Books in Brief

The Silence Of History, by James T. Farrell (Doubleday, $4.95). A novel of experimental intent from an unexpected source. With stalwart patience, Mr. Farrell undertakes a complete account of the mental mutations of Eddie Ryan, 22, Irish Catholic, beginning student (in 1926) at the University of Chicago, and part-time gas station attendant. In Gertrude Stein’s phrase, it is “a little description of the winning of so much wisdom,” of Ryan’s coming to see that growing is distinguishing between material ambition and intellectual aspiration. The atmosphere of his world—the leaden, meanly depressive airlessness of an Edward Hopper street scene—is well portrayed. Mr. Farrell attempts to give his story the pace and tenor of the glacial, silent process of real history, examining the living sequences of time at their natural pace, refusing to make any concessions to fiction’s usual demand for “false conflict and drama.” Informed with a strictness of vision and a mastery of verbal precision, such a tale might have become a worthy descendant of The Making of Americans. Sadly, however, there is little in Ryan’s mind capable of inspiring a firm vision, and the prose is nerveless and banal. The first volume of a projected tetralogy.

R. BEMIS

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The Silence Of History, by James T. Farrell (Doubleday, $4.95). A novel of experimental intent from an unexpected source. With stalwart patience, Mr. Farrell undertakes a complete account of the mental mutations of Eddie Ryan, 22, Irish Catholic, beginning student (in 1926) at the University of Chicago, and part-time gas station attendant. In Gertrude Stein’s phrase, it is “a little description of the winning of so much wisdom,” of Ryan’s coming to see that growing is distinguishing between material ambition and intellectual aspiration. The atmosphere of his world—the leaden, meanly depressive airlessness of an Edward Hopper street scene—is well portrayed. Mr. Farrell attempts to give his story the pace and tenor of the glacial, silent process of real history, examining the living sequences of time at their natural pace, refusing to make any concessions to fiction’s usual demand for “false conflict and drama.” Informed with a strictness of vision and a mastery of verbal precision, such a tale might have become a worthy descendant of The Making of Americans. Sadly, however, there is little in Ryan’s mind capable of inspiring a firm vision, and the prose is nerveless and banal. The first volume of a projected tetralogy.

R. BEMIS