Writers in Crisis

By Maxwell Geismar

As history and summary, this is a very valuable book, and one can hardly take exception to its general critical conclusions. It consists of six essays bound together by a scheme. Lardner, as representing the 1920’s, is contrasted with Hemingway, Dos Passos, Faulkner, and Wolfe, of the ‘30’s, and Steinbeck, as suggesting the direction of the ‘40’s, while the conclusion presents the author’s summary and the moral of the two eras of boom and depression. The treatment of Lardner suffers because of the domination of a thesis; that of Faulkner, because of the author’s labored attempt to be fair. His prime admirations are for Hemingway, Dos Passos, and Wolfe, though they are by no means undiscriminating. One could wish he had put a little more yeast in his bread and had served it in smaller loaves; for there is a good deal of repetition of idea and much involution of sentence. He appears stronger in ethical than in aesthetic equipment. Nevertheless, the book is admirably balanced and high-minded, and there is no other that gives so much of valuable summary and comment for the period. R. M. G.