Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1931-01-31

year, two years, five years, to study
of French fiction and then to go back
to the novels. great in their way, Of
Charles Dickens.
He will see then. It Ii an interesting
experiment in reading tastes. He will
find the great Victorian redundant, YER
bose and everything else along that
line. Much of 1t will strike him as
bombastic almost, at least fine writ
ing" as it is called.
He will have no particular distaste
for Dickens, but will find his former
enthusiasm tempered at last by the
inevitable tempering which must come
when q mind of discrimination finds
something done better.
II +
Young Priestley in Angel Pavement"
takes an everyday group of Londoners,
young and old, and presents them to
the reader in q way which would do
credit to the detached observation of
Guy de Maupassant, the terrible hon.
eSty of lola, the romance of Flaubert,
the keen insight Of Balzac.
The reader Of Angel Pavement" will
end the book with sense of diSSatis-
faction perhaps until he stops to realize
that this is the way life Is. We plan q
birthday party for friend and on the
morning of the great day we receive a
telephone call to the effect that he has
fallen down flight of stairs and is in
hospital.
Priestley writes copiously, as Dickens
did, with much the same wealth of
ready humor and illustration. At times
odd sentences will almost tend to make
the reader feel that he purpoSely imi-
tateS Dickens. But some twist at the
end invariably makes him realize that
he has done the writer an injustice. 1t
Is like Dickens undoubtedly, but not
Dickens. The entire purpose behind
the work Is different. PrieStley no less
than Sinclair Lewis or Ernest Heming-
way. is q realiSt, but-well. not quite
so horribly real. He likes to give the
reader life as it is. and life whole. but
not sad life to the oblivion of humor-
Gus life.
Angel Pavement" published in 1880,
Is better novel than The Good Com
paniOnS," written in 1929. because 1t
carries its realism to a more complete
finish. 1t Is not staged. as the other is.
The elaborate gathering Of the char
acters. one by one. which consumes
the first third OF 1.-THE Good Com
like. trick and the book suffers in this
respect from the old familiar too-much-
of-a-good thing.
Angel Pavement" on the other
hand, starts, goes right ahead, ends,
and when you put the book down you
know you have seen slice of real life
right out of the mind of a man who
has been able to strain it through his
heart. That way great novel lies.
A greater than Dickens? We would
like TO think SO. In many ways Priestley
Is greater, but he lacks indignation.
His stories have no great moral purpose
behind them. Indignation is what
makes q novel great, or at least helps
to make q writer so. Without it we
have great work, but not the greatest.
J. B. Priestley In these two novels Is
almost too good to be true. He has
achieved something which Charles
Dickens never did. and yet he had man
aged to be as good Dickens in q sense
as Dickens ever thought of being.
And this, We submit, Is, as Amos n
Andy-you remember them ?-say-well
we won't say 1t; we will write it prop
erly:
Something. A great deal. Positively,
as Jollifant says in The Good Com
panions."