Fiction
Autumn 1941
Frances
On the death of my aunt Frances, I was not moved. Not much moved although in some ways I suspected that there was a kinship not merely physical between my […]
Fiction
Autumn 1959
A Visit to Chartres
I. I did want to go and see the Cathedral of Chartres, even though with the dispiritment with which I want anything these days. I did want to; the proof […]
Book Reviews
Summer 1959
The American Writer and His Americanism
The Eccentric Design by Marius Bewley. Columbia University Press. $4. In present-day American society, a strong artist is likely to be in a peculiarly ambiguous position. On the one […]
Nonfiction
Autumn 1958
Notes on a Remark of Seami
If there is a celebrated place or ancient monument in the neighborhood, [mention of it] is inserted with the best effect somewhere near the end of the third part of […]
Poetry
Summer 1958
Red Jacket (Lake Seneca)
Monday a plain poem about something—how the wake flows away in the water— but Tuesday I spent making resolutions how to survive the rest of the week. The creator spirit […]
Book Reviews
Winter 1955
They’ve Been Good Enough Long Enough¹
More Stories In The Modern Manner. From Partisan Review. Avon. 35¢. As we read through this anthology from Partisan Review, or such similar books as New Directions’ Spearhead, or the […]
Book Reviews
Winter 1954
Biography Going to Be Great
The Life And Work Of Sigmund Freud by Ernest Jones, M.D. Basic Books. $6.75. This is wine to the body-and-soul, a rarity, a book to review for which I have […]
Book Reviews
Autumn 1953
Bentley on Theater
In Search Of Theater by Eric Bentley. Knopf. $6.00. This is a collection of after-season play-reviews, interviews with theater-people and descriptions of theater-things abroad, reviews of books by actors and […]
Book Reviews
Autumn 1951
An England without Compromise
The England of Elizabeth by A. L. Rowse. Macmillan. $6.50. This book disappointed my particular interest in it, so I shall no doubt deal rougher with it than it deserves. […]
Nonfiction
Summer 1951
Advance-Guard Writing, 1900-1950
Se quoque principibus permixtum agnovit Achivis, Eoasque acies et nigri Memnonis arma. —Aeneid When I undertake an essay on advance-guard writing, I understand that I must seem to be a […]
Book Reviews
Autumn 1949
Jurisprudence vs. Psychiatry
The Show of Violence by Fredric Werlhamn, M. D. Doubleday. $3.00 It is hard to notice without contempt this multiplying genre of books: studies of crises of humanity by experienced […]
Communications
Autumn 1948
Wilde, Goodman, and Roditi
Sirs: I chanced to read Paul Goodman’s review of my Oscar Wilde, in your Spring issue, in the American Information Library of Kassel, a German city of ruins where I […]
Fiction
Summer 1948
Our School
(For Jean) GROUP I (Ages 6-8) The butcher came at an unusual time, to slaughter and dress a calf. The teacher of the youngest group was unwarned, and they were […]
Book Reviews
Spring 1948
Tardy and Partial Recognition
Oscar Wilde by Edouard Roditi. Makers of Modern Literature Series. New Directions. $2.00 After fifty years, judging by continual revival among the literate and semi-literate, we probably must take […]
Book Reviews
Autumn 1947
Stale Marxism
The Novel and the World’s Dilemma by Edwin Berry Burgum. Oxford. $3.75. This is not a useful kind of book; and of its kind, it is a bad example. In […]
Book Reviews
Summer 1947
French Uncle
When the Cathedrals Were White, a Journey to the Country of Timid People by Le Corbusier. Reynal and Hitchcock. $3.00. “If you express great admiration,” says Le Corbusier of the […]
Nonfiction
Spring 1947
Kafka’s Prayer¹
To explore the truth in the thought of Kafka, I deal first at perhaps surprising length with what he said in his own person in a few aphorisms and reported […]
Nonfiction
Autumn 1945
The Father of the Psychoanalytic Movement
“The heavy burden,” said Freud, “the heavy burden of psychoanalysis.” To a father a child is sometimes a heavy burden. Nevertheless he bears it and it rarely becomes too heavy. […]
Nonfiction
Winter 1942
Frank Lloyd Wright on Architecture
As is natural to a teacher and polemicist, a propagandist when he cannot build and a critic of what he has built,—and all this for forty-seven years!—the publications of Wright […]