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PARTISAN REVIEW
never been as fundamental here as it is in England . Whatever the reasons,
class fluidity in this country is greater than it is in England . Writers like
Gissing feel themselves perpetually in transition; what they fear is falling
back into the heap . Gissing's Manchester larceny was not merely a sexual
crime , it was a working-class sexual crime . What Gissing had done , at a most
crucial period in his life , was to assimilate the vices ofa class without managing
to assimilate its innate defenses.
The virtues of Gillian Tindall 's
The Born Exile
are not merely those of
economy and insight. Of all the biographies under discussion here , this is the
most traditional. I am not speaking of its technique or structure, but simply
about the manner in which the narrative, like the narrative of a good novel ,
seems inexorable, so tensile with the guilt and victimization of its subject.
Caught between worlds , a dying Victorianism and an exploding modernism,
Gissing is the child of an inscrutable fate . His art is a triumph, his life a
disaster.
Margaret Drabble's
ArnoldBennett
possesses many of the same virtues.
Ms. Drabble is also a novelist , and like Gillian Tindall she develops Bennett's
life with consummate narrative skill. Like all biographers, she is not without
her faults . Her penchant for speculation can grow irritating; she is most
reluctant to let anything go. Bennett's' 'enthusiasm for private bathrooms in
hotels" must be the result of his lifelong dyspepsia. But few people, even
those who are not dyspeptic , are particularly enthusiastic about sharing bath–
rooms . And Ms. Drabble does not really serve Bennett well when she tries to
defend work she admits is second-rate . Like a lover who turns blemishes into
perfections , she feels obliged to salvage everything. Having informed us that
the story line of a novel " is ridiculous, " she must add, "nevertheless the
novel has a considerable charm."
But indulging the writer's penchant for speculation may simply be the
price one must pay for biography of any kind. And is it unnatural for the
biographer to rate the work higher than the writer's critics? One suspects,
however , that Margaret Drabble is fighting a rear-guard action . Bennett was
an Edwardian writer who was so prodigious as to virtually set himself apart
from criticism. The list of his principal published works, here given in the
bibliography, runs to well over one·hundred separate items, almost all of
them full-length books or plays. And here we discover one of the problems of
literary biography . Bennett today does not seem to be a writer whose value has
been unjustly minimized , even if, as Ms . Drabble writes, he was "more
honest and lasting than Galsworthy, and more perceptive, in many areas,
than Wells. " His talent was limited , and while his life was filled with para–
dox-the shy man who dressed like a dandy, the socialist who relished being
"Mr. Bennett of Cadogan Square"-paradox is rarely integrated into his
