030
PETER BROOKS
THE MODERN ELEMENT
THE TURN OF THE NOVEL. By Alan Friedman. Oxford. $0.50.
THE PASSIVE VOICE. By Harold Kaplan. Ohio University Press. $5.00.
JOSEPH CONRAD AND THE FICTION OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY. By
Edward Said. Harvard University Press. $4.95.
DESIRE, DECEIT, AND THE NOVEL. By Rene Girard. Translated
by
Yvonne Freccero. Johns Hopkins University Press. $0.95.
THE LIMITS OF METAPHOR. By James Guetti. Corne!1. $0.50.
A community of faith is apparent in these recent studies of
the novel: Conrad, Lawrence and Faulkner compose the Trinit:,:; Mel–
ville, James, Hardy, Forster and Joyce are anci llary angels of \'arying
magnitude. Hardly an audacious pantheon: a ll of these studies arc con–
cerned, not with the contempo!-ary, hut with the roots of our modernism,
the most recent clearly definable "great tradition". One might surmise
that a return to these great moral psychologists represented a somewhat
reactionary gesture, a refusal of new a\'ant-gardisl1ls, more radical ques–
tionings of the placc of character, psychology, mO\'emen t and narrative
ill the novel. And yet what is most notable about the books by Guetti,
Kaplan, Friedman and (in this case working with a Eu ropean Gmon)
Girard is their refusal of direct allegiance to the Masters: their attitudes
are characterized by uncertainty, questioning, suspicion, to the extent
that in the best cases their books become inte rrogations of their subjects,
and of the novel itself. And of
criticism
as well: there is an evident
refusal to remain within the ideal humility of the New Critic. an
impatience with explication and r·xcr;esis. a commitment to liter,lture
as an act of consciousness engaged with the world
-:1
commitment
which entails a kind of person:,] struggle with the lessons of the :r-lasters.
and an attempt to wurk mme or less ambitious persona l r.ritical syn–
theses, imaginative systems which want to break ou t
[IO,OJ
"literary
rriticism" to something else.
To take the simplest case first: in
The Turn of the Novel,
Alan Fried–
man starts ["om
<l
1)['1'1 eption about the structure of mooern llm'cls: that
they are notably "open" in their resolutions. that no (".l'! lt or final
recognition comes to close off what he calls the "stream of
conscience."
The phrase i. perhaps somc\\hat balh:l:'OUS, but accurate and important:
Friedman cf)ntinually reminds us that the noveJ is about ethical ex-
