388
PARTISAN REVIEW
his savings and, finally, by stealing from the bank. Just as he is beginning
to feel himself a part of the circle, Hilda is expelled as a
bourgeois,.
a
particularly touching event since she, above all the other characters in
the book, displays the anxious insecurity, the almost heroic fatigue, and
the hopelessly vague plans that would mark the proletarian situation.
From that point onward, as he becomes engulfed in the contretemps
that accompanied the great change in the party line, Mr. Temple's ad–
ventures are rightly chaotic.
Eleanor Clark's greatest gift is for symbolic incident and detail. For
instance, a chance happening upon a shooting gallery can manage better
than pages of documentary fiction to indicate the undercurrent of actual
violence in the situation to which Mr. Temple and the party members
have submitted. Also, exquisite humor is derived from Mr. Temple's
mere use of phrases like
lumpenproletariat
and
historical juncture.
In '
the sections that deal with the Communists, Miss Clark manages bril–
liantly to give life to the parades, the magazine sellers, the fights with
the revolutionary opposition, the cliches, and, above all, to catch the
simple-minded but appealing gaiety of characters like Jackie and Bo,
two energetic lesbians. The author's knowledge of the speech, the clothes,
the bohemian abandon is always accurate and at least one character,
Comrade Rose, who has a brief but hilarious affair with Mr. Temple,
seems quite perfect. The comic aspects of the novel are most interesting,
perhaps because current fiction is so lacking in humor and irony; but no
slight is meant to the essential seriousness of the material.
If
we find
Mr. Temple ruined in the end, we also know that he has been brought
to life by his collision with the inaccurate, disorderly, but all too human
party machinery. He has been made homeless, hungry, and friendless
by the loss of his old routine, but he is no longer either actually or sym–
bolically in his cage. In that sense the book is a somewhat relevant
answer to those people who pride themselves upon never having taken
an interest in politics simply because, by their apathy, they were spared
disillusionment.
In spite of the numerous felicities of
The Bitter Box,
it seems neces–
sary to state that it is riddled with difficulties and that many of the
author's most rewarding observations and inventions are hidden in
dream-like sequences from which they do not readily emerge. There is
frequently a kind of surrealist distortion of setting and often we literally
don't know where we are. One scene, apparently in a movie, is described
in terms of shifting colors, geometric designs, and abstract patterns that
defy elucidation. In addition, Mr. Temple is pursued throughout the
story by a malicious man with a scar who is identified
only
by his
Christian name, John, which happens to be the same as Mr. Temple's.
There are times when this character seems to exist only in Mr. Temple's
imagination; or again, because of the similar name, we think he is per-
