Books
THE AMERICAN SCENE
CITIZENS. By Meyer Levin. Viking Press. $2.75.
NATIVE SON. By Richard Wright. Harper. $2.50.
TROUBLE IN JULY. By Erskine Caldwell. Duell, Sloan and Pearce. $2.00.
RIVER OF EARTH. By James Still. Viking Press. $2.50.
THE TRIUMPH OF WILLIE POND. By Caroline Slade. Vanguard
Press. $2.50.
THE CRAZY HUNTER. By Kay Boyle. Harcourt, Brace. $2.50.
Five of these.six novels attempt to come to grips with aspects of con·
temporary American life; and these are alike in their desire to show, to
illustrate, and sometimes to interpret, rather than to prophesy. And in this
they manifest an important new trend in. fiction. So many political cer·
tainties have dissolved, so many neat conclusions have been proved inade·
quate that writers are turning to an endeavor at re·interpretation of society
before boldly advocating any particular nostrum.
Meyer Levin, who has done a fine job of what might be called inter·
pretive reporting, has taken the Chicago Memorial Day Massacre of 1937
and built around it a chronicle of social and economic reality. His tech·
nique is interesting; though he rarely uses real names, many of the charac·
ters and all the events are, wholly or in part, real. The central part, the
massacre, is shown largely through the eyes of a passing doctor who, in
helping the injured strikers, becomes involved in the whole labor situation.
The other part is made up of an account of the labor situation that suc·
ceeded the strike in Chicago and also of chapters which (in a sort of
Bridge
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San Luis Rey
manner, with what looks like Dos Passos influence) trace
the lives of the individuals killed or injured in the massacre up to the
time of the story's opening. These inter.chapters of. biography break the
continuity of the story. Their effect, however, is not to disrupt the narrative
but to re·inforce its emotional implications. And the story of the doctor,
whose education is also an education for the reader, serves as a unifying–
factor drawing the separate parts together and helping to interpret them.
But the question: "Why a novel rather than a piece of straight report·
ing?" is inevitable. It is on this score that
Citizens
seems to be somewhat
inadequate. The recording is brilliant, the facts have been thoroughly
assimilated and are well used, yet the whole thing seems too blandly intel·
lectual. It is easy to see how this came about. The author was leaning over
backwards to be objective, to interpret events fairly and accurately. But
events have one meaning for the reader as sociologist, and another for
the reader as a "doing and suffering" human being.
Citizens
seems to he
addressed too simply to the reader as sociologist or economist. The hook
needs more of the epic and the symbolic to redeem it into complete life.
This is not to say that we demand less realism, less "fact." Steinbeck, for
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