Newspaper Page Text
Archdiocese of Atlanta
the
GEORGIA BULLETIN
SERVING GEORGIA'S 71 NORTHERN COUNTIES
GEORGIA BULLETIN
BOOK SUPPLEMENT
THURSDAY, APRIL 25, 1963
Identity Loss Through Loss Of Faith
MISS CAROLINE GORDON SHOWN WITH SOME “BRUSH" WORK
Caroline Gordon, the South's leading woman of letters, was
born in 1895 at Clarksville, Term. Novelist, short story writer,
and critic, Miss Gordon contributes to the Yale Review, New
Republic, Southern Review, Harper's, and the Swannee Review.
A renowned teacher of creative writing, she is presently Writer
in Residence at the University of California. Miss Gordon
is readying an essay for the Bulletin to be entitled, "The Re
luctant Reader,’’ a discussion of the "dodges" we all employ
to avoid reading a work of fiction which will tell us something.
BY CAROLINE GORDON
Wilfrid Sheed, in his brilliant
( first novel, A Middle Class Edu
cation,does not avail himself of
that technique which Henry
James perfected and labelled
"The Central Intelligence," by
means of which, Percy Lubbock
points out, he revolutionized the
craft of fiction. Everything that
happens in Mr. Sheed’s novel
is seen through the eyes of
John Chote, an Oxford under
graduate who has won an ex
change fellowship to an Ameri
can university, but John Chote
does not fill what for James
was the chief requirement for
a "Central Intelligence:’’ he is
not capable—or not quite cap
able— of morally evaluating
what has happened to him.
Nevertheless, this novel is
Jamesian in conception and, in
spite of certain technical flaws,
(an amateurish prologue and a
denouement which hovers on the
verge of anti-climax,) is dist
inguished by the attempt to ach
ieve the same kind of tight,
structural unity which cha
racterized James’ last three |
great novels.
COMPARISON with this mas
er in no way detracts from die
originality of this young nove
list’s achievement. Mr. Sheed’s
novel is truly "Jamesian" in
intention. He has so far follow
ed in James’ footsteps as to
attempt to act the Colossus and
bestride two continents, and the
continents and the ocean which
divides them have the same dr
amatic function as "true sym
bols" in this first novel of die
contemporary writer that they
had in James’ last four great
novels.
The characters in James*
later novels cross the ocean
in search of something they feel
a need of and find themselves
possessing or possessed by
something quite different from
what they had in mind. Isabel
Archer expects to lead a ful
ler, richer life as the result
of her marriage to Gilbert Os
mond and finds that she will
be confined— at least as long
as her husband lives—in what
is for her the narrowest of pri
son cells. She cannot bring her
self to leave Pansy Osmond to
the mercies of her father, the
man whom Isabel chose for her
husband but whom she now
knows to be as wicked a man
as one is likely to encounter.
Lambert Strether goes to Paris
at the behest of his wealthy,
middle aged fiancee and finds
there a richer life than any
he had hitherto envisioned and,
in the act of discovering it,
is impelled to turn his back
upon it. He reflects that Ma
dame de Vionnet is, for him,
"the finest and subtlest crea
ture he has ever known even
while he sees her" as vulgarly
troubled as a maid-servent cry
ing for her young man. "Goe
the’s vision of th£ideal..claim
ed by the real" has begun
to consume the present reality
in the interests of a higher
reality. Or, as a theologian
might put it, each of these no
vels is a sort of Pilgrim's Pro
gress, an embodiment, for its
own day, of the experience which
every Chirstian may expect to
have.
JAMES, in describing his
early education, tells us that
he and his brothers and sisters
were not allowed "to divine an
item of devotional practise.’’
Nevertheless, he has ap
prehended, through his genius,
the Christian archetypal pat
terns. His characters go to
Europe to find themselves—
that is to confront themselves.
John Chote, the leading ch
aracter in Mr. Sheed’s novel,
has to come to America to find
himself, but the experience in
each case is the same: the
creature’s discovery of its own
nothingness in relation to its
Creator.
Lambert Strether crosses the
ocean by "steamer." John Ch
ote, belonging, as he does, to
an Icarian age, flies across.
He is met at the customs shed
of the air-port by Eugene Fos-
dick, an American he has known
at Oxford and Fosdick’s sister,
Mirabelle, "a radiant girl in
shorts," who has "the longest
pair of legs Chote had ever
seen." Chote finds the lodgings
which Fosdick and his sister
have located for him near Lin
coln University intolerably
squalid. He also finds himself
unable to attend the lectures
he is supposed to attend on his
subject—law.
His professors talked in
terminably about the role
of law—everything but jolly
old law itself. To Chote
the law was primarily and
preferably the musty old
cases: Jinks vs. Rams-
bottom: plaintiff’s cow in
jured bydefendent’s bicy
cle, temporarily loaned to
Miss Higgins, on Queen’s
Highway.
HIS STAY in the United States
quickly resolves itself into
bouts of loneliness and dep
ression, alternating with week
end visits to the Fosdicks’ lux
urious estate in Connecticut.
His affair with Mirabelle con
sists of rendez-vous which are
not as surreptitious as his sense
of what is fitting demands and
a series of running battles which
take the form of discussion of
anything or everything either of
them has ever heard of.
Mirabelle had just finished
her second year "at a place
called Jones" and knew "just
enough about everything to dis
cuss it." During his first week
in the United States she and
Chote "romped through socia
lized medicine, the Church of
England, the Kinsey Report, the
Middle East, female emancipa-
ion ..." Where Daphne, the
girl Chote left behind him in
Oxford, would have bowed her
head modestly or kept silent,
Mirabelle "charged bravely
forward, shooting from both
slim hips."
Chote’s "middle class edu
cation" has prepared him to
deal with Mirabelle: "One’s us
ual technique was to put a foot
out as she went charging past...
‘But what do you believe?* she
would ask in desperation. ’Oh,
a bit of this and a bit of that,
you know. Awfully eclectic,
really."
Marriage
Men and women approach
marriage with vastly different
psychological and emotional at
titudes which each partner must
understand and accept if the
marriage is to be successful,
says Pierre Dufoyer in his new
book marriage—a word to
YOUNG MEN. It is published
by P. J. Kenedy & Sons today.
In it, Pierre Dufoyer tells
the prospective bridegroom or
young husband what true love
really is and how to recogn-
BUT ALTHOUGH Chote tri
umphs easily over Mirabelle,
he cannot shake off the persis
tent depression engendered by
a dream he had on his air
plane flight to America:
He dream ed he was soar
ing away into space, farther
ami father away from all the
people he loved and trusted
(what people, ha ha.) No,
that wasn’t a dream—that
was really happening. They
were talking him into that:
right out to the blooming
limits. There would be no
body else out there, of
course, just John Wilson
Chote and a lot of empty
space. God? Of course not.
One couldn’t possibly feel
so lonely if God were any
where about. It was icy
cold—God would make it
a little warmer if he had
to live out here. Chote
pulled up the skinny blan
ket and jerked his knees
on to the seat. God was
there, after all; other
wise, one might as well
give up altogether. Just
—give up. Up give, so to
speak.
John Chote, at his prepara
tory school had been the most
relentless, the most coolly cal
culating persecutor of a youn
ger boy, Godfrey Hook, (Known
later at Oxford as "the Rev.
Godfearing Hook” because he
was the son of a clergyman.
Once, after Chote has called
off the torment of Hook in the
interest of prudence - "I say,
chaps, he’s beginning to bruise
a bit" - he applies his eye
to the key-hole of the door thr
ough which the wretched Hook
has just been thrust and, seem
ing to find his own eye gaz
ing back at him, wonders whet
her he is tormentor or torment
ed, then knows an even worse
terror, the fear of losing his
own identity. Mr. Sheed, it
seems to me, is here dealing
with the same theme with which
Walker Percy deals in The Mov-
iergoer, the possibility that
modern man may be in danger
of losing his identity as the
result of losing his faith in
God.
Advice
ize it. He says the attitude of
the man approaching marriage
is usually poles apart from that
of his chosen partner on such
vital matters as love, sex, home
life, parenthood and careers.
But, he adds, these differences
are not irreconcilable. The es
sence of true love is under
standing, adjustment — and
most important die gift of self.
If the young couple strives for
that ideal, they take a giant
step toward a happy and suc
cessful marriage.
