The Pocket Kaleidoscope

Invite Andre Malraux, Arthur Koestler, Ignazio Silone, and a few others to after-dinner coffee some evening and let them talk about what they want to (which, more often than not, is themselves); make up your mind to sit back and listen. Such a social conclave is sure to be successful. With the appearance of The Anchor Review, we now see the formula, usually restricted to Viennese coffee houses and the like, applied to public print.

Assembling the impressive names, whose polished earlier works have established them as some of our best essayists, has apparently left little chance for continuity. Probably the only consistent feature of the Review is the intimate style which each of the thirteen contributors has used. There is no continuous thread, because they are all vitally interested in their own subjects which cover a vast area. Each, naturally, seems enthusiastic to expound on his own field, whether he approaches it casually or professionally.

In deference to the professional viewpoint, editor Melvin J. Lasky has given top rating to Malraux. The French historian-philosopher has allowed an advance peek at his The Metamorphosis of the Gods, which will be published next year. Malraux's high scholarship in the selected portion, a preliminary philosophical comparison of the art of several cultures, is fully palatable to the casual reader by virtue of his immensely exciting style. While the editor has made an admirable journalistic coup in obtaining the selection, its brevity perhaps leaves Malraux out of the Review's context. Close perusal of the text and accompanying photographs, however, is richly rewarding.

Koestler, a writer with a happy facility of spouting forth on virtually any subject, has taken time from pre-occupations with love, the world's wars, and his next full-length literary production, to dash off a careful and perceptive analysis of "The Anatomy of Snobbery." His is an eminently successful execution of a faintly satirical, quasi-serious discussion which the authors of current Holiday articles would do well to read. Silone's contribution, clearly the most informal of the collection, takes the form of an interview. He remains confused about basic questions surrounding an earthquake tragedy in his native Italian village. "What is the sense of accumulating new experiences if one has not grasped facts as primary as that?" he asks. Silone concludes that it is "the true artist's duty to share the sufferings of the men of his time. These are the surest indications of man and his dignity."

Theodore Dreisser's depictions of that same suffering, Alfred Kazin asserts in his effective essay defending the novelist, was rejected by priggish "elderly virgins of the newspapers." Kazin's thesis that Dreiser has been the victim of vacillating American literary taste, is well-argued and convincing.

Several other essays, particularly those by Gerald Brenan, Denis de Rougemont, and Cyril Connolly, show real excellence, and all of the remaining six make worthwhile reading. They display a pleasing lack of immediacy, and at the same time avoid irrelevancy. What's more, The Anchor Review will fit into your pocket.