Volume 28, Number 17 · November 5, 1981
In the Crab Pots
By Geoffrey Grigson
The Book of Ebenezer Le Page
by G.B. Edwards, introduced by John Fowles
Knopf, 400 pp., $13.95
Several irrelevancies and relevancies, with related sub-irrelevancies and sub-relevancies, may be used to help a new piece of fiction with purchasers—libraries and the like—and with reviewers, and (we get to them in the end) with readers. Among them are subject and place. Another is that the novel should be 'discovered,' coupling this with degrees of peculiarity and mystery about the author, who should be recently dead, and with quantum suff. of the word 'classic'—a classic undoubted, which might have stayed unknown. Then publishers, frequently both helpful and timid, may like to have all or some of these considerations swung across the bow by a champagne launcher who is, as we say, an 'established' author; all of which, while it makes this reviewer immediately suspicious, should make him determined to be fair.
Review, 1494 words
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