Books
ALLEN TATE AS NOVELIST
THE FATHERS. By Allen Tate. G. P. Putnam's Sons.
$2.50.
I have seen Mr. Tate's novel described by one reviewer as a story
told with great distinction but small success, and
this,
it seems to me,
is a judgment that rests on a very limited notion of what the novel
may and can do.
The Fathers
does not have many of the familiar
satisfactions of good novels, but it has its own satisfactions. It has no
intimacy; it is not warm or embracing or captivating. Much of its
interest is formally aesthetic. In the old as well as in the current sense
of the word, it is a
fine
book-precise, a little rarefied. A traditionalist
in
his
literary as well as in
his
s?Cial preference, Mr. Tate has had in
mind the wild abnormalities of lthe Greek dramatic fables set within
the limitations of strictest form but, unlike many traditionalists, he
has not forgotten the wildness for the strictness. It should be observed
that when, as a critic, Mr. Tate speaks of form he does not so much
mean the classic linear bounding of events as a consistency and signifi–
cance of tone. And tone is what he chiefly relies on for the form of
his
novel. The fable of
The Fathers
is one of violence, its form is one
of delicacy, indirection, understatement; and
it
is in the intended
paradox of form and content that the point of the book is to be found.
And the intellectual point as well as the aesthetic point: for
quite apart from the formal tension which the paradox creates, it
also creates the modulations of Mr. Tate's judgment on the old South.
The violent fable carries the blame which is contained in his judg–
ment; the form carries his extenuation.
The fable itself--so far as I can make it out: it is not always
perspicuous-is a tragedy seen in two ways. From one point of view,
it is the tragedy of people who have the possibility but not the inten–
tion of virtue. "Now that men cannot be alone," says Mr. Tatej;
narrator, "they cannot bear the dark and they see themselves as
ately good but betrayed by circumstances that render them
pathetic. Perhaps some of the people in this story are to be pitied, but
cannot pity them; none of them was innately good. They were all,
think,
capable of great good but that is not the same thing as
being
ood."
But from another point of view, they are people in some part
trayed by circumstances, at the mercy of a culture that is breaking
p. "Why cannot life change without tangling the lives of innocent
ns?" asks the narrator. "Why do innocent persons cease their
ocence and become violent in themselves that such great changes
ay take place?"
But whether seen as individuals of free moral will or as victims
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