FICTtON CHRONICLE
183
advertising, as automobiles become "Detroit's grinning chromium
colossi." So too in epigrams: "Love is a consumer product for cer–
tain marriages, like a detergent or new can opener," introducing a
passage of psychological generalities of the text book
type:
"Con-.
sequently these women feel a driving impatience, an anger and thrill
of mighty assertion ...
n
Indeed, .the ambition of wisdom becomes
sometimes so overpowering that the author cannot resist introduc–
ing his scenes with ·the universal maxim which each one will ex–
emplify: "There is one time in a man's life when he can do any–
thing; there is one time when he can do nothing. For Burr Fuller
these two times came on the same day." And so into the episode?
Not quite. Into pages of reflections which, by this time, have more
and more the apparent function of providing a
resume
which will
tell the author where he has got to.
Despite some demonstration of narrative skill, this book is upon
the whole dull and pretentious, overweighted with its commentary
on itself, and exasperatingly smug in an attitude of moral rightness
which the author is unable or unwilling to state unequivocally or
bring into any relation with his story.
I may introduce here a brief scholium on sex in the novel at
present. Mr. Warren and Mr. Gold, and to a much lesser degree
Mr. Humes, exhibit their characters as preoccupied in the most
explicit way with the sexual equipment of men and women, espe-·
cially women.
Let us note, first, that they are perfectly free to do this. And
let us note, second, that I do not dispute their right to do it. And,
third, that I do not deny that human beings, and perhaps especially
male human beings, are very often thus preoccupied.
All these disclaimers because any hint that one might even
ac~
cidentally sympathize with the Postmaster General in any way on
these matters will bring up quite naturally-dear God, naturally!–
the suspicion of one's being either impotent or in some more co'm–
plicated way queer. Accepting this risk, there is another element I
should like to consider.
It is that all these thoughts of lust, feelings-up, and copula–
tions take place not in real life but in an .ideal realm, the realm of
i
