Reading I've Liked

FOR a long time some of us have been building up a dislike for Mr. Clifton Fadiman, resenting the suavity and genial alertness of his act as interlocutor for ‘Information Please,’ irritated by his book reviews in the New Yorker. He never seemed to find it necessary to use the words ‘vivid,’ ‘authoritative,’ or ‘well documented’ — words that creep sullenly about in our reviews like nits in the hair of a Guatemaltecan child. This feeling of annoyance was, of course, simply the reaction of an Inferior person to the success of ‘one more rich in hope,’ the instinctive hatred felt by the proprietor of a peanut stand that is marching steadily toward bankruptcy for — let us say — the Chairman of the Board of the United States Steel Corporation.

But all that is over and done with now. It is washed out. We tip our hat and genuflect to Mr. Fadiman in all sincerity and admiration. He is a grand guy, and this book, an anthology with comments, proves it. As the subtitle goes, it is ‘a personal selection drawn from two decades of reading and reviewing presented with an informal prologue and various commentaries’ — and the ‘informal prologue and various commentaries’ are as vital and arresting as the rest of the contents. No anthologist can expect every reader to agree with all of his choices. We do not share Mr. Fadiman’s deep admiration for Thomas Mann or Jules Romains — the latter’s Verdun seems to us bookish and unreal (if you want to know what one actually felt and thought in the last war, read La Guerre, Madame, a tiny book by Paul Géraldy which tells you more in a page than Romains does in a volume. Only you have to read it in French and you must have lived it yourself).

But criticism is disarmed in this instance. This is the reading, roughly contemporary, be’s liked; and a very varied and absorbing collection it is. He presents a lot ot pieces which you and I have never seen—or, if seen, have inadequately appreciated. M. F. K. Fisher, Christina Stead, Katherine Anne Porter — how many of us have been aware of these delightful writers? Mr. Fadiman defends his choices with clear analysis and a discrimination that is strangely convincing. This is a noble anthology and a fascinating book. It is also a picture of our time.

R. E. D.