104
anger is seldom obvious. He re–
sembles his friend Perelman in this
respect or the successful screen
writer in
The
Day
of the Locust–
"a master of the involved comic
rhetoric that permitted him to ex–
press his moral indignation and still
keep his reputation for worldliness
and wit." That he had values and
standards and a social philosophy
is perfectly plain, however, even..
though he was not a social realist
who celebrated brawny proletari–
ans.
The books of West deal with the
obsessions and behavior of gro–
tesques, but they are none the less
political. They tell us more about
the fascist mentality and the com-
PARTISAN REVIEW
ing cataclysm than most class-con–
scious novels of the thirties, because
West was able to feel, as well as to
picture in his impressionistic way,
the emptiness and ugliness of the
times. His books are a kind of
feverish preview of the sadistic and
irrational forties.
Other novelists among his con–
temporaries actually gave a more
faithful presentation of a country
on the skids; West's novels do not
begin to approximate the colorful
and violent documentations of Dos
Passos or the grim tracts of Farrell.
But they do give us in an arresting
and sometimes poetic way, a
glimpse of a mindless people doped
by the pulps, the tabloids, and the
"It becomes increasingly apparent that Franz Kafka is destined to rank
with the greatest figures of world literature."
by
FRANZ KAFKA
THE TRIAL .........................................................
2.50
THE CASTLE ...............................................
2.50
METAMORPHOSIS .....................................
2.75
THE KAFKA PROBLEM ........................
5.00
THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA ..
.3.00
A FRANZ KAFKA MISCELLANY...
3.50
AMERIKA ····-··········-····························-········.....
1.50
7 PLAYS OF MAXIM GORKY, ed.
&
trans. by
A.
Bakshy ...........................................
3.75
6 PLAYS OF RUSSIAN LIFE, trans. by Alexander Bakshy
····································--·······4.50
E. Bentley, THE PLAYWRIGHT AS THINKER ..........................
..............................
.3.00
R. Peacock, THE POET IN THE THEATRE .... .............................
....................................2.50
H. Granville-Barker, THE USE OF THE DRAMA ...................
. .................................. 1.50
D. H. Lawrence, SELECTED POEMS ......................................................................................................
1.50
Marguerite Young, ANGEL IN THE FOREST............pub. at
3.00............
our price
1.25
4
seasons book shop
2.1 greenwich ave., n.
y.
c. 14
