menu_book Chapter 30

Part 30 of Contemporary Reviews of To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. Six Months in the Field of Fiction by Edwin Clarke From The New York Times, 26th June 1927. The present article offers a report on the state of the novel during the past six months, as shown in the work of American and English novelists.

To find a critical attitude that would be all-embracing is manifestly possible for one is confronted by a great variety of attitude and methods. There is today no generally accepted theory of form as applied to the novel. It is a period of experiment. Yet there may be observed a peculiar tendency, a trend toward compression of time, a return

to the classic units with modifying reservations. While the theatre appears to be attempting to break from classical traditions, the novel in some quarters is adapting them to its uses. Notable examples of this tendency are to be noted in Green Forest, the remarkable first novel by Natalie Sedgwick Colby and in the works of Liam O'Flaherty and Virginia Woolf.

This is a happy condition to offset the serious blight of the heavy hand of sociology, for the didactic naturalistic novel is little more than a negative force in pushing the expansion of the novel to such an extent as to bring about a natural reaction from excess. Then too the new consciousness of the post-war period has loosed a flood of smart fiction, an assumed sophistication that has contributed some brightly coloured bubbles.

In spite of all this, the test of the novel still rests upon the appearance of life and truth and the creation of character or story. The laurels for first place among native novel appear to belong to Julia Peterkin for her first novel, Black April. It is a finely conceived book and immediately suggests comparison with the perfectly realised

Time of Man which stood so singularly alone last fall. Mrs Peterkin does not command the fresh resourceful original style of Miss Roberts, but both novels are highly meritorious conceptions of folk material. Mrs Peterkin has created a new field for herself. Black April is an intensive study of an isolated part of the coastlands of South Carolina inhabited

by the blue gum negroes of the rice land plantations. This alien material she has perceived with a hearty comprehension, a warm humanity and excellent restraint. In her technique, Miss Peterkin has reconciled the experimental with the traditional novel. She has adapted the method of the picaresque novel, developing a series of incidents loosely

connected by the thread of narrative and brought them into a harmonious whole by the creation of a dominant character whose influence reacts upon the others. In Black April, the foreman of the plantation, she presents an almost heroic figure. There is posited in the central character and his tragic defeat, the eternal conflict between worldly living and the concepts of religion.

The story deals with the trials and hard fates found among a people who live close to the earth and in direct contact with the elements and elemental emotions. It is an uncommon and notable novel in both craft and substance. The season has been marked by the reappearance of several well-known writers, the sensation of course being Sinclair Lewis's Elmer Gantry, which received more space in the newspapers

than probably any other novel in the history of letters. Booth Tarkington again appeared after a considerable absence. Mrs. Wharton contributed a subtle satire of New York society. Gertrude Atherton turned away from the bestseller and returned to her former historical interests. Anne Sedgwick continued in the genteel tradition.

James Boyd contributed another historical novel of interest, this time the story of a private and the civil war. In the offerings of all these novelists, there is very little in which the past hadn't fully prepared the reader. It remained for Mrs. Peterkin and Mrs. Colby to provide the excitement of the unexpected.

Religion became an inordinately active subject of fiction this year. Sinclair Lewis with his broad, flouting satire naturally was the headliner. Elmer Gantry was a gorgeous, blatant cartoon. Here all the zeal of Mr. Lewis for reform was given vent. He attempted to be fair, to give all sides of the question, but once his creation was

well launched on his career of buffoonery and debauch, one became conscious of an interspersed monologue of the author, giving vent to his own skepticism. The story had many capital bits of sharp caricature and was effective in producing an uproar of controversy. Elmer Gantry was a straw man set up for Mr. Lewis to ridicule.

With the best of Mr. Lewis' character creations, he has no standing. For all the gusto and bounce of the novel, it is inconceivable that anything so facile and obvious will endure, but after one has caught the main idea, the rest of the novel is mere repetition. Quite different was the second novel of Sylvia Townsend Warner, who with gentle irony, a

puckish humour and a rare sense of jest, took her clergyman to the South Sea and there let him discover to his surprise that he never did have a real religious belief. Mr. Fortune's maggot is quite in the tradition of the 18th century satirists. Don Byrne and Irving Bakcheller turning to ancient times right in the manner of the old-fashioned romances.

Mr. Byrne has traced the career of Saul of Tarsus. The story is full of carefully worked up descriptions of the life of the times. His method of stressing the virtues of Paul by running down Peter is perhaps a trifle crude. Mr. Bakcheller's novel tells the tale of the wanderings of Dolis of Colossae.

He skillfully avoided a pious sentimentality. Among the new writers there are a number who have performed with more than promise. After Mrs. Peterkin, the honours go to Mrs. Colby for her brilliantly written Green Forest. This is a modification of the experimental novel which rises above imitation and experiment. In actual passage of time it is limited to the period of an Atlantic crossing, but in

its projection of memory it embraces a lifetime. Several of the characterisations are superb. Behind a limiting and restless point of view, it presents a facility for handling comedy types and situations in a blending of wit and observation. With all its intellectual hardness it has a fresh and rare perception of ironic comedy.

Charlotte Haldane, the wife of the well-known English chemist, offered a satirical speculation upon the hypodermic age of the future. It is a wise and witty book that adroitly plays with ideas. The grotesque visualisation has been ably sustained to emerge in a reductio ad absurdum of modern geneticists.

Half Gods by Murray Sheehan is another fantastic first novel. Mr. Sheehan fashions a tale half real, half fancy, in which a centaur is born on the farm of a family of Missouri hillbillies. Apparently for some reason Mr. Sheehan was self-conscious of his satire and milieu, and his excellent idea was not developed to its full possibilities.

He has, however, the beginnings of a good style, shrewd observation and humour, and has achieved a middle-western study that wasn't corrupted by the drabness of its matter. O. E. Rulfagh, a professor in the North West, calls his Giants in the Earth a modern saga. It is a compelling chronicle of the pioneering days of the last century, a blend of fiction and history.

The combination isn't entirely satisfactory, for, more than a novel, it is a human document of the early days. It offers a vast panorama of the settling of the North West, with the pioneers pitting themselves against the natural elements. It visualises, with stimulating and imaginative force and a simplicity of manner, heroic

behaviour in an age that has disappeared into legend. Distinctly a different type of novel was Springboard by Robert Wolfe. In his hands, the college novel has reached maturity. It is a dignified and sympathetic study of the difficulties of adolescence. Edna Brynner's Andy Brant's Ark is another novel of protest.

A satire on a dominant mother, it is an uneven performance. The family portrayed is an interesting group, but the satire is somewhat forced. Miss Brynner's next novel will be worth watching for. In The Woman on the Balcony, which is a bad title that masks a story of passionate intensity, Rose Kaler has set down against the background of Chicago a discerning account of the trials

of several souls in wedlock. On such a trite and familiar subject, her book is surprisingly refreshing. In Bread and Fire, Charles Walker has presented an autobiographical story of industrial unrest. This novel has a poignant, disturbing quality in its treatment of the curiosity of modern young men to find out what it is all about.

The clever, superficially sophisticated The Red Pavilion by John Gunther showed a talent for narrative in a novel that re-echoes the recent smart fiction. Many of the younger writers showed growth in their latest work. Anne Parrish in Tomorrow Morning concerned herself with the concept of failure due to the difficulty of adjustment to a new order.

It is a more discerning book than The Perennial Bachelor. Issa Glenn's second novel is a document of social interest. Again, her background is the Orient and her story that of a child who is the victim of quarreling parents. The novel suffers from her uncertain treatment of the child.

Struthers Burt has written a novel of contrasts. The Delectable Mountains offers an objection to popular illusions regarding the West. It is a well-organized novel that drowns to a happy end. Somehow Mr. Burt just misses being first rate. Perhaps it is his confident, sane outlook where a touch of madness would put him on

edge. George Hummel, with several capable novels behind him, in his recent appearance was bogged in a sea of inhibitions in his story of a New England woman's frustrated heart. Mrs. Banning, in Pressure, showed growing power in her arraignment of middle-class American society.

Helen Hall, a novelist of growing distinction who frequently is mistaken for the authority on shakes, was represented in a fresh, vigorous story of three generations. Islanders relates the fortunes of a family, the outstanding individual being a woman of rare courage and inquiring mind. This picture of the passing American scene of the last 70 years is a protest against

pushing women into the background of family life when it comes to a decision calling for action. It is a comprehensive novel of arresting interest and well-rounded characters. Red Damask is a worthy successor to Talk. With this book, Miss Saxe is in position to be compared to J.B. Stern.

A German-Jewish family has grown rich in three short generations and is beginning to leave its isolated inter-family life for one of wider scope. Naturally, it is the younger members breaking from the traditional groups who are to be confronted with interracial jealousy and social barriers. The story of Abbey Hall and her difficult sloughs is remarkable.

With wisdom and candour, the novel surmounts the partisanship. With tolerance, it sets down the ancient clash of young and old, Jew and Gentile. A stimulating novel if there ever was one. Percy Marks, in Lord of Himself, has added a sequel to his earlier novel, The Plastic Age.

Mr. Marks is sympathetic and his account of the efforts of his collegians to find themselves is racy but sentimental. Harry Harvies, Cunguy, shows improved technical management. It is a fascinating and colourful account of the mixed-bred women of French China and their European lovers.

The writing of war novels has entered a new stage. Apparently, the period of disillusionment has gone by and humour enters in. Bernard Nason's Doughboys are heroes bursting into wisecracks and slapstick. Three lights from a match, for all its natural swank, is, in its exaggeration, almost in the class with those who found glory at the bottom of every muddy trench.

Mattock by James Stevens, while a tale of a non-combat division, gave a different version. It is the pathetic record of a moron from Kansas trying to be a Christian American soldier and a good fellow to his comrades at the same time. The real talk and stuff of army life is in this novel. The historical novel seems to be reviving.

James Boyd, in Marching On, views the civil war through the eyes of a poor farm boy in the ranks and obtains a new perspective. This novel is a faithful recreation of the period of struggle as it appeared to the ordinary individual shut away from the gaudy moments of melodrama. In Forever Free, Honore Wilsey Morrow has written a satisfying biographical novel of

the life of Lincoln up to the time of the Emancipation Proclamation. Evelyn Scott's study of the pre-war South in Migrations is from another point of view. She is concerned with the influence of ideas upon Southern society. Her novel is pungent and fragmentary. It might be the start of a several volume novel designed to show the South moving West

to various urges. In its characters and picturesque detail, it is attractively engaging. In her new novel, Mrs. Averton reflects the life of ancient Greece. She has told the love life of Pericles and Aspasia against the rich Hellenic background of Greece's Golden Age.

Mrs. Averton prefers the brilliant figure and in Aspasia she has a character of high talent. She appears the modern unconventional woman acting contrary to the accepted mores in living with Pericles who could not marry her having a wife already. Pericles too comes alive in the novel.

Averton sees him as an ardent lover, a sorrowing father and an orator pleading magnificently in defense of Aspasia. The characters of Socrates, Sophocles, Phidias and Alcibiades are lifelike and add to the glamour of the Attic scene. This brings us to the performances of some of the established names in the novel.

In Twilight Sleep, Mrs. Wharton has written one of her most technically perfect stories. A wealthy woman masks herself behind a complacently busy life of social interest in order that she may never come to close quarters with life. The inevitably tragic episode occurs and is detachedly observed. It is a gracefully written, hard, relentless, ironic study of the best people and their

folly. Mr. Tarkington in The Plutocrat makes a hero of a babbit. This novel is Mr. Tarkington's answer to those who go abroad and knock their native land. The greater part of the book is concerned with the behavior of a boisterous businessman abroad, a hearty fellow in whom Mr. Tarkington sees much of the heroic stuff of which the

old Romans were made. In Dear Old Templeton, Miss Alice Brown has written an old-fashioned novel in her leisurely manner. A man on in years attempts to break away and do what he likes himself, only to discover that his family are all too busy doing what they like to give him a chance.

It has a quiet, understanding way and simple charm. Again, Anne Douglas Sedgwick contrasts the civilizations of the French and English. The old Countess is an interesting study in character drawing, if not greatly distinguished. Her dexterity turns an odd and extremely incredible romantic into an acceptable, even sympathetic, character.

Of the British writers, the best work of the year has been turned in by the younger writers, just reaching full maturity. Among these, Liam O'Flaherty is a writer of astonishing modern style and power. He has been influenced by Sing and Joyce and probably the continent, as his work is out of the English tradition.

He is concerned with the obsession of terror and flight. His Mrs. Gilhoolie is prodigious. It is more than a psychological study of a well-known Irish type. It is alive, fused by the rampant energy that blends imaginative and realistic detail into a narrative of such strength as to suggest the possession of nothing less than genius.

The revelation of character is a deep probing of the dark places of the heart and mind. A novel marking considerable change of style is F. Brett Young's Love Is Enough, a story of the English countryside that will make any Englishman homesick in far-off places. With such a background, he has traced minutely the life of a gentlewoman from birth to early autumn.

Mr. Young's chronicle of the passing of three generations of two English families is full of full-length portraits that are in the best tradition of the English novel. The shorter novel of David Garnett's, Go She Must, has also the background of England's garden vistas. He no longer traffics with the fables of man and animals, but the note of fantasy with

its varying imaginative implications illuminates the adventures of this odd young woman living in a country vicarage. Another novel of the country's entry is Row Forest by Anthony Pride. It is a well-balanced study of the changing order. the impoverished landed family, in this instance of Row Forest, in debt through their elders,

refuse to slip into graceful decay and abandon their ancestral home to upstarts. There is hearty blood to this family and a real struggle is made which is contrary to the conventional tale of the broken-down nobleman, a novel of well-drawn characters and carefully sustained interest. The fiction of Mrs. Delafield has recently shown a steady advance.

In Jill, a post-war study of London, she has presented a most interesting group of people in sharp contrast to each other. With dexterity she has commanded a divided interest in her characterisation of a hard sophisticated young couple made rotters by the war and of a young woman whose simplicity and native shrewdness mark her as a child of nature.

In the Allinghams, May Sinclair has told of a family of children being inhibited by their old-fashioned parents. As a family of children, they are incredibly unlike each other and the victims of Freud rather than fate. Storm Jameson has turned back to the time of wooden ships.

Her heroine in the lovely ship becomes the dominant factor in a shipyard and is too strong a character to find any satisfaction in her lovers. But feminism in the lovely ship warps not only the heart and mind of the heroine but also the ending of the novel. The early years of clipper building are picturesquely described.

The gift of Miss Warner's Mr. Fortune's maggot is a deft compression of method. With almost as much topsy-turvy fantasy as Chesterton, in transmuting the commonplace into things fantastic, she brings Robinson Crusoe up to date in about the same manner that Chesterton would reverse the modern into the dress of the middle ages. The spiritual adventure of Mr. Fortune in the South Sea is a comedy of perfected storytelling.

The paradoxical and genial Chesterton has worked his magic spell again in the return of Don Quixote. He has returned to the manner of his Man Who Was Thursday, Man Alive, and Napoleon of Notting Hill. He stages a revolution against present-day industrial life by putting England into Lincoln

Green. His robust humour, the spell of his fancy, make practical jokes of maternity and bring chivalry, romance and beauty to replace a hard and dirty civilisation. Virginia Woolf is the exponent of the experimental fiction in England. Commanding a subtle and resilient style, she has carried her experiment to the point of

achievement. To the Lighthouse is a novel of more complex construction than the previous Mrs. Dalloway. The stream of consciousness, of reverie, is employed in an analysis of domestic psychology. Mrs. Woolf's novels are written out of the intellect. For all her versatile craft, she seems to have reached the limitation of this method

and still leaves something to be desired. She stands as the chief figure of modernism in England and must be included with Joyce and Proust in the realisation of experimental achievements that have completely broken with tradition. A posthumous novel by the late Olive Schreiner has evoked the memory of her African protest.

From Man to Man was left unfinished by Olive Schreiner, but she had been considering it and working on it for nearly fifty years. It is the story of two sisters and sexual injustice. But with feminism and modern life, it is already dated. It is saved from being solely a thesis novel by the bitter sincerity and ability to evoke

memorable incidents in clearly shown pictures. The difference in attitude is obvious when one turns to Pauline Smith's tale of Little Carew. The Beadle is a tale of imposed simplicity and compassionate feeling. It projects the boars as they never have been done before, a homely kindly folk of

simple fate living close to the soil. It tells a story of youthful love and a visiting stranger that is free of protest and moves with insight and understanding of character. It marks Miss Smith as a young writer of potentiality and a fine performance. The historic deeping in Doomsday appears to be nothing more than a competent popular novelist.

W.B. Maxwell continues to mix up modern life with Victorian sensibility in novels where plot dominates the material. In The Marionette, Edwin Muir has evoked fantasy in his pathetic and precisely etched chronicle of the tragedy of a father and son. Tompton McKenzie in Rogues and Vagabonds turns back to the 19th century and writes

of stage folks in a long, diffuse novel. It is something in the manner of his early novels, but strive as he may, the old spark and fire of them is not here. End of Part 30 End of Contemporary Reviews of To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

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