I
Already admired by readers
of HORIZON,
HALLAM TENNYSON'S
distinguished short
fiction is now first
published in America.
All the stories in this
exciting volume have a
common theme; yet each has
its own individual-
even exotic-flavor.
THE WALL
OF DUST
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Nor does
it
mean any one musician
must immediately transform his mu–
sical style or personality.
If
one makes a
basic criticism of, say, Steinbeck, one
is not necessarily telling him to write
like Proust or Kafka. (I assume Mr.
Herman recognizes the difference of ef–
fect between an article in PARTISAN
REVIEW and one in
Pravda.)
Those composers and conductors who
control our musical life-and of whom
Mr. Herman is one-have consistently
kept the music of Schonberg and his
school off the repertory. When called
to support this position they have said
nothing more pertinent than Mr. Her–
man, rejecting the music on the shame–
lessly nonmusical grounds that it is
doctrinaire, "prejudiced," even un–
American. The virulence and irrelev–
ance of their attack suggests that they
are uneasy about their own position.
Kurt List
New York City
SARTRE'S THESIS
Sirs:
. I found it quite hard to grasp
hold of Sartre's thesis about poetry
[in "What is Writing?" in the January
number] firmly enough to criticize it,
for so many of his affirmations are
negated in the article itself. But after
much reflection I braced myself to
consider these negations as contradic–
tions, pure and simple, although Sartre
is an eminent thinker. Let me give a
few examples. Sartre declares straight–
away that it is an absurdity to discuss
one art in terms of another because
their form and matter are different.
But a page or so later he decides that
painting, poetry, and music should be
grouped together in opposition, as it
were, to prose, or simple writing. Then
again he maintains quite hotly that
sounds, colors, and forms are not signs,
and therefore carry no weight of sig–
nification. In other words, a painting
or a statue (and he soon adds a poem)
