Volume 7, Number 3 · September 8, 1966
Durchkomponiert
By Sybille Bedford
A Pursuit of Furies
by Janice Warnke
Random House, 406 pp., $5.95
In 1958 Janice Warnke published a novel called The Narrow Lyre. The title was taken from a line in Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus, and it was her first. It is a work of rare quality, impassioned, haunting, rising to moments of great power, entirely lucid. It might have been highly praised. With a bit of luck it would have been. As it happened the book came out during a newspaper strike, the reviews—the serious reviews that one assumes must have been written—could not appear; when the strike was over the book-production belt had not stood still, attention was turned on to the next batch in the fiction line: The Narrow Lyre had passed almost without notice. Today, needless to say, it is out of print. If we do not count the cost to individuals, what about the cost to ourselves? The question is can we afford to be so wasteful of our artists?
Review, 1699 words
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