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498 elusive. One cannot tumble all over himself with praise of it, nor can he object to it without a futile qualification of every statement. Mr. Cournos, like so many of our present-day writers, goes about his work with intelligence, an impeccable keenness of vision, and some thoroughly arrived attitudes. It is safe to suppose that he has read Freud, a couple of essays on zoology, and a weekly with some shade of radical politics. Consequently, one cannot get at him. He is impregnably aware. Such people are skilled in the art of giving just as much as can be endured, and no more. John Gombarov's stepfather Suffers in Silence for so many pages, but is always discretely muddied with some domestic detail as he is on the verge of becoming a hero. Occasionally a pompous train of oratory is organized, only to be rained on at the last moment. Whereas in the old code comedy was introduced to keep us from suffering too strongly, it is wisely inserted here to forestall our protests. And as I say, the enraging thing is that such subterfuges are successful. Writers of reasonably good books are pre-eminently slippery; they are not to be walked on with comfort. When their book is completed, they can lie back and observe us moving nervously along on ice-creepers.

Heaven alone knows what is to become of the novel. As early as 1884 Huysmans was sick of it, and began his series of compilations with A Rebours. But on the whole, although it is so short-lived, it has become astonishingly autocratic. Keen minds have accepted it as naively as the infallibility of a pope. In spite of the hemorrhage of verse that is splattering about the earth, I suppose there is still one novel published for every poem. Huysmans, Gide, de Gourmont, Joyce, Lewis—I can think of no others who have showed any interest in even stretching the novel, unless Romains be added for safety's sake. The French Academy goes on with its sterile coronations, and across the Channel ten (10) established reputations still heave their annual mountain. Yet if perfection can kill a thing, the novel should have died at the end of the century, since Mann had already written his Buddenbrooks. However, most people have easily avoided this dilemma by not knowing Mann.

The novel is too rigid a form to express an age like the present. We need something that admits easily of interruption, digression,