BOOKS
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side the Carlists in the Spanish Civil War. A good soldier, a warm–
hearted and generous man, he is not really at all what we used to call
in the 1930s "a bloody Fascist." Temperamentally, he is, rather, a
patriarchal anarchist; happiest lording it benevolently Jn his family
circle and among the large group of his friends. In practice, he cares
passionately for individual freedom, and was, indeed, one of George
Orwell's closest friends. His poetry, uneven though this particular volume
is, ought not to fall a victim to extra-poetical animosities; readers who
feel such animosities should remember that, though in defense of his
religion Campbell did fight for General Franco, he was also the only
notable British poet of his age-group to volunteer for, and to serve in
the ranks during, the war against Hitler.
G.
S. Fraser
THE UNDY ING APOCALYPSE
ANGLO-SAXON ATIITUDES. By Angus Wilson. Viking. $4.50.
HOMECOMING. By C. P. Snow. Scribner's. $3 .95.
THE FIELD OF VISION. By Wright Morris. Harcourt. $3 .50.
THE LOST STEPS. By Alejo Carpentier. Knopf. $3.75.
GIOVANNI'S ROOM. By James Baldwin. Dial. $3 .00.
SEIZE THE DAY. By Saul Bellow. Viking. $3.00.
Following so soon on Leslie Fiedler's brilliant Fiction Chroni–
cle (PR, Summer 1956), I've tried to avoid the kind of novels he
ridiculed so conclusively-the sentimental "realist" morality and the
seedy sub-lyric celebration of illiteracy. Luckily I could do this without
neglecting anything of major interest. The four real novelists in my
collection-Wilson, Snow, Bellow, and Baldwin--challenge Fiedler on
ground where he appears a little more shaky than in his admirable sensi–
tivity to hokum. They make, in fact, an ominously neat contrast. One
almost sees the novel walking out of its skin, the skeleton surviving
in the English, the bloom, aura,
expression
in the Americans. Nor is
this as much a matter of relative interest as might appear. The English
are extremely good, and for old-fashioned "bourgeois" reasons: a well–
turned skeleton is a beautiful thing.
Anglo-Saxon Attitudes
owes much
of its success to the energy of its plot, a truly misanthropic plot that
puts all the characters automatically in the wrong and rings down as
