THE INFLUENCE OF MR. LEAVIS
857
insularity as from correct critical principles. The literary nominalism
that Mr. Leavis so doggedly insists upon, with its pragmatical distrust
of anything that goes beyond the hard particulars of the text and its
horror of "abstractions," is peculiarly English and insular and excuses
him from any acquaintance with the advanced thinking of the time.
He can point a confident finger to the good or bad in literature, scrupu–
lously discriminating between the two with a specificness few can equal,
but he cannot-will not-then consider that literary good in life, in its
relation to experience. He has a fine essay on E. M. Forster, for example,
that brilliantly gets at that author's chief weakness-a failure always to
realize a certain "poetic" intention present in his novels-but when
Mr. Leavis is led to speak of
A Passage to India
as a "classic of the
liberal spirit," he does so uncomfortably and summarily, with an evident
feeling of being out of bounds.
His nominalist critical method, too, deprives his writings of form ;
for want of a strong controlling generalization they tend to resolve
themselves into a series of points. They are not, for the most part, shaped
from within, but mechanically borrow such order as they have from the
texts they consider.
In its attitude toward avant-garde literature particularly,
Scrutiny
For example, THE MONK.
Pick up any handbook on the English novel, and you can read all
about
it-its importance, its absurdity, its charm, excesses, milestonedom.
But to read THE MONK
itself,
you must have access to either an ex–
ceptional public library, or an exceptional private pocketbook. Lacking
both, you may go on wondering indefinitely what this legendary novel
is really like. Not a major frustration, perhaps; but from the point of
view of civilized existence, an undesirable one.
It will be the satisfaction of The Grove Press to publish THE MONK
and at least five other similarly unavailable books in the coming year;
moreover, in paper bindings and at a price within the purchasing range
of any economically average citizen, say myself.
In the meantime, The Grove Press will inaugurate its existence on
Herman Melville's 130th birthday-August 1st of this year-by pub–
lishing his last full-length novel, THE CONFIDENCE MAN, a book
which has not been reprinted in America since Dix, Edwards
&
Co.
originally issued it in April, 1857.
Writing in May, 1947, in this magazine, Mr. Richard Chase called THE
CONFIDENCE MAN 'a great book . . . a buoyant, energetic piece of
writing .. (and) .. a wonderfully perceptive study of the American
character, done at the folklore level. .. :
$1.25, at any bookstore, or direct from The Grove Press, 18 Grove
Street, NYC 14. Fall bulletin on request.
ROBERT PHELPS, Editor
