THE NEW NIHILISM
581
tor about Mom's apple pie. The novel raises the question of whether
such a man can be relied upon to guide the fortunes of others, and after
making all the necessary concessions (and a few gratuitous ones as
well) to the opposing camp, it answers in the affinnative. Not, mind
you, a strong affinnative; only a "civilized" one, full of "tragic am–
bivalence."
Buechner is saying that the inability to commit oneself passionately
can still be regarded as a positive value: he is on the side of those
who believe in the intrinsic superiority of what I have shorthandedly
called the skeptical empiricist temper. But notice how weak and de–
fensive his tone is by comparison with the elation that accompanied this
position a few years ago. "Civilization" in Buechner's sense has clearly
lost the power to generate even a surface enthusiasm by now. It seems
to be all played out.
George P. Elliott's first novel,
Parktilden Village/
is a much better
book than
The Return of Ansel Gibbs;
indeed, Elliott seems to me one
of the most promising new figures to have appeared on the literary
scene in a long time. He writes with that air of cool judicious detach–
ment that is now universally recognized as one of the signatures of seri–
ous fiction in this period, but after reading a few pages of
Parktilden
Village,
you become pleasantly aware of the absence of portentous
solemnity in the tone, and you begin to see that for once the cool
judiciousness is doing something more than calling your attention to
the author's su:btlety and good taste: it is working to define a critical
attitude toward the main character. This bland and pleasant young so–
ciologist is ultimately to be shown as capable of the most vicious irre–
sponsibility and the most heedless cruelty. But we soon understand that
Elliott's intention is not to indict the individual Hazen; he is attacking
the whole culture personified by Hazen for breeding emotional sterility
and moral emptiness-in short, for having no values. For the purposes
of a polemic against the "scientific" or "positivistic" view of life, Hazen
is well conceived. He is tall, handsome, and affable in manner, a kind
of human counterpart to the shiny, comfortable, and efficient unifonnity
of the apartments in the California housing development where he lives;
except for those habits in himself which are susceptible of being affected
by an act of conscious detennination (he is a great maker of resolu–
tions) , he dismisses all self-confrontation as wasteful and meaningless;
and he refers everything in his experience to neat categories, refusing to
be
bothered with nice discriminations. For all this, however, Hazen is
blood brother to some of the less amiable elements in American life, his
2. Beacon. $3.50.
