New-York tribune., 1919-09-13

Inc InOdern munger FOR experience,
Tor testing all the avenues of escape
out Of the raw fields of living into
some conjectured beatitude has over
thrown the old style of novel writing.
lhe best selling novelists. from Joseph
Conrad to II. B. Wright, still present
solid front of classic construction:
they tell stories that can be mapped
out, with rise. peak and a fall.
dying or otherwise. Henry James used
to leave a few unresolved harmonies
in his final paragraphs, and Conrad
has followed closely in his example.
but for the greater part the ramparts
of fiction are we'll kept in front by
rounded narratives of classic form
Yet it is, after all, false front
Behind this smooth appearance is an
horritic decadence, with dozens and
dozens of new novels coming into be-
ing without any apparent design Of
the KIND that Is so obvious in the nine
teenth century novel. These are novels
OF new order, spineless almost form
less creatures, wandering restlessly
through meads and pastures, valleys.
alleys, and over oceans. foraging hun
gr!!y through The facts of life as they
are found glarlngly on the hills under
the widely revealing sun. The new
novelist scarcely ever comes to an
agreement with existence or finds any
moral solvent outside of the sheer
fact of experience itself and the quies-
cence that may come with it. The
novel. in the hands of young people
who have heard modern music, seen
modern art and lived past the gamut
Of motors and guns, has become sub
jective, self expressing and lyrical. AS
such it has only the kind Of form
which can be found in a sudden hill
side geyser, ordsworth's s form in his
most famous Ode. or Shelley in his
1t owns 10 the kind of form that
marks Whitman, being in more than
a half dozen ways the child of Whit
man. 1t is already fashioned, so
fast do the fashions go, to admit
that the greatest modern discovery
is sex, yet for hundred years scien-
fists and philosophers and artists to-
gether have been thinking of moth
ing else, from Nendel to Freud, and
from Schopenhauer, through Nietzsche
Wagner, Rodin, Swinburne, Ibsen,
Hardy, Meredith. Anatole France, Whit
man. Samuel Butler, down to Bennett
and Wells and Spoon River" 1t is the
accent Of the time, and a good deal
Of energy was spent for long time
trying to make it possible for the ac-
cent tos ring free. Now very suddenly
a whole school of creative persons have
shed their garments from them and
leapcd out in the white lgnt of knowl-
edge, quite naked and unashamed.
The Way Of All Flesh" set fash
ion in autobiogra phical fiction that
young Englishmen have been follow
ing feverishly ever since. But to say
1t hides the actual development and
evolution that took place 1t was in
deed an epoch-making novel because
il allowed a good many persons to see
themselves naturally and truthfully
for the first time. This was such a
vivid experience that Brtons have
been trying to recapture it ever since.
This is the explanation of Gilbert
Canaan, Compton Mackenzie, j D. Beres-
ford, D. II. Lawrence, W. l.. George
IN his early work, James Joyce, Dor
othy Richardson. and, in some ways,
Of May Sinclair. All these people
are talking rather more than less
about their own fierce adventure into
llfe. sharply dissatisfied. in contrast to
their Victorian fathers, with the bland
surfaces of consciousness, biting
deeply into the bloodstream of exist
ence and always finding sex. Because
they are talking of themselves, are
subjective and lyrical, they express
themselves IN variety Of forms.
Joyce Is poet; so is Lawrence. Law
renee Is, in direction at least, such a
poet as James Oppenheim, but much
more subtle. more Instantaneous in his
imagery, more poetic and less rhe
torical, similar in the compulsion which
makes both of them writhe in their
poetry under the lash and sting of sex
In this light 1t is weak critic who
hides from the prose and poetry of
Lawrence because it is heavy with
popped fragrance. 1t is obvious that
this is nowhere pleasant fact; hu-
mans are always in the act of saying
grace to such gods as Rabeais be-
cause by humor they have had the
power to make sex less terrible But
TO characterize Lawrence as sex-rid-
den, failing to see him in the history
of his time and to leave him there