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University Daily Kansan
Friday, April 20, 1962
Readers' Paradise —
"America's Coming-of-Age" is pretty dated stuff. Van Wyck Brooks wrote it in his less benign days; he is such a kindly elder statesman of literary criticism today that it is difficult to conceive of him as an angry young man.
He looks at American life and literature in the teen years of this century and is not overwhelmed. He seems relatively unaware, then, of Henry James, but the days of James' rediscovery lay ahead. So did the rediscovery of Melville. Brooks says that Poe and Hawthorne were the only writers of note who were not swept up in Transcendentalism; Melville certainly belongs in such a grouping.
HE CALLS, additionally, for a recognition of America as an entity before there ever can become an American literature. Many have answered that call, but as Brooks himself well knows, they were answering it long before he sounded it.
AMERICA'S COMING-OF-AGE,
by Van Wyck Brooks. Doubleday
Anchor, 95 cents. THE LIBERAL
IMAGINATION, by Lionel Trilling.
Doubleday Anchor, 95 cents.
These essays are most noted for Brooks' definitions of highbrows and lowbrows. He also notes perceptively the way we fumble for ways to define ourselves and our issues: New Nationalism, New Freedom, New Patriotism. And today he could add New Frontier and New Conservatism.
Many readers are acquainted with the excellent essays in Lionel
Two Books of Criticism
Trilling's "The Liberal Imagination." By "liberal" he is speaking of awareness of complexities and difficulties, and he suggests nothing doctrinaire.
He starts off, in fact, by taking off after Parrington for being so doctrinaire that he could apologize for the worst of Dreiser and put Greeley among the great writers and scorn James because he did not deal with the American scene. It is a stunning essay.
Trilling also gives us his views of the rise and fall of Sherwood Anderson, and he contributes a brilliant essay on that underrated novel of social protest by, of all people, Henry James: "The Princess Casamassima." His essay on "Huckleberry Finn" is well known, and he is one critic who does not believe that the novel falls to pieces when Tom Sawyer arrives on the scene.
* *
THE SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON,
by Johann Wyss. Dell. 35 cents.
Most adults probably don't read this one anymore, but it does provide a welcome relief from much that is being thrown at us these days. It is wholesome and clean, and the success of the Walt Disney film version has persuaded a paperback publisher to give it a go.
The magic of the book, of course,
lies in the fact that all of us have
a kind of utopian desert island in
our minds, and some of us, busily
equipping our fallout shelters,
might get some valuable tips from
the Robinsons on how to survive
in adverse circumstances.
Balzac in New Books
PERE GORIOT, by Honore de Balzac. Doubleday Dolphin, 95 cents.
EUGENIE GRANDET, by Honore de Balzac. Doubleday Dolphin,
95 cents.
In several respects these celebrated novels by Balzac, which often find themselves in the same volume, are greatly different pieces of writing. Each book is marked by the tremendous sense of realism that always characterized Balzac, but the settings and the points of view have little in common.
"Pere Goriot" is a story of Paris, and essentially it falls into the pattern of the "young man from the provinces" that was attracting both Stendhal and Dumas. Though it is a story of an old man and his ungrateful daughters, it is even more a story of a young man. For the central character really is Eugene Rastignac, the boy from the sticks who comes to the big city and slowly acquires sophistication and disillusionment.
PERE GORIOT IS ONE MENTOR; Vautrin, an escaped convict, is another. But Eugene learns even more from the women, especially the daughters of Goriot. These two are wretches who would fit well into "King Lear" or even "Cinderella."
Eugene in his ingenuousness is a delightful character, and his instincts prove to be as decent as those of Goriot, whom he befriends when everyone else in the Parisian boarding-house uses the old man as a convenient target for sarcasm and tongue-lashing.
"Eugenie Grandet" is a story of the provinces. Charles Grandet is a Parisian with whom the sweet and innocent country girl, Eugenie, falls in love. He is a Eugene Rastignac in reverse. He possesses all the sophistication and guile that Eugene painstakingly had to acquire. He is a man of the city, but he meets his match—as who doesn't?—in Eugenie Grandet's terrible old father.
THE ELDER GRANDET IS ONE of the wealthiest men in his part of the country. He is a grape-grower and a grasper and the worst miser on record. He also is an old crook. Balzac easily could have fallen into caricature with Grandet, but he never makes that blunder. Grandet remains believable.
It is a sad tale—the daughter of the miser, the fop from Paris who goes to the Indies and becomes a wealthy and unprincipled adventurer, the mean old father, the long-sacrificing mother. Eugenie, of course, is well rid of Charles, but this is a hard thing to tell a young woman in love.
Both books have detail and insights that set them apart from the romantic tales that were so popular even as Balzac was writing. They deserve their reputations and continued popularity.
* *
THE KREUTZER SONATA, by Leo Tolstoy. Premier (Fawcett), 50 cents.
If I were 20 years younger and in full possession of all knowledge, as many University students apparently are, I would put this book aside and say "Nonsense!" Tolstoy was well into his mood of religious fanaticism when "The Kreutzer Sonata" appeared, and he offers observations that would be utter balderdash to our sex-centered society.
Or to his sex-centered society, for "The Kreutzer Sonata" deals with the tragedy overtaking a couple who offered each nothing more in their marriage than the satisfactions of sexual intercourse. But Tolstoy goes beyond merely condemning a marriage—or any relationship—based on lust.
Sexual intercourse is not God's will, says Tolstoy. Nor is it mere animal behavior, for animals "abandon themselves to sexual intercourse only when the progeny can be born," he writes.
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