BOOKS
a big job without sufficient attention to the mam task involved: that
of really showing the how and the why of a man like Lawrence or
Dickie or Proctor. He has been too hasty and counted on style, evoca–
tion and symbolism to do that which only patient thought, imagination
and analysis can do.
To turn to
Federigo
from
The Huge Season
is to enter another
domain of fiction, for
if
Mr. Morris has taken a large theme and a
complex subject, Mr. Nemerov has tried to make little ones out of big
ones-and in my opinion has succeeded very nicely.
It
is not a great
book and I am sure the author did not intend it as such. With all
possible temptations to be arch, literary, and smart-aleck, Mr. Nemerov
has given a neat, sardonic account of love among the not-so-young of
New York advertising-cum-Longchamps circles. Julian Ghent is at once
a sympathetic (I am just his age) figure and a figure of fun, as indeed
are his wife and one or two others. The young are heartless-amusingly
so; indeed, amusing may be the only appropriate adjective for the novel.
Mr. Nemerov hints at the prototypes for some of his characters, gives us
an interesting
doppelganger,
takes us to one or two diverting parties, and
winds things up with a very fine twist on the old gimmick of the lady
and the chambermaid. It is all well done and great fun.
If
the author
has by no means set himself the task that Mr. Morris has, nonetheless
what was needed got itself done and nicely so.
The locale of Miss Powell's novel is also New York, more specifi–
cally Bohemian New York; the focal point for the scenes de la vie de
Boheme, the Cafe Julien. What puzzles the reader most is-why? Miss
Powell brings together her many characters, sends them away, shows us
painters, a nymphomaniac, a phony publisher, "sales types" of sundry
sorts, and it all seems to amount to nothing much. The tone is unre–
mittingly arch, the wit discursive, the plot attenuated. Presumably we
have here a "wicked" clinical study of certain deracinated urban char–
acters who frequent a certain cafe in order to find a home. Miss Powell
seems to be attempting to show that the unexpected continually occurs
and that what a person intends he rarely does. None of it seems to make
much difference, since the folk involved have no size or shape, nor is
their world in any way compelling. The various liaisons are picked up,
dropped, picked up again, and finally-simply left, some in a state of
irresolution, others perhaps potentially soluble had Miss Powell created
a solvent. Again, it seems scarcely to matter. A kind of epigrammatic
style, a caustic comment in the manner of Waugh seems to have been
Miss Powell's goal. Once the reader sees clearly that she cannot attain
to it, he, like the author, loses interest.
