598
PARTISAN REVIEW
odious and sterile, so lacking in affection or sympathy" that Mr. Geis–
mar doubts whether Jones is "capable of describing ordinary human
relationships at all." These are representative specimens of Mr. Geis–
mar's critical vocabulary, of his tact and tone; and it is clear that the
pleasure that he gets from reading seems to be exceeded only by his
sense of the intelligence, honesty and seriousness of the subjects of his
reviews. And if one feels that the coo of the sucking dove is occa–
sionally drowned out by the whine of the bottom-dog, one should re–
call that many of these reviews were published in
The Nation,
because,
as Mr. Geismar says,
«The Nation
was the only magazine that would
publish them."
Finally there is Mr. Geismar's prose, which is as distinctive in its
way as Mr. Kenner's. It is lively and precise, and scouts all stale or
fuzzy metaphors-thus, "Our writers do indeed lack a spiritual pur–
pose, which in former generations was accompanied by a broad social
base.. . ." Mr. Geismar must here be referring to the pedestal on which
Ozymandias's feet remained. And there is this:
The theme of sibling rivalry is recurrent and dominant in the Old
Testament itself. It is subject to many levels of interpretation, from the
moral, ethical, or social import, to the deepest levels of psychology, where
both Mann and Freud found it so fascinating.
I find something wondrous in the picture of Mann and Freud skin–
diving together in the unconscious, searching for "imports," Mr. Geis–
mar's metaphor for spanish gold. Or there is this, my personal favorite:
As in almost all of Dos Passos' fiction, the human core of his philo–
sophical concepts is absent. Perhaps the central deficiency in his political
thought rests after all, upon a psychobiological failure.
Only an impenitent radical would have the courage publicly to rebel
against the reactionary dictates of style-no one but a deeply com–
mitted progressive could deal so progressively with sense and metaphor,
would refuse this loyally to conform to the repressive class and caste
concepts of the English language.
If
Mr. Kenner speaks from the right and Mr. Geismar from the
left, then Harry Levin is at the center, the dead center. Mr. Levin,
however, is really beyond party strife, and the political metaphor is
not very pertinent. Mr. Levin lives out in the great world. He is a kind
of literary Christian Dior, dealing almost exclusively in current, high–
priced fashionable ideas; and his literary creations are like Dior's models,
objects, devices, for putting on and taking off these attitudes as
if
