BOO K S
145
to say about this book will be sure to underestimate the good effects
of Bellow's good-natured laissez-faire. Strange indeed to see it blooming
so irresistibly at the outposts of despair and an austere scientific curiosity
about the calamities of modern city life. So far Bellow is a little weak
in plot and concentration; a little mellerdramer of the
Aspern Papers
variety might help later on. But the stories and the play in this book
are the most thoroughly achieved of all the fictions I've been discussing.
So-peace to the restless spirit of Leslie Fiedler. The novel does
seem to be dying, along with the literate world that begot it. But let
us at least enjoy as many remnants of this world as we can.
R. W. Flint
CAPITALISM RE-EXAMINED
CONTEMPORARY CAPITALISM. By John Strochey. Rondom House.
$5.00.
Contemporary Capitalism)
be it said right at the outset, is an
admirably lucid, undogmatic and sprightly attempt to analyze the major
socio-economic trends of our era in terms of a democratic socialist per–
spective. One was not entirely prepared for it. John Strachey has
been best known in this country as the author of a number of em–
harassingly crude and doctrinaire books which attempted
in
the '30s
to provide a Stalinoid theoretical foundation for the Popular Front
enthusiasm of British and American intellectuals.
The Coming Struggle
for Power)
the most widely read of these books, enjoyed such a success
in this country that Random House even included it in its Modern
Library Giants series, next to
War and Peace .
Reading it now one can
understand George Orwell's fierce hatred of the whole school of
"youthful snob-Bolsheviks" which centered around the Left Book Club
and of whom Strachey, Victor Gollancz and Harold Laski were the
main luminaries. From Strachey himself little had been heard since. He
had broken with his Stalinist friends at the time of the Nazi-Soviet
pact, had served in the R .A.F. and become an influential member of
Britain's postwar Labour Governments; but he had written no major
book to account for his changed views. Now that this book has appeared
we are forced to revise our earlier estimate of its author. His is a
subtle and flexible intelligence seriously grappling with central issues.
