176
HOWARD NEMEROV
ing motion to fulfilment of its design. I may mention especially
two splendid scenes, one in which a surprise fire drill
in
the midst
of inspection brings on disaster, and another,
in
which the Com–
mander exposes to Sulgrave not only himself but an uproarious exe–
gesis of history as a mystical and prophetic cipher. A marvelous
talent is at work
in
these places.
About other matters I am less happy. The introduction of the
woman Vannessa brings about a loss
in
clarity, a certain queasily
erotic sentimentalizing of the story, and the making of some con–
nections which strike me as forced.
I should mention, though, that I am
not
criticizing the style
in which the woman's reflections are set forth, that is, in a series of
double-column thoughts and comments on the thoughts which in–
deed at first resemble the poetry of a mad book-keeper. On first
seeing these, I was prepared to be outraged. But since we seem to
be at present in a period of automatic condemnation of anything
which looks like a "device," I had better record my later impres–
sion that all this worked out quite well as a convincing imitation of
the process of her distracted thoughts.
Mr. Humes has attempted something very wonderful indeed.
My feelings against the accomplishment have to do with some few
signs of looseness and padding, and with a certain trailing away
toward the end, a weakness of resolution attending his concentra–
tion on the love affair between the widow and the young man.
These faults, however- and they may be faults only, or mostly, to
that strict view one takes when called upon to "criticize" something
-scarcely diminish my admiring appreciation of his beautiful work.
Robert Penn Warren's
The Cave
resembles Mr. Humes' book
in one essential way, that is, that people apparently unrelated, or
related
in
apparently superficial ways, are brought into radical rela–
tion with one another by means of a single situation,
in
this in–
stance that of a young man trapped in a cave. It is an incidental
re–
semblance, perhaps, that the single situation has to do,
in
both
books, with something underground, with ideas of mortality and
mystery associated with the earth. But here the differences begin.
Mr. Warren has here, as always in his novels and
his
narrative
