Volume 11, Number 1 · July 11, 1968
Stale Incense
By Bernard Bergonzi
Tunc
by Lawrence Durrell
Dutton, 359 pp., $6.95
Blessed McGill
by Edwin Shrake
Doubleday, 234 pp., $4.50
In What is Literature? Sartre argues that whereas the poet is concerned with words rather than with things or ideas, the novelist, as a prose writer, must move beyond words to the real world, and so inevitably involve himself with questions of direction and commitment. Sartre is expressing contempt for poetry, while pretending to shield it from the harsh realities of prose. Anglo-American criticism has moved in an opposite direction by trying to treat large areas of prose literature as a form of poetry. Yet to account for my divided attitude to Lawrence Durrell's writing Sartre's distinction is useful: I enjoy Durrell's poetry, which, though slight, is elegant and witty, but I find his novels, which have been widely praised for their 'poetic' quality, tedious and sometimes absurd. The prose becomes mannered, whereas in the poems Durrell does not need to say much, and the little he does say can be pleasingly uttered. But in the novels, and particularly in the intricate but hollow Alexandria Quartet, he tries to say a great deal at great length, with much pretentiousness and vulgarity. At the same time, there are passages of great power, so that one cannot altogether dismiss the prose—the famous duck shoot in Clea, for example.
Review, 1898 words
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