The Correspondence of Shelby Foote & Walker Percy
The friendship of the two writers began in their early teens and continued until Percy’s death in 1990, at age seventy-four. Their correspondence would seem to offer interesting reading, but several aspects make this book unsatisfying. One is that Foote didn’t save Percy’s letters until 1970, so from 1948 til then we get only Foote’s letters. The editor, Jay Tolson, entitles this first section “Master to Apprentice.” Foote took the role of master because, though the men were the same age, Foote began writing fiction first. By nature he was a pontificator, and he doled out advice on writing and espoused the nobility of the profession. He went on at length about his work (plot outlines, etc.). He also gave urgent suggestions as to what Percy should read (the names of Proust, Dante, and Dostoevsky must appear well over a hundred times). He comes across as a didactic dispenser of knowledge. When we finally get responses from Percy (his first letter appears on page 128, close to the midpoint of the book) it becomes clear that he wasn’t a compliant pupil. And it’s interesting that he turned to Caroline Gordon and Allen Tate for help with his first novel. Foote was adamantly against this: “. . . they are to be avoided as you would avoid something contagious.” I think Percy liked Foote, but took him with a grain of salt – he may even, like me, skimmed much of what Foote wrote him (and, also like me, never got around to reading Proust). Even when both men’s letters are included, they’re spotty – a half year will go by without any correspondence. Percy’s letters are better – short and often humorous. As for insight into the personalities and lives of the two men, there’s some of that, but not a whole lot. I think Tolson did a shoddy job with his footnotes. He’ll give us a street address, but he leaves us in the dark about matters that are important (who is this person being discussed, using only his first name?). Still, a long relationship like this generates some feeling. Which makes the ending of the book both odd and sad. Tolson includes the very short eulogy Foote gave at Percy’s funeral. In it Foote throws in the following names: Dostoevsky, Proust, Faulkner, Schopenhauer, Maupassant, James, Dante. But not one personal word about his old friend.

Four Short Novels by D. H. Lawrence
I’ve admired some of Lawrence’s short stories – “The Odour of Chrysanthemums,” “The Rocking Horse Winner,” “Tickets, Please.” But his novels are another matter. Though I liked the first third of Sons and Lovers, in which he examines his parent’s marriage, it falters badly when he turns his attention to himself. I couldn’t stick for long with The Rainbow and Women in Love. He loses me when he beleaguers some abstract point about life or explores inexpressible states of being. I feel the characters and the plots are being stifled by an agenda. The short form almost forces him to be succinct and grounded. I took up this volume in the hope that the “short” aspect would prevail. This was true in Love Among the Haystacks (the briefest of the four), in which two brothers find women that they will marry. It was simple and generous, and it left me feeling satisfied. The other three novellas – The Ladybird, The Fox and The Captain’s Doll – were all about male/female relationships, and all had an enigmatic quality that initially interested me. But my interest turned into incredulity. If people act strangely, the reader must still believe in them. But the obscure and shifting emotions of these characters not only became unbelievable, but ridiculous. The feeling I had could be summed up with “Who are these people and what’s their problem?” I don’t think Lawrence had a clear idea. I quit The Ladybird halfway through, but finished the others to their inconclusive endings (with The Captain’s Doll it was a struggle through twenty pages of descriptive prose). Someone should have made Lawrence recognise his strengths and weaknesses. Ambition – which, for him, took the form of conveying Deep Ideas – was a killer for him as a writer of fiction.

Flesh Is Heir - Lincoln Kirstein
In the first chapter, “Flesh is Fear,” Roger Baum is fourteen, attending a boys’ boarding school. Initially he’s on friendly terms with a new arrival – Andrew Stone – but soon Andrew embarks on a campaign of psychological warfare against him. Roger is susceptible to Andrew’s tactics because he’s imaginative; he comes to feel as if he were being “extinguished in the pityless blackness of an influence that fitted him like a strait-jacket.” Andrew is creepy and his actions incomprehensible; but Roger is the subject of the chapter, and his fear is convincing. Also of merit is the atmosphere of a boys’ school, with its rivalries and jealousies and cruelty. The boys were real boys, the writing was direct and forceful, the narrative lean and unencumbered. I found this opening to be highly promising. But the second chapter, “Flesh is Work,” was just okay, and in the next five a steady decline takes place. They have Roger growing into his early twenties, drifting in and out of posh surroundings in Europe and America, interacting with various characters, none of whom made an impression on me. The emotional impact conveyed in the opening is never duplicated in any form. The falloff can be explained by the fact that the author was twenty-five when he wrote Flesh Is Heir. Only in his encounter with Andrew Stone had he attained the distance to make convincing fiction. For the rest of the book what we get is pretentious posturing. In an Afterword, written when he was sixty-five, Kirstein seems bewildered that the Lost American Fiction series had chosen to reprint the book. He notes its faults and states that he had second thoughts after its acceptance for publication and was relieved when it was totally ignored by critics and readers. He never continued as a novelist; his primary fame came as co-founder of the New York City Ballet. Maybe his longtime prominence in Big Apple artistic and intellectual circles made him a candidate to be “rediscovered.” But a more deserving – and appreciative – choice could have been made. As a writer of fiction Kirstein should get credit for writing one very good long story. And that’s it.