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what the books by Farrell and Caldwell lack. It is conceived with a
superior daring, executed with polish and subtlety, and, unlike so much
scrupulously well-written fiction by American women, concerned with
an adventurous and pertinent contemporary theme. In this parable of
Mr. Temple, an obscure bank clerk who walks out of his teller's cage
on a fine spring day and wanders into the Communist Party, we have a
situation rich in humor and pathos, half-hallucinated and yet always
alive with meanings. Mr. Temple, at the beginning of his history, is a
robot, a mechanical man whose life is built upon so many paralyzing
decorums and evasions that he is more a corpse than anything else. The
choice of this profoundly inexperienced man as a mirror to reflect the
turbulence, vivacity, and irresponsibility of the Stalinist heyday is in
many ways strikingly advantageous; more so, one is inclined to think,
than a worldly, articulate hero would have been. Leaving the bank and
setting out upon his compulsiye wanderings, Mr. Temple meets Hilda
Brand, the wife of a party intellectual whom he had known as a shoe–
string bank depositor. Mr. Temple is drawn to the warmth and beauty
of Hilda and to the restaurant in which she works and, ultimately, into
the radical movement of which Hilda and her husband are a part. Like
a somnambulist, Mr. Temple begins to distribute the party paper, to
try to read Marx, and to do his bit for the revolution by contributing
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HENRY MILLER
Obscenity and the Law
of Reflection
A classic psycho.esthetic analysis of the
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LOU HARRISON
About Carl Ruggles
Like Charles Ives, Ruggles has been
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ANAIS NIN
Realism and Reality
Her idea of the novel, by one of our
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HENRY MILLER
The Amazing and Invariable
Beauford DeLaney
Essay on one of our greatest American
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his work.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
The Necessity of Atheism
Written during his undergraduate days,
and scarce, these words bear re·reading,
even
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MICHAEL FRAENKEL
Land of the Quetzal
A memorable travel journal of Sub–
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•
YONKERS 5, N. Y•
