114
HOWARD NEt.4EROV
the novel, which is as far removed from everyday human life as
would be something taking place under the sea. Their vividness,
or the quantity of detail in which they are described, may provoke
but never satisfy our desire (leaving to one side masturbation,
which is a remedy neither more nor less outside the realm of fiction
than a man's being moved by a novel to go in to his wife). Since
our technologists have not yet enabled us
to
feel every hair on that
bearskin
rug, the criterion of sensuous vividness
is
brought into
question, and with it is brought into question also the part played
by detail of
all
sorts, not only sexual, in fiction.
As
to sexuality
in
particular, it
is
the monstrosity not only in love, but in writing
about love, that the will is infinite and the execution confined, that
the desire is boundless and the act a slave to limit. The writer's
freedom to indulge himself in these descriptions-which have, most
often, a remarkable similarity one to another-mayor may not
be
good for him. But my impression
is
that it is not altogether good for
the art he practices, that the increase in the quantity of sexual de–
tail is but a special case of the proliferation of detail throughout
(flawing Mr. Warren's book, destroying Mr. Gold's); and that the
development of a separate art form of nipple-description, or tit-wit,
while it will probably not be the death either of sex or the novel,
i~
not necessarily in itself the demonstration of great artistic powers,
and may even become a great bore.
Nothing I have said should be taken as intending the least
the least infringement on the artist's right to do just as he damn
pleases.
The Rack,
by A. E. Ellis (I have been told this is a pseu–
donym) portrays the long sufferings of a young student, Paul Dave–
nant,
in
a French tuberculosis sanatorium called Les Alpes. It is a
very
grim
book, having often the air of being not so much a fiction,
and also a
very
funny one. In this unfamiliar area, the massive sup–
port of medical detail (not of sexual detail, though there is a love
affair) seems entirely relevant and functional; and in fact, though
massive, this detail is not quantitatively so much; it
is
only exact.
Through Paul Davenant's sufferings, which owe as much to
