mans, 6s.) contains both delight and disappointment for those who
enjoy The Bridge of San Luis Rey. According to the publisher's advertisement, Mr. Wilder finds in the " short dialogue a form which satisfies his passion for compression," but which does not always satisfy the reader's passion for understanding. Indeed, in many of the fanciful -little scenes he has crushed his own meaning to death. Some of the Three- Minute Plays, as he calls them, belong to his extreme youth. Three-minute parables they are in reality. The last four only have been written within a year and a half. " Almost all are religious, but religious in that dilute fashion that is a believer's concession to a contemporary standard of good manners. But these four plant their flag as boldly as they may." Take away both concession and compression, and we have a small residuum of something we can only call poetic prose of very high quality
indeed.
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