The Case against Pure Sensibility

Nothing by Henry Green. Viking. $3.00.

The overevaluation of Henry Green in some of our literary circles is a typical American relapse into provincialism, an instance of our tendency to credit a work as a great achievement on the insufficient ground that its sensibility is finer than our own. The same mistake, in reverse, is now occurring in France, where the predilection is toward the rude manner. Wherever it occurs, this is provincialism: it is the elevation of manner to the highest rank.