BOOKS
FICTION CHRONICLE
FREE FALL. By W illiam G olding. Harcourt, Bro ce. $3.95.
A HERITAGE AND ITS HISTORY. By
I.
Compton-Burnett. Simon
&
Schuster, $3 .75.
FROM THE HAND OF THE HUNTER. By John Braine. Houghton
Mifflin, $3.75.
THE LO NELINESS OF THE LONG-DISTANCE RUNNER. By Alan
Sillitoe. Knopf, $3 .50.
RITUAL IN THE DARK. By Colin W ilson. Houghton Mifflin, $4.95.
ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS. By Colin Macinnes. MacMillan Co., $3.75.
If
the British ever ran an export drive in quality fiction
they would find themselves depending heavily upon some of the
writers in this list, and without Golding and Compton-Burnett they
would have small chance of success. The others are not quite
in
that class, but Braine and Sillitoe represent the sophisticated pro–
vincialism which is a current selling point, and Macinnes is a per–
ceptive reporter of actual English life, especially among the minors
and immigrants. So there is a lot of British culture in this list, and
I wish I could say I liked the look of it more than I do.
William Golding I take to be the most important English
novelist since the 'twenties, an astonishingly dedicated and original
artist driven on by a compassion which only in the matter of tech–
nical control becomes an almost cruel severity.
Free Fall
is his
fourth novel, and I run counter to my own sense of what is prob–
able or decent in calling it a failure. Golding always insists on the
simplicity of his books, but it is a simplicity of a kind that makes
for critical complexity, and nobody could hope to get much out of
this novel at one reading. Yet, after three readings, I still cannot
quite take it. In all that relates to the shape of the "myth"-as he
likes to call it-Golding's skill is what it was. Technically,
Free Fall
