62
PARTISAN REVIEW
feel as if I were picking apples off the ground in an enonnous orchard.
If
I pick a bad one, I throw it down quickly, because there are plenty of
good ones lying around in the grass.
From the orchard we go to the sunny meadow and hear about Ger–
trude Stein's play,
Daniel Webster.
This is a very busy play, full of acts
and scenes and famous early Americans sitting down and standing up
and talking prosaically to each other, but all the time slyly aware that
they are famous early Americans. The directions for stage business and
scenery stir up a grave, theatrical excitement. I understand that Miss
Stein is now dismissed as old hat by critics who applauded her ten years
ago. They say she is not alive to important Causes. Such nonsense only
exposes the narrowness of her critics, and marks them as unworthy of
the causes they champion.
In his next edition of
New Directions,
Mr. Laughlin had better get
rid of that gruesome jacket design, and number the pages for the con–
venience of readers. What I do like is his impassioned attitude. He must
be reprimanded sternly, however, when to prove the antiquity of experi–
mental writing he mentions an upstart, Father Ennius, of the Second
Century B.C. I submit an eminent Egyptian, Khakheperrensend,
2,000
B.C.
"Would I had phrases that are not known, utterances that are
strange, in new language that hath not been used, free from repetition;
not an utterance which hath grown stale, which men of old have spoken:"
TOM PRIDEAUX
THE THREE MISTERS HARRISON
MEET ME ON THE BARRICADES.
By
Charles Yale Harrison. Charles
Scribner's Sons. $2.00.
In
Meet Me On the Barricades
the first thing we are asked to
believe is that the book is a novel. It is not. The second is that P. Herbert
Simpson and two or three others who fly through Mr. Harrison's pages
like fabulous witches (brooms and all) are real. Which they are not.
The third is that witches know anything about Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin,
Browder, Mike Gold, "proletarian literature," F. D. R., revolutions and
Hoover. The fourth is that unbelief rages in· the world. Which is true.
The fifth is that the author is very confused. Which is also quite true.
And so on.
If
we agree with the author that his book is a novel and his
witches are characters (or his characters witches) then we cannot credibly
consume the myriad pages of sharp, highly advanced political (radical)
discussion with which the book is supersaturated. On the other hand, if
we find these politics real and absorbing I am afraid we shall be urrable
to accept the witches. We shall just have to imagine that
Mr.
Harrison
himself is talking all the time and that the witch-and-dream magic setup
is merely relief from the tediousness characteristic of some
politi~al
talks.
This is a hard thing to say since the reviewer agrees with much
