Volume 15, Number 8 · November 5, 1970
Ghosts and Others
By Denis Donoghue
Adam and the Train: Two Novels
by Heinrich Böll
McGraw-Hill, 268 pp., $6.95
Whitewater
by Paul Horgan
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 337 pp., $6.95
The Dick
by Bruce Jay Friedman
Knopf, 310 pp., $6.95
The Ghost of Henry James
by David Plante
Gambit, 247 pp., $5.95
'And Where Were You, Adam' and 'The Train Was On Time' are described as novels, but it is better to read them as novellas. I am sure that Herr Böll wrote them with a sense of their participation in that genre. The novella is neither a novel nor a short story. It distinguishes itself from each by listening to its own rhythm, it has its own pulse. Measuring time, it does not count pages. A certain rhythm is to be fulfilled: it is a matter of tact, a propriety of form, that the writer practices whatever degree of austerity is required in the fulfillment. He understands the genre, and he assents to its limitation. As for content, the main limitation is that the form goes better with ends than beginnings; if life is a five-act play, the novella comes in with act 4, and stays to the end, fulfilled in death.
Review, 2694 words
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