FICTION CHRONICLE
manage, from page to page, to make a book that ought to be unreadable
actually quite exciting. Somehow these shifting fragments, snatches of
conversation, street brawls, and departures of soldiers holds one's interest
for the entire length, over four hundred pages. The pace is largely
maintained by the wonderfully natural dialogue which, though not
always philosophical or profound, is invariably revealing, clever, and
utterly lifelike. And
if
the exact situation of the characters is unclear,
the few glimpses we have of them are vivid and dramatic.
The book ends with a well-handled irony: the Munich pact. In the
final paragraph Daladier steps down from the plane expecting to be
mobbed for appeasing Germany. Instead he is applauded and the people
think the terrible· nightmare of the last week was unnecessary, there
will be no war, demobilization will follow immediately. Throughout the
book the use of real historical characters is so witty and precise one
wishes Sartre had done more with them. (For instance the wonderful
moment when Neville Chamberlain, after listening to one of Hitler's
most outrageous speeches, says, "Well, there's nothing new there.")
The Reprieve
is an achievement of some sort. It is vague and rather
superficial, but is does sparkle with an uncommon enthusiasm that should
not be held too cheaply. What one finds himself admiring is the gaiety
and humanity of a writer genuinely interested in his material.
It is precisely the lack of real interest in his subjects that makes
Erskine Caldwell's production of one novel after another a doomed and
desperate act. Caldwell is frantic, bewildered, obviously disoriented as
a writer. As he continues to increase and multiply, begetting failures,
it becomes harder and harder to remember that his early work was a
true, though slight, contribution to American literature. At times, as in
the latest novel,
The Sure Hand of God,
he seems to realize that he
must go backward to
God's Little Acre
and
Tobacco Road
since he
clearly cannot go forward. And even this does not work. In the two early
novels and some of his excellent short stories Caldwell was a creative
primitive and there is every reason why these books, which are fantasies,
should have been much admired here and in Europe. Those two amazing
nymphomaniacs, Darling Jill and Griselda, and the incredibly ribald
Jeeter Lester are authentic creations of low comedy and their irrepres–
sible lewdness is closer to surrealism than to social documentation. These
books are first-rate dirty jokes, extending the situation of the farmer's
daughter and the amorous old man to the limit. But this sort of thing
cannot be repeated very often.
The Sure Hand of God
tries to turn back
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