Evening star., 1936-11-21
Bv Mary.Carfer Roberts.

Powys. New York: Simon &
Schuster.
~HOSE who know the past work
of John Cowper Powys will
read this present work with
L familiarity. 1t Is q typical per-
formance. It is not in any sense a re-
writing of a past success; it is not
book of dubious individual integrity.
But it is, beyond question. another
powys novel" It's resemblance to It's
predecessors is like that Of one little
town to the next in a country OF sucn
mountain ruggedness that all towns
undertaken in it must be conditioned
by its contours. This terrain Is John
Cowper Powys' strange mind ana MS
strange, undertaking concept OF his
work as an artist bent on Interpreting
that mind, His books are merely the
monuments which mark its pecul-
srities. Or, to change the figure, MS
books are like slices cut from the same
loaf, each complete, but all made Oh
the same materials.
And so we have here another story
oS a youngish middle-aged English
man with hooked nose. cudgel OF
walking stick and "lfe-nlusion.
His name in Maiden Castle" Is Duo
No.man. But he is also the Rook
Ashoyer of "Ducdame" and the Wolf
Of Wolf Solent." Even more is ne
the hero of that work of his authors
which was no novel; more than he
"a any other character, he Is the hero
Of the Autobiography" OF John Cow
per Powys. For there Is more tnan
mere openness in the manner IN
which Mr.. Powys endows his heroes
with his own being. his physical char
acteristics as we'll as his own confessed
mentality: there Is flagrant
determination about it and an obvious
purposefulness. 1t Is as If, to get inside
their bodies and make them live. he
had to give them bodies with which
he is acquainted; it is as If. to make
them at home with his own sensations,
he had to give them the very organs
through which these sensations were
ACQUIRED. So Dud Norman takes his
pldCt IA OSAlCA AioSS~ "a
embodiments of his own creator.
Like the other members of this
Brotherhood he enters his particular
novel at the beginning OF a new cycle
of physical experiences in new
physical environment. Also like them
he brings to this newness an already
fixed attitude-his life-illuSlon, IN
the authors immutable phrase-an
attitude familiar to all Powys readers,
the attitude of the man whose world
is made Of the cerebral appreciation OF
physical sensations. He has love
affair with woman by social place
and education his inferior and in this
experience he again shares the lives
of his predecessors. He makes friends
with a group of eccentrics, chief
among whom is a mad Welshman who
dreams of reviving the gods Of pagan
mythology and is obviously the brother
of the mad parson in "Ducdame.
A thin and beautiful young gentle
woman Is an acid version of the book
sellers daughter in wolf Solent." As
with Rook and Wolf, his mother has
been a dominating influence in Dud's
life. And like "Ducdame," this book
Is patterned to run over one year, its
minor scenes including cemetery and
a travelling carnival, both familiar
Powys properties. Maiden Castle"
Is, in short, so like the novels which
Mr.. Powys has previously written that
his name on the cover is quite un-
necessary. And what Of all this?
Who, If any one, among our living
uovelists has written more signifi-
can't and distinguished books?
For John Cowper Powys, though
using limited number of properties,
has, in a rare degree the force Of
creative imagination, that force which
Is not imagination at all, in the
popular sense of the word. but Is the
only true realism, that force which
blasts away the clutter of contempo-
rary considerations (man-or-the-
machine, class struggle, revolt OF youth
and the like, at presenD and gives to
q novel of human beings certain eter-
nal human verities. Like the apples
of Cezanne, therefore, his repeated
pictures of Fromeside do not pail upon
us. We can, with propriety, demand
OF Mr.. J. Phillips Oppenheim that he
change his settings with each of his
several hundred masterpieces, because,
clearly, these superb works contain
nothing but settings. We lack occa-
sion to make this demand Of Mr..
Powys.
And we come here upon the de-
hghtful paradox that. with the force
Of creative imagination behind 1t,
localization of scene may be carried
out to the point of agony. and yet that
scene will gain, with each stage of the
process, broader universally. And
thus it is with the repeated English
countryside in the Powys novel. It's
scents, its soils, It's contours. its colors
and its flora are dealt with in scrupu-
lous minutiae. And still it affects no
one with strangeness. 1t is compre-
hensible to any reader who has ever
seen a countryside anywhere. Like
the ever-so- Russian towns Of Turge-
nev, it is home to Middle Western
American, provided only that the Mid
die Western American has cultivated
mind. 1t is at one time the true land
and the land of the true spirit. Coun-
try-and country-so portrayed be-
comes naturally fit background for
human action Of deep and universal
quality.
And perhaps 1t may not be amiss
10 point out there that its portrayal
thus Is the exact opposite OF the pro-
cess against which the reviewer has
more than once recently cried out in
pain-the rash rushing in of enthusi-
astic novelists upon "unexploited" ter
rains and the production. six weeks
later, Of novels of most embarrassingly
local color. Such novels have recently
been written about the scrub pine
forests of Florida or the river margins
Of the Mississippi delta or the back
woods districts Of the Blue Ridge
Mountains. novels in which the au-
thors' obvious thought has been that,
a - II