"Structural Expedients" - "Shreds and Patches"

160 As I have suggested, much of the strength and charm of this book lies in its distinctively personal perspective. One wonders, however, how much, if any, of this distinction would have been diminished had the author chosen to involve himself more seriously and more extensively with hard-core literary materials. Hynes probably devotes more attention to thefinearts (painting, dance, and theatre) than he does to literature and the distinctively literary dimension of Edwardian culture. T. E. Hulme, for example, deserves a place here; likewise eager Imagists and the energetic Pound. Indeed, having edited an excellent edition of Hulme's writings (Further Speculations, 1955) and displaying in its Introduction commendable intimacy with the contemporary literary situation, Hynes might very easily and very profitably have related many important but neglected literary points (ideological and aesthetic) to his other concerns - "The Decline and Fall of Tory England" and "Human Character Changes," for example. In any event, my expectations were raised, perhaps unfairly, and I am disappointed to see him slight literary England on the eve of World War I. Eut not, more Importantly, the inviting contours of this difficult age, nor its delicious pecularities of tone and temper. Northern Illinois University Arra M. Garab 2. "STRUCTURAL EXPEDIENTS" - "SHREDS AND PATCHES" Kenneth B. Newell, Structure in Four Novels by_ Hj1 G-1 Wells. The Hague, Faris: Mouton, 19δ"8". The basic thesis in Mr. Newell·s book, as the title indicates, is that four of Wells's major novels - Love and Mr. Lewlsham, Klpps. Tono-Bungay, The History of Kr. Polly - reveal a careful structure, contrary to the widespreacHcritical notion, encouraged somewhat by Wells himself, that all his novels were written hastily with little regard for artistic craftsmanship. Newell Justifies his approach by Wells's own comment in an article from the Saturday Review (July, I896) that novel criticism should attempt "to understand the bearing of structural expedients upon design, to get at an author through his workmanship, to analyze a work as though it stood alone in the world." Newell is true to his own critical stance. In the four chapters dealing with the four novels, he cites no extraneous criticism and excludes biographical allusions. Mr. Newell sees Love and Mr. Lewlsham as a study in self-deception or vanity. Lewlsham progresses from the deception of his moral superiority to a realization of the necessity for moral compromise; from the deception of his superior ability to a recognition of his considerable limitations; from the deception of superiority of emotional feelings (romantic love) to a recognition of the realities of marital relationship. These thematic strands are blended throughout the novel and reach their culmination in the conclusion of the novels when Lewlsham stands stripped of the exaggerated illusions of career, principles, love, and faces his future realistically . 161 Kipps. according to Mr. Newell, is thematically an assertion by Wells of the superiority of Chance and Character over Determinism and Social Vanity. In the early part of the novel Kipps is apparently entrapped in the drabness of the life of a draper's assistant; in the words of his fellow assistant Minton: "I tell you we're In a blessed drainpipe, and we've got to crawl along it till we die." Kipps is saved from this fate by his character, which refuses to succumb completely to naturalistic determinism, but mainly chance, in the form of an inheritance from his paternal grandfather. Drawn into upper middle-class society by his fortune, he is saved from a sterile gentility, presumably through character, by elopement with his childhood sweetheart. After various vicissitudes brought about by chance he resumes his natural character, or something close to it, as the proprietor of a small bookshop, essentially free of the illusions of both naturalistic determinism and social vanity. As in Love and Kr. Lewlsham, Mr. Newell finds in Tono-Bungay a three-part theme, in this Instance, the flight of a sky rocket, the life cycle of an organism, and the transformation of reality into illusion. These themes are manifested in various aspects of the novel, among them the commercial venture symbolized by Tono-Bungay. the English social system symbolized by the past glory of Bladesover and the present...