706
PARTISAN REVIEW
She in
tum
but less quickly falls in love with him, and she is estranged
from her husband, an admirable man in many ways, because he has com–
pelled her to some unnamed, brutal sexual perversion. When a famous
preacher whose advances she has rejected with contempt persuades the
entire community that she has committed adultery with Pugh-an
accusation which is false in a physical sense but true emotionaIIy-she
is poisoned or poisons herself. This summary is more unjust than most,
for the comparative simplicity of the action when thus formulated con–
ceals the labyrinthine complexity of attitude, motive and feeling.
For example, Mr. Pugh and Mrs. Vaughn, as they call each other to
the end, come to a recognition of their love for each other without
speaking explicitly of love at all, while they are arguing mildly and pen–
sively about whether civilization makes human beings happy or unhappy.
The over-civilized man condemns civilization and the beautiful spon–
taneous woman defends it, both of them unknowingly and passionately
evaluating civilization as they do because they are in love with each
other, the man condemning civilization because it
is
the great obstacle
between him and another man's wife, the woman praising it because
the man is entirely a product of it. The reader, drawn forward by
lyric eloquence and the story's fascination, discovers in the end that he
has encountered in a new way the sphinx and riddle of existence itself.
What O'Brian has accomplished is literally and exactly the equivalent
of some of the lyrics in Yeats's
The Tower
and
The Winding Stair
where
within the colloquial and formal framework of the folk poem or story
the greatest sophistication, consciousness and meaning become articulate.
In O'Brian, as in Yeats, the most studied literary cultivation and
knowledge bring into being works which read as if they were prior
to literature and conscious literary technique.
Delmore Schwartz
THE PURSUIT OF FAULKNER
WILLIAM FAULKNER: A CRITICAL STUDY.
By
Irving Howe.
R~ndom
House. $3.00.
Faulkner has had his belated triumph in America and Irving
Howe has confirmed that fact by writing an entire book about him.
Perceptive, just and readable, the book is worthy of the occasion. Mr.
Howe cannot, to be sure, come to Faulkner in the excited spirit of the
pristine discoverer. The work of discovery now belongs to the past. It
