A History of the Crusades. Volume I. The First Crusade and the Foundation of the Kingdom of Jerusalem by Steven Runciman (review)

SHORTER NOTICES 441 Sherwood Anderson, His Life and Work. By JAMES SCHEVILL. Denver, Colo.: The University of Denver Press [Toronto: Burns & MacEachern]. 1951. Pp. xvi, 360. $5.50. Professor Schevill is the sort of biographer who is never content with saying the best about his subject. He reminds us, justly, that the stories in Winesburg, Ohio were all influential, and that some of them are still very readable. But he goes on to insist that we accept this book as "a vital, illuminating, superbly formed American classic." Morewe are to consider Poor White and the unfinished Memoirs as work of the same high quality. Again, it is not enough to think of Anderson as a myth-maker, able "to strike many subtle overtones from a simple theme." No, we must believe he was "the first important American psychological writer in the twentieth century, revitalizing the tradition of Hawthorne and Melville." OU sont les neiges d'Henry James? It is true that Professor Schevill admits Anderson's faults as a writer: his inability to stick to facts even when his intention demanded them; his careless craftsmanship; his intellectual nalVete and emotional instability. But the biographer does not really regard these faults as serious. Some of them, indeed, he imitates; his style is as repetitive and humourless as Anderson's, and his psychologizings are even more superficial. What is probably most valuable about this book is its inclusion of previously unpublisbed Anderson letters to Professor Schevill's historian father. In these Anderson has expressed, more movingly perhaps than in any of his published works, his sense of the loneliness of the artist's life in this continent of the non-artists. Sometimes in these, too, one catches something of the peculiar appeal of Anderson the man, at least as this reviewer remembers him-that gentle but persistent attitude of love toward his species, that natural goodwill, rare enough in contemporary American writing, for which one cherishes him, even though his books fade. EARLE BIRNEY A History of the Crusades. Volume I. The First Crusade and the Foundation of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. By STEVEN RUNCIMAN. London: Cambridge University Press (Toronto: The Macmillan Company of Canada Limited]. 1951. Pp. x, 360. $6.50. This book is the first of three volumes which will deal with the whole Crusading movement. With its appearance, the English-speaking reader is at last freed from dependence on German and French histories for a full and scholarly account of the subject. By forestalling SHORTER NOTICES 441 Sherwood Anderson, His Life and Work. By JAMES SCHEVILL. Denver, Colo.: The University of Denver Press [Toronto: Burns & MacEachern]. 1951. Pp. xvi, 360. $5.50. Professor Schevill is the sort of biographer who is never content with saying the best about his subject. He rerniods us, justly, that the stories in Winesburg, Ohio were all influential, and that some of them are still very readable. But he goes on to insist that we accept this book as "a vital, illuminating, superbly formed American classic." Morewe are to consider Poor White and the unfinished Memoirs as work of the same high quality. Again, it is not enough to think of Anderson as a myth-maker, able "to strike many subtle overtones from a simple theme." No, we must believe he was Hthe first important American psychological writer in the twentieth century, revitalizing the tradition of Hawthorne and Melville." OU sont les neiges d'Henry James? It is true that Professor Schevill admits Anderson's faults as a writer: his inability to stick to facts even when his intention demanded them; his careless craftsmanship; his intellectual naivete and emotional instability. But the biographer does not really regard these faults as serious. Some of them, indeed, he imitates; his style is as repetitive and humourless as Anderson's, and his psychologizings are even more superficial. What is probably most valuable about this book is Its inclusion of previously unpublished Anderson letters to Professor Schevill's historian father. In these Anderson has expressed, more movingly perhaps than in any of his published works, his sense of the loneliness of the artist's life in this continent of the non-artists. Sometimes in these, too, one catches...