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95
found in any gross violation of the writer's craft-there is none of the
debasing illicit excitement which a Koestler can summon at the drop of
a phrase. Where the novel is inadequate it is because Serge has tried
prematurely to do what only a really first-rate novelist, a novelist to
the calling born, could do; for which, in our times, there is more cause
for praise than censure. Others will write better novels on these themes,
but to few will we respond as warmly.
IRVING HowE
STILL LIFE
THE MEMORIAL: PoRTRAIT oF A FAMILY.
By Christopher Isherwood.
New Directions.
$2.75.
N
EW DIRECTIONS has done Christopher Isherwood, and his readers,
no service by failing to indicate that
The Memorial,
which was
published in England in 1932, is not-as at least one deceived reviewer
has assumed-his "latest production." Though marked by much of the
same wit and tenderness of manner, this novel does not have the stature
of
Goodbye to Berlin
and the recent
Prater Violet.
The Memorial
is about a number of basically disparate, uncom-
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