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history of war but not merely a description of historical forces, the fact
that men are through and through historically conditioned. There are
basic imperfections to be taken cognizance of, the inchoate legions of
autumn leaves, for example. Wilder than the huge blue Ethiops whirling
in lionskins, wilder than the cries of camels and elephants at man-made
war, is the fact of the basically cruel isolation of one thing from another.
On this theme, Aiken enlarges. The poem illuminates, it may be said,
the agony of what it is to be a fragment. Aiken entertains, however, the
hopefulness that our future will not be like our past, that there will be
a blissful divergence, a breaking away from the long history of blood
and tears and falling leaves. History, we are to believe, is resolved whe:.1
the will turns upward, up the spiral of light, ever to the brighter stair–
way and doorway of light where is the love implicit, impartible, the
clear heart, the divine guest and host of mankind. Such a faith cannot
be
argued with, naturally.
MARGUERITE YouNG
A MEAGER CROP
INTERIM.
By R. C. Hutchinson. Farrar
&
Rinehart.
$2.00.
THE FoLDED LEAF.
By William Maxwell. Harper
&
Bros.
$2.50.
THE CRADLE WILL FALL.
By Stephen Seley. Harcourt> Brace
&
Co.
$2.00.
THE MusiC Is GoNE.
By LeGarde S. Doughty. Duell> Sloan
&
Pearce.
$2.')0.
THE BRICK FoxHOLE.
By Richard Brooh Harper
&
Bros.
$2.50.
DARKLY FLows THE RIVER.
By Lt. Commander John Macdonald ,
R.C.N.V.R. Coward McCann.
$2.50.
I
F THERE IS,
for these six novels, any denominator which may be
called common, apart from their size it is,
pos~ibly,
a certain density
of seriousness and intensity of sentiment. But here no more than in
Rodin's statue does an attitude of thoughtfulness imply ripeness of wis–
dom, nor do a set of characters who
feel
very hard determine the emo–
tional stature of a novel. None of these books has a "big" subject, none
is a novel of ideas, none requires or invites either a second reading or
profound attention, and only one concerns characters whose existence is
on a fairly high level of consciousness.
It is exactly this one,
Interim>
by the Englishman R. C. Hutchinson,
which is the most generally interesting. Superficially, it is the story of a
soldier's brief but deep knowledge of a family blundered on, worked and
suffered with, and after a few revelatory visits to the rather unusual
household. lost, except to memory, through death by disease and war,
and sacrificial isolation. Though fragmentary, the experience is none the
less rich for him, because of the kind of insight granted him. The fact
