clever, it is a sad pair to choose from, but the former would be nearer to art. Mr Frank, as I have noted above, can be clever, but as a rule he is too precipitant. As a result, his works lack edges; one catches an abundance of rich overtones, but they obscure the note itself. What, for instance, is the structural significance of the City Block cycle? What is the inevitable centre about which it revolves? It should force itself upon us from the complexion of the work. Structure is not so priestly a thing that only the elect can glimpse it. Structure 1s the first principle of a work, not the last.
As to Rahab, the case is simpler. One does, on finishing it, get a definite retrospect. The author starts with Mrs Luve, a procuress; then he goes back to the beginning, and gives us Mrs Luve's career; ending upon Mrs Luve, exactly where the book began, we now have this procuress with all the qualifications and subtilizations of 250 pages. She emerges, somehow, stationary, like a fireplug on a busy street, like a boat anchored in a fog. There is nothing priestly about this; it is, in fact, startlingly simple. The book is undoubtedly Mr Frank's best piece of work up to date. It is the logical culmination of The Dark Mother, representing directly that type of writing which the former book was feeling for. That is, Mr Frank has found the manner which best carries his burden. . . . The same is true of certain stories in City Block taken as isolated units. In stories like Under the Dome and John the Baptist Mr Frank has made just as accurate a junction between the burden and the expression thereof. That is, so far as the untrammeled, direct giving of himself is concerned, the author has attained it. These works go the whole extent of Croceanism: the expression is immediate and full.
But expression is not all of art; the rest is elegance. Mr Frank has done a valiant task in his fight against the inhibitory baggage which American art has had to lug. His work on this score is as significant as that of Van Wyck Brooks. But both men, under the urge of their evangelism, tend to make the emphasis on expression too exclusive. It is an excellent corrective which becomes in turn a defect if carried too far.
