BOO KS
145
CRITICISM AT ITS BEST
THE RISE OF THE NOVEL. By Illn WlItt. University of ClIlifornill Press.
$5.
American criticism has fallen upon quiet days. A vast pro–
duction continues from one season to the next, but there has been an
ebbing of the disputatious passions of a decade ago, when literary people
could work themselves up to argument about the New Criticism. In
part this is due to the remarkable capacity of our culture for assimilat–
ing and devitalizing all ideas, in part to the fact that the New Criticism
has apparently exhausted itself through over-assertiveness. The result
must obviously be a rather dull "literary atmosphere"; nonetheless it
is
possible that during the next decade there will be a considerable
amount of distinguished criticism written by men who have profited
from the risks of their elders and are content to be eclectics rather than
pioneers. Those of us who do not find this prospect of isolated achieve–
ments inspiring should beware of dismissing it too easily. Books continue
to be written by solitary persons, not by teams or tendencies.
These observations find some grounding in Mr. Ian Watt's
The
Rise of the N ouel,
a first-rate work of criticism that would surely have
been impossible without the crossing influences of the various critical
schools of the past few decades, yet is admirably free from the sectarian
dogmatism that has disfigured most of them. Traditional literary scholar–
ship, psychoanalysis, the functional school of modern sociology, Marx–
ism, the close analysis of texts-these and more come into play in
The
Rise of the N ouel,
but as elements that have been assimilated by the
critic's sensibility rather than as "methods" applied with programmatic
intention. Even as one sees this complex of influences behind Mr. Watt's
criticism, it remains a criticism firmly disciplined, secure and single–
voiced. When, for example, he discusses
Robinson Crusoe
as an eco–
nomic myth he inevitably turns to Marx, but not in order to "use"
Marxism as still another device in the critical repertoire. He has read
Marx, learned what he could, kept his head and gone his way, so that
the insights borrowed from Marx become his own possession, insepar–
able from his awareness as a whole. As a result, the usual chatter about
critical approaches becomes irrelevant; what matters is watching a
superior mind at work, sharing in its discoveries and enjoying the
privilege of disagreement.
Mr. Watt has chosen to write about the eighteenth century English
