548
PARTISAN REVIEW
tudes; even silly attitudes-poses, if you like, or narcissism, or be-damned–
to-you coloratura-anything but this dim date with someone to ac–
company you to something
&
maybe merge a few happinesses.
Dudley Fitts
THE ENGLISH LITERARY SITUAnON
THE MODERN WRITER AND HIS WORLD. By G. S.
Fr~ser.
Criterion
Books. $3.95.
Mr. Fraser's resourceful and intelligent book is a survey of
literature in England over the last fifty to seventy-five years. It has five
sections-"The Background of Ideas," "The Novel," "The Drama,"
"Poetry," "The Trends of Criticism"-which together make a fairly
complete literary history. But even though the book was written as part
of an academic duty when the author was lecturing in Japan in 1950,
it is not an exhaustive study. The book is very rich in objective judg–
ments and analyses of the English writers (much more so than I am
going to be able to suggest in this review), yet the author's purpose has
been to reassess the older generations in relation to what he conceives
to be the necessities of his own generation.
Mr. Fraser is a poet and critic of the post-Auden era. He began
by being associated with "The Apocalypse" group. In later years this
movement broadened out into "Neo-Romanticism," a movement which
included )not only Apocalyptics (if that is the word), like Henry Treece
and Nicholas Moore, but anarchist and pacificist poets like Alex Com–
fort. The neo-Romantics responded especially to the work of Herbert
Read, George Barker, and Dylan Thomas. They have regarded them–
selves as "poets of the image" rather than as "poets of the statement"
like Auden and Empson, and their effort has been to shift poetry from
the ideological basis it had in the 'thirties and to involve it more fully
in the archetypal experiences of man. Mr. Fraser applauds the super–
session of Marxist thought by a more traditional liberalism. He notes,
apparently with approval, that Jung is now a much stronger influence
among English writers than Freud.
I t would be wrong though to think of Mr. Fraser as belonging
very strictly to any school or movement. He is not in this book notice–
ably "romantic" or "apocalyptic"-far from it. What interests him is how
to live as a writer in modern England. He has seen many careers in his
own generation spoiled by the war and the anxieties and maladjust–
ments of its aftermath. His subject is the fate of the writer in a dis-
