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With
rchgic)n gone out of the intellectual
wc~ld they now write solemnly and uneasily about novels; they are clearly impatient with the vulgar life of the better novels and were it not that they had
on t anothers books about books to
analyze, I suspect many of them would
despair and falter. The novelists dont
sppm vrry bright to the critics and
tllcir commentaries seem irrelevant to
thr Ilovelist. Yet each affects the other;
:111dthose writers who are unduly eager
for f,lnie and acceptance will write
11ovels which they hope might interest
I.~li~ious-minded
critics.
The results
range from the sub-literary bleating of
tl,c Beats to Mailers portentous:
I
am the way and the life ever after,
crucify me, you hackers, for mine is a
ritllal tl-ath! Oh, Scott, oh, Herman,
011,
ancestral voices murmuring,
take
mu tlrsh and my blood, partake of me
:III~ fiilofo mysteries! And the curious
thing is that they will crucify him; they
will partake of his flesh; yet no mystery
\I ill be revealed. For the priests have
created the gods, and they are all of
them ritual harvest gods.
T \Y.ZS most struck by this remark of
\ndrd Gide in the posthumous A;nsi
Soit-il: It is affectation that makes so
many of todays writings, often even the
best among them, unbearable to me.
111~author takes on a tone that is not
natural to him. Of course it is sometimes the work of ;I lifetime for an artist to discover who he is and it is true
that a great deal of good art results
ironi the trying on of masks, the affectation of a perronu not ones own. But it
seems to mc that most of my contempor,lries, including Mailer, are - as Gitle
srlggests - desperately trying to convillcc themselves and the audience that
they are something other than they are.
lhere is even a certain emh;lrrassincnt
aboltt \vriting novels at all. Telling
stori:ts does seem 3 silly occup,ltion for
one f ullv grown: yet to be a philosopher
01. :I religious is not easy when one is
m;~kliig a novel. Also, in a society such
1s ours. ~1here there is no moral, politic;il or religioils center. the trmptation
to fill the void is irresistible. There is
the rmpty throne so . . . reiz the crown.
\\;I10 wo\~ld not br :I king or high priest
in hucli an age? :\nd the writers, each
ill his o\vn way, are preoccupied with
power. Some hope to achieve place
through good deportment. Universities
are filled Lvith poets and novelists conducting demure and careful lives in imitation of Eliot and Forster and others
who through what reem.r to have been
discretion, made it. Outside the univer16
The Pleasures
7H I! 1VOIZLD OF THE
WALL
SIKI:/:I
JOLJIZNAI.. Edited
bv
Charles Preston. Simon & Schuster. 4s;
pp. $6.50.
BUSINESS began as a reaction to boredom. .4lthough an invention of distraction, it has now grown so important
that most of this nation heartily endorses its ethic as our rairon detre.
Conventional
American judgment
rejects any suggestion that there is something radically amiss in our headlong
pursuit of profit. Still there are those
lvho can only exclaim at the unprecedent-EDWARD
W.
ZIEGLER,
a former
newspaper
man, is now an editor at
McGraw-Hill.
01 Business
ed frivolity of it all. For business, say
what you will, remains a means-to
an
end that Americans prefer to leave illdefined.
Minute, ethereal and fleeting hints
that The Wall Street Joumal may entertain similar thoughts make that paper
a fascinating organ. Or perhaps one
sees in it what one yearns to see. The
bulk of the evidence points the other
way: the loving, tender-even
sentimental-vignettes
of American businessmen and consumers impelling their persons, their talents, their hopes and their
capital with frightening constancy toward some transitory
and probably
worthless goal.
The newcomer to the Journal, or to
this anthology from its pages, cannot
expect the paper to be predictable ex-
The NATION
may be specifically
erally authentic.
fictitious,
he is gen-
to take
$3,000
I cant
a tight
to keep
HANSBERRY
BELASCO
THEATRE.
111 W. 44 St.. N. Y. C.
17
ARCHITECTURE
Walter
McQuade
A MONTH
OR TWO AGO. on a
sunny. summery fall dav, I had lunch
at the llotel Plaza in i$ew York with
one of the best of Japans architects,
Kenzo Tange, his wife and some other
friends. The Plaza. designed a half-century ago by Henry J. Hnrdenbergh in
Hohenzollern style-in
which every nuance
was made a complete gestureattracts this kind of visiting firemens
lunch, I suppose, because Frank Lloyd
Wright liked the building, and now people remember, pleasantly, having lunch
there with him and getting the dogtrot
tour of the place.
After lunch we walked down Fifth
Avenue, pausing at 54th Street to peer
\vest toward the chaste backyard watt
of the Museum of Modern Art, over
which you could see the plastic-roofed
dome of the bare, spincy, cantilcvcred
truss of the current outdoor exhibition
devoted to R. Buckminster Fuller, the
1nvrntor and hrlitder. The structures
looked good in the sunlight. The gold
framework of the truss glinted optimistically;
the geodesic dome, clad in
putty-cotorcd plastic, bulged buoyantly
above the decorous gray brick wall. And
farther down the sidewalk, facing us
under one of the little trees planted in
the sidewalk, stood Fuller himself with
t\vo of his ticutenants, pointing up the
\v:1tt
at
the
tl'LlSS,
and then gesturing.
Even
from th e corner, his motions were
east to ~rnd(~rst.~ntl. Ht> m:rs slrggesting
I i: