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in
a moment of sheer insight into her true character. This-plus some
bull-ring monkeyshines and some Blood in the Afternoon-comprises
the novel's whole action. So help me God! Oh yes-there's a funny
foreign psychiatrist with (vast mine of symbolism) a transvestite in
tow! The rest is mostly a busy, fussy tying-together of a lot of por–
tentous details, in a short-winded Faulknerian rumination I found
mildly amusing, though not exactly the glory of the middle generation.
Now for Senor Carpentier and
his
all too comprehensible despair.
Imagine,
if
you can, a highly purposeful, erudite and
accurate
novel,
as soaked in high culture as
The Outsider
but with every detail used
for just what it is worth and no more, jog-trotting along from scene
to scene and idea to idea, as colorful, new, and efficient as those fac–
tories said to be springing up everywhere in South America, a most
informative
entertainment-and all put to the service of a tired and
jejune Lawrentian primitivism.
Lorenzo, what hast thou wrought?
But
it is difficult to imagine how, given the appalling rag-bag of Carpen–
tier's mind, he could have done much otherwise. The Apocalypse and
the Atoning Woman are our most available myths; and Carpentier is
too entranced by his fine collection of verbal exotica and literary set–
pieces to care about attempting a serious novel. His best scenes have
both pathos and humor. He has a first-rate mind. But what is one to
THE SCHOOL OF LETTERS
INDIANA UNIVERSITY
SUMMER 1957
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
FELLOWS
Newton Arvin
Eric Bentley
Richard Blackmur
Cleanth Brooks
Kenneth Burke
Richard Chase
William Empson
Francis Fergusson
Allen Tate
Leslie Fiedler
Robert Fitzgerald
Irving Howe
Randall J arrell
Alfred K azin
Robert Lowell
Arthur Mizener
Herbert Read
Morton Dauwen Zabel
Austin Warren
Philip Rahv
Mark Scharer
Delmore Schwartz
Stephen Spender
Newton P. Stallknecht
Robert Penn Warren
R ene Wellek
Harold Whitehall
Yvor Winters
Address inquiries to Newton P. Stallknecht,
director, The School of Letters, Welborn House,
Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana
