274
PARTISAN REVIEW
In
the present book many of his individual remarks-his com–
plaints about the symbol mania of certain critics, his feeling that some
of the younger novelists have transformed technique into a subject
matter-are very sensible. But sensible only if removed from their am–
biguous context, a tone so condescending and "amused" that one
wishes to retreat from one's formal agreement and stand instead with
those whom Cowley attacks. Sometimes his tone is even more ques–
tionable, as when he says, a little pettishly, that "critics torture them–
selves to be more ingenious than other critics" or that critics "publish
their findings [on Conan Doyle's influence on T. S. Eliot] in the lit–
erary reviews and hope for better faculty posts next autumn." No doubt;
critics being human and having children like everyone else. But can
one seriously assume that the trouble with much contemporary criticism
is
due to a desire for promotions rather than to a deep, thoroughly sin–
cere commitment to a critical method which leads, most of the time,
to dreariness?
The Literary Situation
suffers from too many omissions: neither
poetry nor politics makes an appearance, literature being here pretty
much fiction and the very latest fiction at that. Cowley's claim that
the New Critics have fathered "a new fiction" similar in kind and spirit
to their own work is extremely far-fetched,
if
only because no critics,
new or old, exert that degree of influence over American writers. And
his mind is so cluttered with "trends" that he never gets down to ana–
lyzing or evalua ting or even appreciating a single book or a single body
of work in its own right. When he does venture a literary judgment it
isn't very reassuring: Mikhail Sholokhov's
The Silent Don,
he tells us,
"is the novel of our time that comes closest to being another
WaT
and
Peace."
Yes, in the way Norman Rosten comes closest to being another
Vergil.
In
the end, one feels that Cowley depends too much on a careful
knowingness, a measured shrewdness. Of deep conviction and motivat–
ing passion, of anger or satiric thrust, of fiery enthusiasm
The Literary
Situation
offers very little. One is frequently being tipped off, as it
were, that much remains up Cowley's sleeve and if only he cared to
reveal it.... After awhile, however, one ceases to care whether there
is a sleeve.
Irving Howe
