PARTISAN REVIEW
not for his brilliantly accomplished detail and finish. In London it is
a relief to see an exhibition by a younger painter who is unaffected by
the ubiquitous, aesthetically paralyzing, Picasso influence. It seems as if
Picasso's greatness, like a rich wine, has made bilious nearly a whole
generation of his successors. However Augustus John, whose first exhibi–
tion in fifteen years is now at the Leicester Galleries, has reverted (after
a few experiments with faintly post-Impressionist still lifes) to his
earliest manner-romanticized Irish and Welsh peasant girls in wild
gray landscapes. His harsh portraits of men are still excellent.
The most interesting news of the day in literature is George Orwell's
new long novel. I have
see~
two chapters of it and have the impression
that this will be his most important work so far. Unfortunately it is
going very slowly because Orwell has been dangerously ill, and is still
not recovered. A course of streptomycin injections was in the main suc–
cessful, but it has left some unpleasant secondary complications. I heard
from him in his hospital in Scotland a week ago and he is still only able
to get up for an hour a day.
There is a rumor that E.M. Forster has finished a new novel.
If
it
is true it is indeed something worth writing to America about. Philip
Toynbee, whose
Tea with Mrs. Goodman
was so very well praised last
year, is lying fallow; except for a few scintillating reviews. Cyril Con–
nolly is also between books. Evelyn Waugh's
The Loved
One-about
morticians (both animal and human) in Hollywood-appeared early this
year in
Horizon.
Nearly everybody enjoyed it. The only exception I
know was the
review
in a dingy dutifullittla monthly called
Our Tim.e,
which is run by crypto-Stalinists. Their cantankerous review is interest–
ing because it is an example of the completeness with which the artistic
fellow travelers, and travelers' travelers, have swallowed the Zhdanov
line with regard to the arts-showing up their pretense, in private con–
versations, that Communism in the West could not in matters of culture
be expected to be subordinate to Moscow. It is useful to contrast this
unconditional surrender (some of the contributors to
Our Time
are
people who used to know better) with the very cagey policy of the
Stalinists on questions of straight politics and economics. They are
abusing the policies and leaders of the Labour Party but are still pre–
tending to support, conditionally, the government and the production
drive. They dare not "isolate themselves from the masses" by adopting
the full Cominform line and pronouncing themselves honestly anti- ,
Labour. They merely execrate every principle for which the Labour
Party stands and insinuate a little monkey wrench or two, in the form
of minor strikes, into the productive works. After a Cominform attack
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