Dusk at the Grove
THE MAN of the MONTH
[Atlantic Monthly Press & Little, Brown, $2.50]
A BOOK considerably more important to American letters than I he ‘great American novel has been written in Dusk at the (Grove, by Samuel Rogers. For it is a novel important among novels in English.
In modern fiction, so far as I am familiar with it, there is not a finer example of the novel as both record and revelation. This is the middle ground, where realist and romanticist can touch, for the hard-boiled record of the realist here mixes happily with the Arcadian outposts, the farther extensions of perception. Though this revelation is only of that which any reader might himself experience in his routine if he had the perception, yet, if he has it not, Mr. Rogers’s own special grace of seeing descends upon him like a prophet’s cloak. One does not merely read about the Grove, the Rhode Island home of the Warings, but one enters upon the actual levels of perception and oblivionsness of the people of the Grove, and of the rock where they dive in blue deeps, opposite Sakonnet.
This is the story of a modern and charming uppermiddle-class American family, who spend their summers near Newport, and experience crises and routines which, whether thrilling or commonplace, are involved with more than meets the eye. Here are young people the most modern, able to look out upon life and not only to see limited areas of ‘sex and society,’ but to reflect life without limiting it to that which we know as physical reactions alone; in short, to regard the emotions of human relationship, which they so richly experience, as but one of the aspects of relationship and as but one of the areas of being. And this fascinating power of these people is communicated from the page and experienced by the reader without the ex cathedra word.
The exciting and really epochal aspect of the novel is that, though it is wholly modern, yet it has captured that beauty, that mellow light, that well-accustomed handling of event, which we associate chiefly with novels of an older technique. It is as if the book were written by someone infinitely used to our present scene, someone who had long observed it from within, and then had moved a bit away, in order to see more of it, and so had told his tale.
It is true that this fine accomplishment owes its power in part to style, to a perfectly integrated style. Mr. Rogers has freely used the technique of transcribing the awareness of his characters — pages of awareness; but he has not tapped the current of consciousness in order to record random impressions and observations* thus making consciousness seem very like the vagaries of delirium. Instead he has employed the method to dip into that deeper consciousness which offers revelation, offers perception so exquisite that the earthy routine of the common day is revealed not as our usual sleepwalking inkling, but as full adventure, wild and haunting.
If one were to find fault, it might be that at first glance the thought imagery in which the characters float is too similar. But, delicately scrutinized, the distinctions prove to be sensitively indicated, with no sharp shading of type, but rather with the clear thin ditterings of personality. Brad and Thornton do not reflect as Dicky does; and Dicky, drunk or sober, is not thinking as does Joel. Mark and Luly are scrupulously differentiated, and differentiated too as they deepen into age. Linda’s insights and recognitions — and her charm — are highly special. Ellen, the neurotic, is inexorably drawn, and without a tincture of caricature. Mark, the father, is a charming figure. ‘Brad is your mother’s favorite, he says gently. ’I have no favorites. I don’t like any of you.’ The book is fertile with delicate humor. And it is fertile in a phrasing which might be that of Walter Pater — but now applied, as an example, to girls on the backs of the rising and falling animals of a beach merry-go-round: ‘Not so charming as the Apsnrascs with their cloud-like curves, their delicate harnesses of jewels, and their spiry crowns.’ The American ‘amusement park,”by the way, has here at last its due, becomes a communicable experience, is employed as a relief, as the high point before the fall - or, so to say, as the pause, the transposition, the slow Greek breath, preceding the catastrophe. For the people in Mr. Rogers’s amusement park feel no excitement, but rather that faint catalepsy, that dream state of escape, which is the truer psycho!ogy. To compare with this novel one of those other novels, smart, bizarre, invincibly aware of its own new direction, is to turn to a roller coaster’s greasy track from his ’crescent of beach spread in a dust of light.
All this in a book whose story holds one, whose characters delight one, so that one read’ in a happy absorption to the end. It is a book like no other hook and yet a story of the common lot.
ZONA GALE