NOVEL IS AS NOVEL DOES
THE RETREAT, by P. H. Newby; Jonathan | Cape. English price, 12/6. FOUR CITY DAYS, by Robert Travers; Victor Gollancz. English price, 12/6. CHILDREN OF THIS WORLD, by Grace Allen; Jonathan Cape. | English price, 12/6. INVISIBLE MAN, | by Ralph Ellison; Victor Gollancz. English | price, 15/-. "THE novel is an art form, but it is also a convenient vessel for anything | that happens to be in the mind of an) author; and authors, these days, have so | much on their minds. To find. common ground between a mixed bag of novels -like these four-is like trying to judge in the same class at a dog ‘show a sealyham, a bulldog, a_ collie. and a dachshund. It seems there is nothing the modern novelist cannot do with the novel-except re-establish a firm tradi- | tion. Mr. Newby’s book is undoubtedly the | most novelish-as -it also is the bestof these novels. It is a pale tale of a détraqué pilot in the last war who waxes woozy after his ship is torpedoed leaving Dunkirk and who gets off with a woman he pities at the expense of the wife he loves. Four City Days, brisk, tough, gruesome and competent, is all about an undertaker who carts the stiffs (the destitute and the unknown) for a big American city, no questions asked, and who does in the end ask a question about one corpse, a question essentially concerning his own integrity. An old lady who wants to buy peace of mind leaving her money to help build a church, an irritatingly~ saintly {continued on next page)
BOOKS (Cont'd)
parish clergyman, and a young girl caught between love and safety are the main ingredients in Grace Allen’s solid but unexhilarating story of the New England upper classes. The third American novel, Invisible Man, is Ralph Ellison’s powerful and defiant exacerbation of the Negro problem, scene Harlem. Some _ coloured writers have got to think of themselves as. human beings first, Negroes second. Mr. Ellison is not one of them..But he is. a connoisseur of rare states of mind Yes, all these are novels-good novels even-but please don’t ask me to certify
their pedigrees.
David
Hall
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 728, 26 June 1953, Page 13
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362NOVEL IS AS NOVEL DOES New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 728, 26 June 1953, Page 13
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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