FICTION CHRONICLE
FOUR NOVELS
THE RACK. By A. E. Ellis. Atlantic-Little. Brown. $4.50.
THE OPTIMIST. By Herbert Gold. Atlantic-Little. Brown. $4.50.
MEN DIE. By H.
L.
Humes. Random House. $3.50.
THE CAVE. By Robert Penn Warren. Random House. $4.95.
Mr. H. L. Humes' somewhat starkly titled
Men Die
is
in some
ways the simplest of the works at hand, a kind of allegorical fant–
asy; at the same time, though, it is a technical achievement of dazz–
ling virtuosity. Though put off at first by some of its mannerisms,
I finished by being almost altogether fascinated.
The story draws its materials from one blinding instant, the
explosion of a Navy munitions dump on a Caribbean island, shortly
before the Great War of 1939; in this blast all personnel are de–
stroyed except for five Negrbes imprisoned pending their trial for
mutiny, and the young Lieutenant Sulgrave who is responsible for
them. The novelist, with an ingenuity reminiscent of that displayed
in the demonstrations of topology, explores the antecedents and
consequences of this instant in a series of scenes and meditations.
Thus there are revealed, for example, not only the madness of the
Commander, Hake, which the moment of the explosion puts in the
past, but also some of the circumstances surrounding that madness,
the past of that past, told to Sulgrave by the Commander's widow,
Vannessa, at a time which the moment of the explosion puts in
the
future; past and future,
by
this means, come into a very elegantly
patterned and classical relation with motive, prophecy, idea.
I don't think it's any part of the reviewer's business to tell over
the plot in detail (since I have been unable despite all instruction
to give up a simple pleasure in stories, which I hope some of my
readers share), and
50
shall confine my comment to some generali–
ties about the narration.
