BOO KS
717
he encumbers his essentially frail material with a heavy apparatus
of the oblique and surrealist; and that he allows the "anti-realism,"
in
which he takes such innocent delight, to decline into a spectacle
of the irrational and horrifying. Mr. Hawkes succeeds so well in
these secondary elaborations that he reminds one of a surrealist
painter turning out nightmares with the untroubled ease of a
portrait painter doing society ladies. But arrested images, however
powerful and scarifying, are not literature.
It
is a pity that Mr.
Hawkes is so self-indulgent; gifted beyond dispute and disciplined
in narrative skills, he ought to forget his theories and write a story
with one unbreakable rule:
If it sounds weird, cut it out.
The Crossing Point
is mildly interesting, in the way a family
album might be, or even an anthropological report: which is per–
haps the explanation for the excessive enthusiasm of the uninformed
English reviewers. It describes with apparent accuracy Anglo–
Jewish society in a London suburb, establishing beyond dispute how
bitter and destructive the pressure of the dominant culture can be,
for those in an ethnic minority who try to retain their distinctive-
THE TRANSATLANTIC REVIEW
Essay Contest:
Fo r
writers under 30, on essay of
2000 words or less (strictly aca–
demic treatises are discouraged).
Entries to be in by December I.
PRIZES:
One 1st ....•.$125.00
Two 2nd ......$ 75.00 each
Pleose send essoy with stamped return
envelope to:
Transatlantic Essay Contest
Box
3348
Grand Central Post Office
New York 17, New York
Transatlantic Review Issue Nu.mber 7:
with Solvotore Quosimodo, Bobette
Deutsch, Alfred Chester, Kimon Lalos.
.and . others. Also prize-winner of British
short story contest.
~
John Hall Wheelock
THE GARDENER
AND
OTHER POEMS
A collection of entirely new
poems, the finest work of his
long career.
.
$3.00
SCRIBNERS
POETS OF
TODAY VIII
Presentin~
Albert Herzmg
John M.
Ridland
David R. Slavitt
Selected and edited, with an
.introductory essay, by John
Hall Wheelock.
$8.95
