950
PARTISAN REVIEW
end of literature. We may regret the passing of a period, but lamenta–
tion cannot become the content of a critical doctrine. In the new period
which we are now entering the literary medium may discover new
forms and adventures for itself: for one thing, the social process in which
the writer is now caught up may put an end to his famous alienation in
our time, and a literature with very different possibilities may result.
Unfortunately all this is still very much in the future, while right now I
do not think there can be much doubt that these new conditions are
producing, and will probably produce for some time, a literature that is
plainly inferior to the old.
William Barrett
UBIQUITOUS OBLIQUE
THE BODY. By Williom Sonsom. Horcourt. Broce. $2.75.
TWO WORLDS AND THEIR WAYS. By Ivy Compton-Burnett. Alfred'
A.
Knopf. $3.50.
There has becn a curiou change in William Sansom.
The
Body,
his first novel, is a break with his own past. He belonged to
the group of young British writers who work in the Kafka tradition,
presumably in the hope of creating a new, major art form. Sansom's
short stories
(Fireman Flower)
had reached a point where great expecta–
tions were not unreasonable. He had availed himself of the best in
Kafka, the structure that can ' be turned any way to fit modern
life,
the analogues of experience, the philosophical tone. But he has dropped
all this, just when one might have expected him to carry it further.
Perhaps the writer's pride objected to doing imitations. More charit–
ably construed ("working within the tradition"), his break may have
been motivated by a desire to escape confinement, to work on his own
terms. Only for Kafka was the manner the man. For the rest it is some–
thing like a magician's trick, presto, it works!-the tree springs full
grown .without seed, casting a profound shade. But life grows pale
in this shade, and the merest reality, first reckoned well lost, becomes
irresistible, not for its own quality, but because it lies out of range.
Before long, it is not the trick that appears magical to the artist, but
the ordinary, untouched part of the world.
It
may be for such reasons that
The
Body
is entirely assembled
of unused parts, sounds, colors, textures, freckles, hair, shop windows,
