ers and sometimes addicts; Ameri–
cans love jazz and fast driving and
secluded corners ; with all the itch
to conform, Americans are still
trying to burst the bonds of isola–
tion by various sorts of violent ex–
periences, including art.
Why then do so many readers
find comfort in the dry apotheosis
of Marjorie Morningstar's frigid–
ity? How can Sloan Wilson get
away with a billion copies of his
pettish smugness in the job, the
house, the rich aunt, the old war–
time affair "talked out" between
husband and wife? The great
novelists have always given us, be–
fore anything else, before all mo–
rality and sociology, a sense of the
richness of possibility. Why do so
many novelists fear the mystery of
personality?
Well, first of all, they always
have. Besides, life is hard enough
without going out looking for
challenges. In an impoverished
time, palliated by plenty but wor–
ried all the same, there is a gen–
eralized loss of the sense for cre–
ative activity. Nothing more than
anxiety inhibits the power to do,
to make, to invent, to admit. When
your belly is constricted by wor–
ry, oatmeal goes down most com–
fortably. Novelists are human be–
ings more than they are anything
else. The mystery of personality is
a mystery: isolation, incomprehen–
sion, brusque flashes of lightning,
danger, danger, danger. To enter
into a dark place involves the risk
of coming out where you won't
459
see things as they were. In novels
as in life, we cannot eliminate
emotion utterly and remain hu–
man ; but we can replace deep in–
volvements by passing safely from
the stage of titillation to that of
being jaded without crossing
through commitment. We live this
way, we write these books, we
read them in order to say:
I'm
safe, I really am, and I 'm pleased
about it!
(We keep on renewing
the experience because secretly we
are not pleased.) Thus Sloan Wil–
son can declare that his novel ex–
presses his sense for a world which
has treated him "pretty well"–
wars, bombs, a third of a nation
watching Ed Sullivan, all of it.
Better forget about adventuring,
he means to say; better accept
a stereotyped image of desire;
better be attentive to the media
and take the profit in subsidiary
rights.
The novel at its best is a large
perspective on life in society–
large because the hero's doings are
important and because the novel-
Indian Thought and
its Development
By ALBERT SCHWEITZER
"Reconciliation of
practical ethics and
mystical monism."
Journal of Phil080ph'll
Paperback $1.60
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