Types of Thematic Structure by Eugene H. Falk (review)

1969 BOOK REVIEWS 211 of abstraction which is typically Beckett's. The tension in Beckett between the concrete and the abstract is clearly at the heart of Beckett's own dramatic form. and Kott's brief remarks are again revealing. The final chapter, "Theatre and Literature," is an excellent general treatment of the debt which contemporary drama owes to Joyce and Kafka. The final pages deal with the ambiguity of mimesis itself and discuss Artaud in a clearer and more useful way than in any other essay which I have read. This chapter, as well, illustrates the basic limitation of the book. Extended and made more inclusive, it could become one of the most important analytic works in the criticism of modern drama; but, instead, it puts forward a significant insight or important relationship and then does not continue to explore but moves forward facilely to the next provocative idea. Theatre Notebook : 1947-1967 will find its primary use, I think, in stimulating people to explore and write about many of its sensitively innovative ideas and interpretations. Perhaps that is its purpose. Personally, I should like to see the fuller explorations conducted by the imagination which originated them. CHARLES R. LYONS University of California, Berkeley TYPES OF THEMATIC STRUCTURE, by Eugene H. Falk. Chicago, London and Toronto, 1967, 180 pp. $5.00. Anyone who picks up this book for a quick scan hoping to extract a few ideas for immediate use will probably very soon drop it. The more's the pity. True, the first pages are not easy reading. Types of Thematic Structure belongs to the Chicago school of literary criticism that abhors loose terminology, claims Aristolle as its ancestor and attempts to apply to literature a "rigorous" form of analysis centered on the literary work as a self-contained, coherent linguistic whole that generates and communicates its own meaning. In a brief and brilliant introduction Bernard Weinberg distinguishes Mr. Falk's form of "thematism" from other approaches --specifically Poulet's and Richard's that use the same label. Although one may regret, as I do, what appears to be a touch of nationalistically-slanted arrogance in the tone, those few pages should be required reading for all apprentice practitioners of the an of literary criticism. And indeed such is the confusion in our present terminology-including the various brands of "structuralism"-that clarification is essential. Mr. Falk's book offers a double interest. In the first two chapters he defines whh the utmost care the critical terminology he will use, and this in itself defines his method. He has tackled the difficult task of giving precise meaning to the rather vague set of words we apply to the component parts of the novel: story, plot, action, incident, theme, lOpic, motif, structure, etc. This is not without its perils. They become obvious right at the beginning and with a key concept: theme. In a tightly-written page Mr. Falk ranges over the variety of ways in which the word is curently used, in order to distinguish the use he makes of it. But, though the distinction is clear in his mind, and eventually may become clear in the reader's, yet one cannot help wondering how feasible it is to expect a term so familiar, general and ill-defined really to be made to carry a specifically defined meaning. Yet the only alternative seems 'to. be deadly for literature: the coining of a specialized vocabulary that quickly becomes a dead jargon. Perhaps a tabulation of the terms used with a brief definition would considerably clarify those 212 MODERN DRAMA September pages for the reader. I shall nol. attempt here to summarize these two introductory chapters. They are essential to the further reading of the book, if it is to bring about the kind of literary experience that then unfolds. Mr. Falk applies his method of analysis to three well-known novels, all three brief and so more easily manageable-Gide's La Symphonie pastorale, Camus' L'Etranger and Sartre's La Nausee. He uncovers in them three modes of thematic structure, major modes in his eyes. The efficacy of his method is quite clearly mirrored in the richness and...