Seinfelt on Moore

2^ REVIEV/ Seinfeit on Moore Frederick W. Seinfeit, George Moore : Ireland's Unconventional Realist (Philadelphia: Dorrance, 19751· A critic, I feel, should be extraordinarily well-informed, analytical , honest, and kind. But my indignation at what has masqueraded as genuine George Moore scholarship in some recent publications may have made me intemperate. To begin: Nobody can do GM scholarship without reading and assessing Jean Noel's massive, well-documented volume, George Moore : L'homme et l'oeuvre (Paris, 1966). First-rate as a literary historian, Noël is less incisive and reliable as a literary critic. In his study, Seinfelt, apparently blissfully ignorant of Noel's work, uses Hone's Life exclusively; and even here his facts are incredibly wrong. Twice, for example, Lady Maud Cunard is described as Sir William Eden's wife; twice Oscott is spelled Ascott and referred to as a Jesuit school. Instead of revision, Seinfelt uses rewrite as a noun; he speaks of Kate Ede becoming "more and more a drag on Dick Lennox." Seinfelt sees Shakespearean borrowings in A Mummer's Wife because Kate Ede bears the same first name as Katherine in Taming of the Shrew; and Kate Ede's "many violent assaults on her lover, the big, bear-like actor Dick Lennox, suggest a reversal of the physical contests between Shakespeare's incompatible couple" (p. 241). Seinfelt suggests that Moore's title, Hail and Farewell might well be derived from the closing duet of Siegfried and the prologue duet in Götterdämmerung. No elaboration on that one, In his scholarly apparatus, Seinfelt uses the first edition of Ave ; for Salve and Vale, he uses the 1925 New York edition. Enough of examples. The reader must get my point. Seinfelt's book, originally a dissertation done at Pennsylvania State University, is divided into three parts: Moore's treatment of men and their relationships to each other; Moore's treatment of women; and, inevitably, Moore's treatment of the man-woman relationship . About three-fourths of this is sheer plot summary, which proves, of course, that Seinfelt has read the prolific Moore. In one case, three versions of the same plot summary are given. Seinfelt's literary conclusions are scanty and unreliable. The fallacy is, I think, inherent in the topic. A good advisor should have told the researcher that valid conclusions on such a broad topic are virtually impossible to draw with an author like Moore whose writing career encompassed so many decades and so many styles. The final essay in the book is unrelated to Moore: "Thomas Mann and Some American and British Writers." That essay is as meandering and unfocused as its title. I have really tried to find useful and enlightening material on GM in this study; unfortunately, I have failed. Kean College of New Jersey Eileen Kennedy ...