THE CRITIC OF DOSTOEVSKY
Still Life. By J. Middleton Murry. 12mo. 464 pages. E. P. Dutton and Company. $2.50.
The Things We Are. By J. Middleton Murry. 12mo. 320 pages. E. P. Dutton and Company. $2.50.
IN Still Life Mr Murry gives us: an English, critic's, version in novel form, of England's own particularly highly sophisticated type of post-war, out-of-nowhere-into-nothingness, the book ending with one lost hysterical soul weeping in perfect iambs. In The Things We Are Mr Murry seems to have undergone an idyllic reaction against his own previous effort, and in expiation steers a mysteriously awakened Mr Boston into a wife, and the company of wholesome, big-bosomed Mrs Williams. And to our astonishment and shamefaced confusion, just when the lovers have been united, this very Mrs Williams comes into the room and places a steaming pudding on the table. Which makes one feel that if we are to preserve Mr Murry as a Platonist we must maintain the balance between dualities by throwing one of his novels on each side of the scale, and letting the bitterness of the one counterbalance the sweetness of the other.
As a portrait of English society, I am willing to take Mr Murry as gospel. The sterile self-analyses in Still Life, the futile conversations, the almost vulgar self-consciousness: it has always been my fond belief that contemporary drawing-room England is precisely that. Yet, building upon this fundament, Mr Murry has contrived to wind up a story with a positively astonishing skill. For the first seven or eight chapters we follow him as he takes on one responsibility after another; but unfortunately, once Mr Murry has finished winding up his story, there is nothing to do but let it run down. Before the story is finished every last one of the characters has told us far too much about himself; and for the last hundred pages they are nothing but voices. Still, these statements are unfair; as they make no allowance for the really keen strokes which Mr Murry keeps turning up continually, and for the discretion and freshness with which the old triangle theme is handled.
