Ford Madox Ford

31:1, Book Reviews FORD MADOX FORD Richard A. Cassell, ed. Critical Essays on Ford Madox Ford. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1987. $32.50. Richard A. Cassell's compilation titled Critical Essays on Ford Madox Ford is part of the G. K. Hall series Critical Essays on British Literature under the general editorship of Zack Bowen. Although this collection of essays does include a small amount of biographical scholarship, two original articles, and a previously printed essay that was reworked for inclusion, it is nevertheless far closer to the collection of already published Ford criticism compiled in 1972 by Frank MacShane in Ford Madox Ford: The Critical Heritage than, say, to the collection of original essays, poems, and memoirs published by Sondra J. Stanginl981. The primary value of Cassell's book must be found in the quality of its selectivity , for, unlike the MacShane volume, what it attempts to provide is a compact synecdoche for the body of scholarship and criticism on Ford Madox Ford that has expanded very rapidly since the publication of Douglas Goldring's The Last Pre-Raphaelite in 1948 and the subsequent republication of Parade's End in 1950 and The Good Soldier in 1951. One assistance to such a task Cassell might have adopted would have been to reprint such overview articles as Joseph Wiesenfarth 's "Criticism and the Semiosis of TAe Good Soldier," which in summary fashion analyzes diverse responses to that novel. But Cassell has chosen, instead, to depend on representative commentary alone, and, on the whole, he has made an intelligent selection: with the exception of the biographical matters scanted in this collection, anyone reading through it would encounter a sampling of scholarly and critical opinion about Ford that generally reflects not the whole of Ford criticism but much of the best of the whole. The temptation such collections can create for a reviewer is to second-guess the editor, and it is a temptation I am unable to resist entirely. I miss, for example, the brilliant analysis of William Gass's "The Neglect of TAe Fifth Queen" first published in the Stang volume. Certainly John A. Meixner's analysis of The Good Soldier that appeared in the Kenyon Review in 1961 must stand as one of the most clear-eyed ever written on that novel—but it, too, is missing. And I regret that Cassell did not include some substantial selection from Carol Ohmann's Ford Madox Ford: From Apprentice to Craftsman (1964), because her argument for a striking thesis—that the slowness of Ford's working toward the success of The Good Soldier was the difficulty he faced in a search for content, not a search for form—is put so cogently. Cassell does provide an essay which acknowledges Ohmann's thesis and argues against it, but that is rather like providing only half of a debate when, in fact, both sides have strong points to make. But it would be misleading and ungracious to complain too much about what CasseU has left out of his collection; what is more important to note is just 89 31:1, Book Reviews how judicious his selection often is. Consider what was certainly the most daunting problem he faced: choosing critical comments on The Good Soldier. Cassell elected to include only two contemporary reviews of that novel, but he chose what are unquestionably the two best: Rebecca West's sensitive and generous appreciation of "the wonders of its technique" balanced against Dreiser's sensible, if blinkered, criticism of the "formalism" of the novel coupled with his generous expression of admiration for its moral honesty. Of more recent criticism, Cassell includes the following: Mark Schorer's trail-breaking introduction to the 1951 edition; Samuel Hynes's brilliant Sewanee Review essay, ten years later, on the epistomology of the novel; Thomas C. Moser's surehanded discussion of Conrad's technical and personal influence on Ford; the penetrating analysis published by Lawrence Thornton as a corrective to the "mitosis" in the criticism of TAe Good Soldier since 1951; and the astute exploration of the relationship of Ford's psychology with his art that is Miriam Bailin's contribution. However one might wish for others, these are...