BOO KS
711
slumber by an accident and held captive by a monstrous sister is too
neatly flanked by the minor themes of first love and the loneliness of
middle age. Mrs. Taylor seems to have intended some parable about
Love, and in working it out she has crowded her short novel with feelings
and situations relevant to her intention but to be taken on faith, for
she has had no time to create them. After the first chapters, dominated
by a few finely drawn characters and a wonderful seascape, the action
sprawls out inexorably in a clutter of plot and moves on to a happy
conclusion. The closest parallel I can think of is in those endings of
Dickens in which good feeling and the god-like bestowal of prizes and
demerits clouds everything that has preceded them. This fairy-tale end–
ing is implicit in the title and suitable to the parable ; it violates the
reality of the nearly faultless early chapters. They may have been meant
to end well, but they were not meant to end tidily.
It is a violation which infects the writing. This prose which can
recapture so happily all the tensions and shifts in the most commonplace
relationships turns, when the novel must be set in some final order,
into a parody of the prose of Ivy Compton-Burnett. A parody, however,
with the passion left out, as if wit and intellect sufficed to resolve matters
set going in a different emotional climate.
PERSPECTIVES USA
5
Edited by Malcolm Cowley
A Partial Table of Contents
Changing Mind (a long poem)
Antony in Behalf of the Play
Torch Song (a story)
Young Man with a Horn (on Jazz)
Theodore Roosevelt
American Houses, Modern Style
So~e
Observations on Changes in
Leisure Attitudes
CONRAD AIKEN
KENNETH BURKE
JOHN CHEEVER
OTIS FERGUSON
EDMUND WILSON
HUGH MORRISON
DAVID RIESMAN
Also: Book notes and reviews, a digest of American periodicals,
notes on and photographs of the contributors.
188 Pagas 8 Photographic: Illustrations Pric:e: $1.50 Annually: $5.00
Published by Intercultural Publications Inc., 2 West 46 Street, N. Y. 36.
Address subscription orders to Paragon Mailing Service, 347 Adams
Street, Brooklyn 1, N. Y. Bookstore distribution through Viking Press.
