The Paris Review 10

It may seem rather inane to characterize Paris Review 10 as a few writers and poets trying very hard to say something. Of course they try to say different things, but that is categorically unimportant. What is significant lies in the ardor and carnestness with which most of the writers try to strike through to some final statement. There to pears to be an acute fear of being misunderstood. If the point of a story is meant to be ambiguous, then it is made murky. If the point is supposed to be clear, then it is made crystal-clear. This general criticism is not directed against a lack of narrative skill, but against a failure by many of the contributors to make efficient use of such skill.

Some of the poetry suffers from the same kind of theme-forcing. There is a fine line between a world that is fully expressive of theme in sound and overtone, and a word that is just oppressive. Too often there are words of the oppressive varsity in the poetry. For these reasons we find ourselves liking a story up to a certain point, or after a certain point; and we find that while certain poems are pleasing as a whole, certain phrases or words in them are distasteful.

It is unfortunate that more space in this review cannot be devoted to nine poems by Elizabeth Jennings, collectively entitled "Sequence in Venice." The nostalgia that several reflections on a visit to Venice might inspire is certainly evident in the poems, but it is tempered by a kind of tough-mindedness that elevates nostalgia above a driveling sentiment. Furthermore, Miss Jennings shows an ability to be ironical about human emotion without being preciously funny. In the first poem, "Introduction To a Landscape," we find this irony:

"Difficult not to see significance

In any landscape we are charged to watch,

Impossible not to set all seasons there

Fading like movements in a music one

To other, slow spring into the fat rage

Of summer . . ."

The speaker in these poems often adapts an urgent tone reminiscent of Edna St. Vincent Millay, but this urgency is fortunately tempered by Miss Jennings' awareness that it will pass, that the emotion is twice as intense as it should properly be.

The other poetry in Paris Review 10 is not on a par with "Sequence In Venice." Adrienne Cecile Rich's "The Tree" states a Frost-like theme (silent, unresponsive nature capable of instilling fear, frustration and solace in man) with a disappointing lack of economy. "The Ballad of Mother and Son" by Wilfred Watson contains some rather wild metaphors which are utterly mystifying. "I saw God like a trout in a creek" probably means that the speaker had a flashing glimpse of God, but "trout," "creek," and "God like a trout" seem extraneous and forced, if not totally meaningless. The other poems have similar difficulties to a lesser degree.

I think the two best prose pieces in the issue are "The Angry Man" and "The Beau Monde of Mrs. Bridge." "The Angry Man," a first-published story by Donald Winks has an absorbing narrative; the author shows a fine sense of humor, and he avoids any heavy-handed thematic underscoring. It is not a polished story, nor is the plot, which concerns the effect of an enigmatic deckhand upon those around it's a very original one. But it is an even well-sustained piece of fiction. "The Beau Monde of Mrs. Bridge," by Evan S. Connell, is satire on mid-western, upper-middle class morality. It is not able for a placidity of viewpoint unlike much social satire. The other stories are marred more or less, as I have said, by an obvious effort to be murky or ultra-lucid. The "Art of Fiction" interview, tenth of a uniformly excellent series, is with James Thurber.

In all there is nothing to bewail in Paris Review 10. A literary periodical which can consistently publish fiction no worse than fair deserves a good deal of praise.