BOO KS
693
cluded; Mr. Bowen has objectified his theme and his characters. Yet
hatred comes through, really the only genuine emotion that I detected.
The story tells of Edna Roberts, her marriage to William Gavin, her
actual murder of her husband and the psychical murder of their son.
Unremittingly grim in tone, action and theme, the novel can never make
of its material more than a controlled hymn of hate for Edna. Mr.
Bowen at no point tells us what or how to think; he simply takes us
deeper and deeper into the evil of Edna's career. Why? to what end?
I think the author wishes to say that certain women are like Edna, and
that granted a few such women, their husbands and children are likely
to have a thin time of it. For all the control, the self-restraint he exer–
cises, Mr. Bowen cannot make his book come alive; he can merely keep
it from becoming anguished. And this is a pity, for clearly Robert O.
Bowen is a genuine novelist. What he lacks is a subject to take the
place of the one he apparently feels he exhausted
in
his first two books.
Promise has to be the final word in the case of Mr. Wagoner–
perhaps high promisl}-I am not sure. In any case, the opening pages
of
The Man in the Middle
caught me up and carried me well past
the point at which Mr. Wagoner lost his way and mine. I kept going
in the hope that we would both find the right track. What began as a
THE SCHOOL OF LETTERS
INDIANA UNIVERSITY
Summer 1955
Courses on the graduate level in the theory and practice
of Literary Criticism
Including work toward advanced degrees in
Criticism, English Literature, and Comparative Literature
SENIOR FELLOWS
John Crowe Ransom
Lionel Trilling
THE FELLOWS
Newton Arvin
Eric Bentley
Richard Blackmur
Clea nth Brooks
Kenneth Burke
Richard Chase
William Empson
Francis Fergusson
Leslie Fiedler
Allen Tate
Austin Warren
Philip Rahv
Robert Fitzgerald
Mark Schorer
Irving Howe
Delmore Schwartz
Randall Jarrell
Stephen Spender
Alfred Kazin
Newton P. Stallknecht
L.
C. Knights
Robert Penn Warr.n
Robert Lowell
Rene Wellek
Arthur Mizener
Harold Whitehall
Herbert Read
Yvor Winters
Philip Blair Rice
Morton Dauwen Zabel
Full information available about January I
