BO 0 KS
325
the particularity of the . external world which her two children Ralph
and Molly Fawcett inhabit so completely that her picture of it is at
every point as full as it can be, and yet at no point is this reality the
subject
of her writing. (In this respect, as in others, she goes beyond her
first novel, in which she was often at the mercy of the setting she at–
tempted
to
use, entangled in her own stage props.) For example: she
reproduces the speech manners of the genteel "Bonney merchants" and
the sanguine "Kenyon men"-opposing tribes between which her children
are tqrn-with absolute aural fidelity, yet with such variability and indi–
rection that their verbal quirks are never obtrusive, but always quietly
enhancing and right. She was "tired to death" of something, one of the
Bonney merchants says of herself, obliquely, and the words are .so skill–
fully embedded in their context that it is an almost shocking pleasure
to hear them in the mind, after the context has moved on, and with
them the precise echo they raise (for me, at least) of the language my
parents used, the flat, downright, unwillingly expressive speech of a
generation ago.
On another plane, Miss Stafford is so perfectly in command of the
internal landscape of her children as well, that she almost never exhibits
it directly or deliberately, never spends herself in random virtuosity, but
is content to reveal this landscape partially and steadily through linguistic
gesture-the whole dense aggregate of texture, emphasis, pace, intona-
A NEW SERIES
GREAT WRITERS OF THE WORLD
the first two volumes will be
HORACE
by
ALFRED NOYES
and
BOCCACCIO
by
FRANCIS MACMANUS
Each will give a biographical portrait
of the subject, showing him in the con–
text of his own time and country, and
in his influence on men since. There
will
be plentiful quotation (with trans–
lation). Each volume
will
be priced
at $3.50. Others in preparation on De
Maupassant, R abelais and Dante.
SHEED
&
WARD
63 FIFTH AVENUE
NEW YORK 3
A great poet's
latest work
TRANSPORT
TO SUMMER
by
Wallace
Stevens
This is Stevens's first new full–
length book in five years.
It
in–
cludes many poems never be–
fore published, as well as the
contents of two limited edi–
tions:
Esthetique du Mal
and
the remarkable philosophical
poem,
Notes Toward a Su–
preme Fiction.
$2.50
ALFRED • A • KNOPF
~~~~~
