When the Big Job Is at Stake.

There are novels, poems, and plays which do not quite make it as novels, poems, and plays. Yet they are infinitely more rewarding, more valid, and more impressive than the slick and well-made product which observes the Hollywood unities, “packs a wallop,” and wins the plaudits of critics who couldn’t tell Oedipus from apple butter. That this is so makes contemplation of the literary scene a somewhat sorry experience. The “bed to bidet” school almost inevitably triumphs whereas the metaphysical novels of a Charles Williams are remaindered a week after publication.

All of which is an overblown lead into a discussion of two books whose authors never intended them to be competitors for the Les Misérables award of the year. The first bumps and starts and bumps again in its course to completion. The second flows like a Ray Noble arrangement, traversing an emotional gamut from A to B with almost no effort and a heightening of tension which the best of the TV writers might envy.