The Writing of Nathanael West by Alistair Wisker (review)

Studies in American Fiction125 slackening into self-indulgence"? We could make this charge against what Wasserman calls "the remarkable paragraph" (p. 58) that closes "The Old Beauty," Cather's "most admired story" (p. 55), where Cather appeases her guilt and seeks the protection of a golden-ager. The reprinted works vary in significance as insights into Cather as short story writer. In "The Writer" section, Cather's 1913 comments on authenticity and the development of her first novel from stories make a contribution, as do the review of her 1925 speech distinguishing "spiritual" from "crude" plots, and her credo, "The Novel Démeublé." Decidedly less significant are Edith Lewis' account of meeting Cather and being captivated by her eyes, the 1921 Hinman and Mahoney interviews (except perhaps for Dorothy Canfield Fisher's suggestion in the latter to compare the 1903 and 1920 versions of "A Death in the Desert"), and Walter Tittle's reminder of Cather 's dependence on American idiom and acquaintance with the Impressionists, especially Manet. "The Critics" section gathers Christian and mythological perspectives on "The Joy of Nelly Deane," and a reading of "Uncle Valentine" more valuable than the story (already given too much space). A solid discussion of the fine stories in Obscure Destinies concludes the volume. Wasserman selects stories to establish Cather as a major short story writer, but she needs to do more sifting to isolate eight or ten stories as a pedestal for the distinction . "The Garden Lodge" clearly will not be one, and the inclusion of "Uncle Valentine" would be unlikely. Brigham Young UniversityJohn J. Murphy Wisker, Alistair. The Writing of Nathanael West. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990. 236 pp. Cloth: $35.00. This slender monograph need not have been written. Author Alistair Wisker appears painfully aware of this sad fact and offers a feeble rationale for its existence. Despite the continuing popularity of West's novels, he states, "there has been no new critical introduction to his writing for several years. This book is intended to serve at least that purpose." Wisker is Coordinator of Adult and Continuing Education at Bedford College of Higher Education, in England, and he may intend to use his little book to introduce West to his Adult Education students. The bad news is that he offers no new information on West's life or fresh critical insights into his work. Instead , he struggles to outline past Westian scholarship and criticism. Indeed, Wisker relies throughout on Jay Martin's Nathanael West: The Art of His Life (1970), and this thin effort is essentially a melange of quotes from Martin and other West scholars like James Light, Victor Comerchero, Randall Reid, and Leslie Fiedler. Wisker hangs his borrowings on a very thin expository thread. Despite his numerous , lengthy, and mostly extraneous excerpts from West and from the aforementioned biographers and critics, he is hard-pressed to produce a book-length study. Wisker does make a promising, if somewhat rambling, start. Placing West within the familiar crucible of American-Jewish writing, he attempts also to relate him to postmodernist criticism and to point up his relevance for later social satirists. Here he relies on contemporary cultural critics like David Lodge and Jonathan Raban, as well as on a handful of commentators on Modernist art and fiction of the 1920s and the American political scene of the 1930s. Wisker focuses on the various Dada theorists and Surrealist painters cited by these writers to indicate how Modernist artists cen- 126Reviews tered in Paris following World War I shaped West's thought and fiction. He also discusses briefly the influence on West of Dostoevsky, Baudelaire, and other Symbolist poets. Comparing West with contemporaries like Scott Fitzgerald and William Carlos Williams, Wisker then argues his subject's influence upon such postmodernist "poets of perversity" as Carson McCullers, Joseph Heller, John Barth, John Hawkes, and Thomas Pynchon. These connections are all valid but painfully familiar. Not only has it all been said before, but it has been said better. Still, Wisker does bring these varied ideas together, so he had the potential here for one useful article. His problem is that he writes awkwardly and imprecisely. After two brief but diffuse introductory...