BOOKS
151
trust, as he says in
The Classic
(1975), in "the possibility of effective
ethical choices."
Kermode's own readings here in the Gospels and in selected
modern novels are often brilliant. He is particularly good on the
knotted texture of Mark's narrative and on the ways in which Matthew,
working in the tradition of Midrash, elaborates and deepens the
character of Judas. He has some striking things to say about the
apocalyptic and figural significance of the codex, which the early
Christians preferred to the unfolding Jewish role, and which becomes
the mold of the novel. Together with Robert Alter's articles on the Old
Testament, this book should encourage more literary critics to pick up
their Bibles.
HOWARD EILAND
THE LONG LIFE OF MODERNISM
FACES OF MODERNITY: AVANT-GARDE, DECADENCE, KITSCH. By
Matel Callnescu. Indiana University Press. $15.
FIVE TEMPERAMENTS: ELIZABETH BISHOP, ROBERT LOWELL,
JAMES MERRILL, ADRIENNE RICH, JOHN ASHBERY. By David
Kalstone. Oxford University Press. $10.95.
FOUR POSTWAR AMERICAN NOVELISTS: BELLOW, MAILER,
BARTH, AND PYNCHON. By Frank D. McConnell. University of
Chicago Press. $15.
During the decade that followed World War II, we in the
English-speaking world came to feel that a great literary period was
coming to a close. The most gigantic figures-Lawrence, Yeats,
Joyce-were dead. Others-Hemingway, Faulkner, Eliot, Pound–
were still alive and productive; then they too died, in that order. The
younger writers of the forties and fifties were turning the innovations
of the masters into a new academic style; or else they were abandoning
the pretense of innovation-like Auden in his later work, or Philip
Larkin. The energies of the age were largely devoted to criticism ("The
Age of Criticism, " Randall Jarrell called it in a condemnatory essay),
because the time had come to assimilate the vast accumulation of new
treasure before we could move on.
