As for the specific works in this collection: Odets’ “Waiting for Lefty” and Alfred Kreymborg’s “America, America!” (somewhat in the manner of a morality play) will probably appeal best when read, though all the pieces can disclose virtues to those who also watch for theatric possibilities.
I agree with Newton Arvin that the section on criticism seems least developed. The dramatic invitation to “make a choice” may lead the critic to make his choice too soon. Here enters the problem of “suspended judgment,” as against the invitation to the dramatics of invective. In fact, if one reads Michael Gold’s “Wilder: Prophet of the Genteel Christ” purely as a fiction, he is likely to enjoy it much better. I could even imagine Wilder enjoying it, if he were able to think of it as a Cicero thundering against a Catiline. And in “Eagle Orator,” Malcolm Cowley administers very deft punishment to Paul Engle’s earlier work, “American Song.” For criticism of a non-pyrotechnic nature, we should signalize Edwin Berry Burgum’s appreciation of Spender, Auden, and Lewis, written from the standpoint of their serviceability in shaping revolutionary attitudes. And the essay by the younger critics, William Phillips and Philip Rahv, bears testimony that they understand the complexity and indirectness involved in the “imaginative assimilation of political content.” Indeed, I believe that their reservations would require them, editors of the Communist Partisan Review, to be less friendly towards some of the political matter in this anthology than I have been. We should also include here a reference to Joseph Freeman’s introduction which, though prolix and unnecessarily defensive, contains many acute formulations.
In conclusion: As one particularly interested in the processes of literary appeal, I have generally tended to consider the volume from this standpoint. I have been vague about “absolute” tests of excellence, for I frankly do not know what such tests might be. Particularly in works of a controversial nature, the imponderabilia of emotional bias strongly influence our aesthetic judgments. Hence, in dealing with a book of this sort, I thought it better to place the emphasis upon the matter of functions, which are neutral, available to anyone, like a theory of ballistics. But in the course of discussing processes, I have also found it necessary to touch somewhat upon the “way of life” that gives them meaning.
For the anthology does represent a way of life—and in this congregational feature lies the power and the promise of the “proletarian” movement as a contribution to our culture. In this movement, there is the customary high percentage of unexalted moments, as regards the field of literary representation, and even more so as regards the field of practical relationships. But taking what we have, I think we may see how the “proletarian” sort of emphases and admonitions can provide a lasting and essential stimulus to the formation of the national “consciousness.”
Imaginary Lines
We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson. Viking
The New Leader, December 1962, 20–22
Once at the planetarium, while the show was on, I fell into a doze, or a daze, leaning back comfortably, peering into the artificial starry cloudlessness. Words were issuing from some indeterminate place in the man-made night. And as I listened half-asleep, my eyes glazed but not closed, of a sudden there flashed across the sky great white arcs, with numbers. The apparition caused a brief interval of confusion in my mind: between the perceiving of these startlingly sharp lines and the recognition that they were not a prodigious happening in the real sky, but a mere human invention to illustrate the meridians which can be theoretically drawn as a means of specifying longitude. In that unbalanced interval, I experienced a moment of truly apocalyptic terror.
And, without the fright, there is a somewhat related painting by Charles Demuth. It represents a calm bunching of angled roofs and a belfry. But for present purposes, the main point is: The sky is filled with arbitrary lines that repeat the forms of the architecture.
Both of these examples might help define the particular quality of Shirley Jackson’s imagination, most notably her ways of shifting between the real and the fancied. It is a trick on which she has worked out many variants. And it is managed with especially appealing success in her piece of fanciful realism, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, a story told in a style as limpid as brooks used to be, before the days of progress.
This novel is exceptionally well built as regards the ways in which the characters serve to bring out the poetic functions of one another. The younger sister (Mary Katherine, “Merricat”) bristles with odd judgments and intolerant discriminations (in keeping with Miss Jackson’s likings for the lore of demonology). By contrast, the elder sister, Constance, becomes wholly believable in her patient simplicity. She is so prompt in helpfulness she never gets to the stage of recrimination, except when she blames herself.
The contrast is heightened ironically by the character of Uncle Julian, who is invalid to the extent of childishness, and who takes the maternal Constance’s constant attention as a matter of course, even while also taking it for granted that she was guilty of the crime for which she had been tried and acquitted. (It is a judgment in which many of the neighbors concur, so that Constance’s virtue is even somewhat like that of a savior crucified between thieves, though you can depend upon it that, in a Shirley Jackson character, any traits on the “saintly” side will have their special twists.)
In the midst of all the turmoil, something like high comedy arises from the ingenious notion of having Uncle Julian at work collecting data on the crime, while at the same time his mind wanders, so that, at particularly tense moments in the unfolding of the plot, he forgets which character is which, and falls into outbursts of righteous indignation that are quite irrelevant.
Against all three of these inmates in the “Castle” there is Cousin Charles, a fairly ordinary fellow whose average nature in this ingeniously tangled setting makes him almost heinous. We also tend to see the story largely through the eyes of Merricat, who is outstanding in Shirley Jackson’s catalogue of little demons, and who rounds out the pattern by her intuitive notions about Cousin Charles as “‘demon” and “ghost.” The villagers perform dynamic roles in the development, too—nor should we forget Jonas, Merricat’s cat, whose role as a person serves well, again and again, to keep the pot of the narrative aboiling.
One could not here discuss in detail the handling of the plot itself without somewhat spoiling the story for those readers who prefer to find out such things for themselves. But some observations can be noted. Except for a bit of padding, the story is told with perfect mastery, particularly in the way the interrelationships among the cluster of characters is handled.
The best kinds of “surprise” and “suspense” are those that one experiences when re-reading a book. The appeal of a story is soundest if it does not depend for its effect upon the reader’s sheer ignorance of the outcome. In the case of the narrative of these odd inmates in what becomes a very run-down “Castle,” we could strike this compromise:
For those who want the one-time kind of surprise and suspense (the book that is to be used once and thrown away), this story has the twist that can fully meet their demands. It is a story built around the reminiscing on a crime, the arsenic poisoning of several people (plus, we should note in the interests of imagery, much incidental concern with poison mushrooms). But the essential attitudes toward this crime are built up so integrally, the reader’s ultimate interest is not confined to “who dun it” curiosity: rather, the book’s best appeal is grounded in the fact that, when the disclosure comes, it is made to mesh perfectly with the salient traits of the characters. This is a more permanent advantage.
The novel’s virtues, then, in sum: An exceptionally well-assorted bouquet of characters; a fanciful ending built out of quite real beginnings; a disclosure that, because