Affable Hawk
,Criticism. By Desmond MacCarthy. (Putnam. 78. 6d.) :MR. MACCARTHY is known to his friends, who now number :several millions, as a conversationalist. His voice was at first :heard over limited areas, such as college courts and drawing ?rooms ;- then, by the happy invention of the wireless, it flew into any locality which had the sense to turn it on, and can be heard to-day in highly non-academic circles. It floats across jiotel lounges; Air Force barracks, watchmen's shelters, per- ,
;suasive, civilized, apologetic. "I have been reading . , . "
it..says, or "I have been thinking of . ." and inattention becomes impossible. The watchman May grunt, the airmen :may shout out "binder," the lounge ladies say "Oh not that :Justin what's his name again about books," yet they cannot but listen to Mr. MacCarthy's voice. Whatever he says is fascinating.- And whatever -lie prints becOmes fascinating .When: we supply (as we must Occasionally) the • vocal accom- paniment. He is a talker rather than a writer, and that is -one cif the reasons why it is difficult to write about him.
'1, • He modestly describes the volume under review as
literary journalism." It is scarcely. that. It has none of the journalistic demerits—Bo shallowness or pertness, none of, the deficiencies in temper or education that are inseparable -from' punch. Nor has it the journalistic merit of formal .neatness. These little articles do not lie quite right in their little plates. They loll to one side or end abruptly, as if the 'Writer had lost interest in his theme and left its development to the reader. Even the longer articles—like the one on .Proust----have this defect (for in written stuff it is a defect) and -in the shorter Ones (e.g. in " Literary Booms ") the abruptness is almost painful. One turns the page, agog for more mischief and wisdom, and, alas, all is over already.
- This is one's only complaint against the book, and if one has -read it with sympathy and understanding, one realizes how un- -important such complaints are. Mr. MacCarthy himself never shakes the mistake of scolding people for not being what they are 'not; SPeakiiii Of Saitiisel Butler he says "'The fifvoiirite virtue of the humorist is always toleration," and it is his own ; virtue. He tries to see the best in every writer, even in Miss . Gertrude Stein, but (and this is an important point) his stand- ; point is not so much Christian charity as pagan common sense. Why not look for the best in people ? It is foolish to look for anything else. But don't do it in order to display your own kind-heartedness. He mistrusts "niceness," both in himself and others, it is dangerously easy, and one of the accusations he brings against popular critics of to-day is that they exploit their own charms. Butter your authors, and a bit will be left over for you ! No! No butter for Mr. MacCarthy. He is ' tolerant but not at all easy going ; he never yields, as Arnold ' Bennett did, to the temptation of making things jolly all around and of giving young writers a leg up even if they don't deserve it. His integrity is unassailable. It is one of the
pillars on which his critical edifice is reared—good temper of the Samuel Butler sort -being the other.
Though his approach is philosophic it would he a mistake_to burden him with any particular doctrine. He does, not bcking to the class of critics represented by Matthew Arnold aild Tolstoy who try to discover the tests by which good lite,ratare can be recognized. Nor does he belong to the far more valuable class which Coleridge adorns : the critics who send.us hack in excitement to the original. He is neither , a teacher nor an inspirer. What he does give us (besides much incidental pleasure) is an improved equipment: to help the reader to watch himself is part of the function of .criticism as I under- stand it" he writes, and after reading him we are better fitted to cope with literature generally, and also with non-literature, sometimes called life. He educates us by the only eflicient method—the indirect—and to be in his company is to acquire civilization. As has been suggested, the full quality of his personality does not come out in the written word ; his voice is an integral part of it, and his employment by the B.B.C. is greatly to the credit of that many-sided institution.
Combining as he does the candour that was Cambridge with knowledge of the world, Mr. MacCarthy offers a fascinating problem to the analyst. There is an undergraduate freshness about him, a disinterested ardour for the truth, and yet he is quite an old bird. "Affable Hawk" he styled himself, and the title is apt ; he has seen from his perch many reputations rise and fall ; he has noted the contradiction that underlies the simplest statements and can say of truth itself that "you can no more sit domin and tell it than you can write a poem " ; he has learnt about the structure of society ; he has visited in country houses and dallied with nobs and snobs. Why, in spite of so much wariness and sophistication, has he cared to follow the gleam ? The answer is that though he knows the world he is not knowing about it, and it is knowingness, not knowledge, that rots a critic and is indeed the spiritual death of anyone. He often writes as if he were tired, but he is never slick ; that dreadful enamel which many men daub around as they get on in life—that fatal pot of enamel—or is it colour wash '?-----has been placed by a benign fairy just beyond his reach.
-There are twenty-nine reprinted articles in this volume— which is the second of a series. They deal with contemporary writers such as Santayana, Yeats, David Garnett and Joyce or with writers of the past who have affinities with contemporary literature such as Richardson, Defoe, Donne, Browning and Beckford. There are also some articles of a general nature : ." Notes on the Novel" is particularly bright, and Mr. Mac. -Carthy's own novel in the style of Mr. Hugh Walpole, beginning " The Rev. William Neggit sat at his kneehole table," is so alluring that one wishes he would continue it for ever.
E. M. FORSTER.
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