Fiction
Dangling Man. By Saul Be/low. (John Lehmann. 8s. 6d.)
Dangling Man, by Saul Bellow, which I commend with enthusiasm to the intelligent, is by no means holiday entertainment for the casual reader of any new novel. It is a serious piece of writing by an American, whose first published work it appears to be. It has held this reader in sympathy and interest for many hours, and I
,close it knowing that I shall remember it and watch for the author's .future work—than which no routine reviewer of fiction can say handsomer. And I say it with gratitude. Before we discuss its spirit, let us outline the form of this book. It is very simple. It is a diary running from December, 1942, to April, 1943. This diary is kept by a young man in Chicago, who, having been signed up for the Army, has had to give uphis civilian job, and is waiting, in a pause between two lives. The delays and formalities of drafting are on his nerves, and the loss of his job makes it necessary for him meantime, and he cannot guess for how long, to live on the earnings of his wife. They have had to leave their apartment and live in one room in a boarding-house. The weather is cold ; he has nothing to do ; he is introspective and well-read. So he sets down the thoughts, conversations and observations of the sad period, _and in the last entry of the diary, April 9th, 1943, his last civilian day, he says : "I am no longer to be held accountable for myself ; I am grateful for that. I .am in .other hands, relieved of self-determina- tion, freedom cancelled."
That is the shape of the book. Its content is of the kind to madden the hearty and the extrovert. It is the search of the indi- vidual for himself ; in no sense of self-protectiveness, or. with any idea that his life; his earthly span, is more imPortant than any other or to be guarded more than any other against earthly chances and terrors. But he looks within for his centre, and seeks to under- stand it in the light of his reactions to what he sees; undergoes and takes from external life. This diarist is an egoist to good purpose,- and he writes shamelessly from as far in as he can get, within his isolated spirit. He is lonely, and understands and welcomes loneli- ness, yet cannot adjust it gracefully to the outward, automatic parts of life, and cannot indeed himself entirely undertake to live by it "The quest,- -I am beginning to think . . . Whether it leads us to thievery, slanghter, sacrifice, the quest is one and the same. All the striving is for one end: . . . But it seems -to me that its final end- is the desire for pure freedom. We are all drawn towards the same craters of the spirit—to know what we are for, to know our purpose, to seek grace." I cannot go 'on quoting to give the cold and serious quality of this young 'anther's mind ; but 1 sugkeq to the uncertain that they read in this book the passage which begins in the second paragraph of page 67 and goes on through page 68. If they are attracted to the individual conflict indicated there they will be in sympathy with this book. If not, so be it ; but let them not read it to mock. Here are some reflections at a party in Chicago: "And it came to nig all at once that the human purpose of these occasions had always been to free the charge of feeling in the pent heart ; and that, as animals instinctively .'sought salt or lime, we, too, flew together at this need as we had at Eleusis, with rites and dances, and at other high festivals and corroborees to witness pains and tortures, to give our scorn, hatred and desire temporary liberty and play. Only we did these things without grace or mystery, lacking the forms for them and, relying on drunkenness, assassinated the Gods in one another and shrieked in vengefulness and hurt. I frowned at this dreadful picture."
I have little space left, but I praise this -new author for taking imaginative fiction back, as has done his brilliant contemporary -and fellow-countrywoman, Eudora Welty, to its trtie origin, the isolated
heart, the questioning, separate human soul. -
Three Colours of Time is a long, well-made biographical novel of the life of Stendhal. Very solid with everything in and all soberly and readably arranged. Those unacquainted with the varied events which made Henri Beyle .what he became could do .worse than correct that ignorance here ; but some Wilt question the novelistic device and wonder why on earth Mr. Vinogradov did not. use all this fine material and his own powers of order and understanding in direct biography.
The Angel kith the Trumpet, by Ernst Lothar, the distinguished Viennese novelist now 'living in America, is a large' full chronicle of upper-middle-Class life: in Vienna from 1888 to the Anschluss. It strikes the reader as-careful, 'honest and accurate but it is• also richly Picturesque and-often attractively humorous. This 'reader was, puzzled' by the introdan into the famous story of Mayerling and' the suicide' of Prinoe'r'Riidolph of a new and somewhat dis- illuSioning thread, and desired to know how much of fiction this new story is But the whole familY history of the Alt % wealthy piano-makers, and in particular of Hans Alt, who in middle life becomes a hero Of the Austrian underground movement, flows masterfully along, and is sure to enthral great numbers of readers.
KATE O'BRIEN.
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