"PASTICHE "—AND MR. MeFEE.
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
Sin,—Your reviewer, who dealt recently with Mr. McFee's novel, Command, is entitled to the gratitude of your readers for his objection to the allegation of pastiche so loosely levelled at any writer whose style, even superficially, appears similar to that of another author of renown. Captain Macedoine's Daughter, also by Mr. McFce, was the subject of similar charges by reason of its presumed likeness to a work of Mr. Conrad.
After all, the form of a novel, and the arrangement of words and phrases in it, are no more than the envelope in which the author's thought is despatched to the reader. How many authors who phrase like the late Mr. Henry James can be said to be imitators of that at times rather obscure master ? The phrasing may be his, but the discoveries, the thought, are not in the phrasing. Apple and currant jelly may surely be strained through the same jelly-bag without losing their essentially different qualities.
Casuals of the Sea, an earlier work of Mr. McFee's, may, like his later novels, show that he is an admirer of Mr. Conrad, as are most of his fellow novelists ; yet this is no pastiche, but an obvious child of its author's own brain. If anyone troubles to read it carefully without prejudice, he will find ib difficult to identify characteristic Conradian thought with the result of Mr. McFee's mental processes.
If Mr. McFee has been successful in capturing some of Conrad's supremely beautiful turns of phrase, that magic, phrasing that would make a Conrad a work of art, even though it had no vestige of form or plot, who will blame him ? It is a feat in itself. Let us admit that, in so doing, Mr. ilileFee shows his excellent taste rather than condemn him for being what he is not—a merely slavish eopyist.—I am, Sir, &c., JOHN HASLETTE VenEy. 21 Vancouver Mansions, Edgware.
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