences of the "depression" generation.
The book does not possess that quality which classical literary criticism
called the "universal" but which we more accurately term the "social."
The scenes of the novel and the attitude of the characters do not make
the reader say: "Here are experiences characteristic of a certain type of
white-collar worker in the depression," or "Here are the typical moods
and feelings of revolutionary youth today." It is impossible to consider
You Can't Sleep Here
in the same way one thinks of
To Make My
Bread
as a social document describing the evolution of the Southern peasant into
an industrial proletariat or to find in Newhouse's novel the mood and
material which enables a poem like Alfred Hayes'
In A Coffee Pot
to catch
the typical reactions of unemployed white collar workers in the great
economic crisis.
Certainly this is not due to the social reality of the events themselves:
the contents of
You Can't Sleep Here
center around like in a Hooverville,
and include a flophouse scene, a strike, a demonstration. Nor is it the
result of an unrealistic description of these scenes; as a whole, they develop
naturally in the plot of the novel.
Then what is it due to? I believe it must be attributed largely to
the intensely
personal
perception of the author. To be sure, it is this
individualized way of looking at things which is responsible for the fresh
writing and delightful gags and mannerisms to be found in the book. This
breezy sensibility of Newhouse is an adaptation of the hardboiled manner
of the speakeasy generation (with whom he tells us his hero "consorted"
but did not "completely understand" because their "limitations" were not
his and he did not have to "go through their extremes"), plus the sense
of social awareness which has come to members of all extant literary gen·
erations during the past three or four years. The result is something more
than a combination (conceive it if you can!) of Ernest Hemingway, Ring
Lardner, and John Spivak! But it is this peculiar outlook which makes
Newhouse
look for
light and striking things even in social scenes whose
description demands something like deep earnestness and a sense of the
tragic.
His mode of perception is, therefore, definitely limited when he ap·
proaches such material. It is, I think, far better adapted to satiric
exposes
of upper-class practises than to profound stories of workingclass struggles.
While
You Can't Sleep Here
is full of fresh, clean writing which could
never be dull and ordinary, it fails exactly where the plodding and un·
literary manner of
To Mtke
./lt!y
Bread
succeec!s.
ALAN CALMER
