PARTISAN REVIEW
tenns, though," "Meanwhile, though.... As you will see"). It is excel–
lent, despite its manner, on Sinclair Lewis, whom he does not call "Sin–
clair"; enthusiastic but indiscriminate on Sherwood Anderson and F.
Scott Fitzgerald; mediocre on Willa Cather, and badly muddled on
H.
L.
Mencken. Geismar's method is to study carefully and chronolog–
ically his author's books, especially those neglected by others, try to
work out a consistent pattern in relation to what he takes (sometimes
acutely) the author's original drives to have been, and
up~et
popular
notions about the author with his results. He has little interest in craft
or in artistic questions generally, and is always willing to overpraise
inferior books for thematic purposes. With Lewis the method works
admirably, and Geismar can be seen at his best here. But he is inclined
to beat his authors with "reality," to overrate wildly the determinant
influence of societal situations, and to underrate both the effects of an
author's commitment to his craft (art) and his developing commitment
to the tenns of his vision
if
he has one. When he finally arraigns his
authors for not having written about
the right things
(on Mencken,
pp. 53-4; Lewis, pp. 131-2; Cather, p. 218), or prefers Anderson to
them, obviously because he was more broadly involved in the ordinary
life of the American people, or forgives "Scott" on some glamour-ground
I don't understand, Geismar writes as a critic whose views were de–
termined by the thirties, but it is impossible to take
him
seriously, and
in fact he deserts criticism. He has a mind, too, in which
The Beautiful
and Damned
"sticks" but
The Great Gatsby
does not.
Geismar's worst defect, however, is in perspective. His volumes
on leading American novelists (this is the second' "will fonn" he says
"a literary record of American thinking over the last century"-and
one can only gasp at the impudence. A short summary at the end of this
book does indeed mention various poets and philosophers and critics–
even six lines of "The Waste Land" are quoted-but the discussion is
ridiculous, and Geismar's claim to be an historian of American thought
is simply a joke. He is debarred anyway by his provinciality. Referring
condescendingly to an essay by Lionel Trilling on Anderson in
The
Kenyon Review,
he goes on: "Mr. Trilling is typical of the group of
academic critics whose chief interest has been in English literature and
who believe they · can deal adequately with American writing through
such essays or through book reviews." At last we learn why Geismar,
who writes worse than most professors, has nothing indispensable to
say, and can't integrate books, insists on writing them. American writing
is too
noble
to be dealt with in mere essays (such as poor old Dryden
used to write ) or book reviews (such as Eliot's of Grierson, which
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