Two Flops and a Winner

A few years ago John Knowles wrote a neat little novel called A Separate Peace. It was an American transcription of Roger Peyrefitte’s Les Amitiés Particulières and won a name for itself. Then he wrote Morning in Antibes, a confused novel both pointless and dull. And now Mr. Knowles sends forth a third. It, too, is pointless and dull. The writing of novels is inordinately esteemed in our society, and many go in for it who have no knack whatever. The scribbler of fiction was thought to be a trifle loony in nineteenth-century America (as in Russia today) ; now he ranks just below movie stars and TV emcees, and the status is worth the climb. The struggle is so fascinating, in fact, that the aspiring writer hypnotizes himself into believing things that would give him the dry grins in a waking state.

For instance, Mr. Knowles began to believe that rich people living in Connecticut are interesting, and that if he imagined them in certain situations—situations that one can see every afternoon on television laced with much headier treacle—their silly anxieties would make an interesting novel. Well, they haven’t. Perhaps, to be generous, Mr. Knowles’ dim story might have taken on some life if he had vacuumed the fuzz off his prose, learned to construct a dramatic scene, and found an interest in human beings. Human beings have made excellent subjects for novels before. Novelists have described their endurances on desert islands; their taking up knight errantry ten centuries too late, their fanatic pursuit of white whales. Mr. Knowles’ protagonist is discharged from the military and is naughty with a friend’s wife. There is no other plot, to speak of. Some rich Connecticut people solidify from time to time, to rattle the whiskey in their glasses and to peer into goldfish ponds. This meager, mumbled narrative is thinned out to occupy 242 pages, the length of the Pentateuch plus eight chapters of Joshua, or of half of Don Quixote.

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Guy Davenport

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A few years ago John Knowles wrote a neat little novel called A Separate Peace. It was an American transcription of Roger Peyrefitte’s Les Amitiés Particulières and won a name for itself. Then he wrote Morning in Antibes, a confused novel both pointless and dull. And now Mr. Knowles sends forth a third. It, too, is pointless and dull. The writing of novels is inordinately esteemed in our society, and many go in for it who have no knack whatever. The scribbler of fiction was thought to be a trifle loony in nineteenth-century America (as in Russia today) ; now he ranks just below movie stars and TV emcees, and the status is worth the climb. The struggle is so fascinating, in fact, that the aspiring writer hypnotizes himself into believing things that would give him the dry grins in a waking state.

For instance, Mr. Knowles began to believe that rich people living in Connecticut are interesting, and that if he imagined them in certain situations—situations that one can see every afternoon on television laced with much headier treacle—their silly anxieties would make an interesting novel. Well, they haven’t. Perhaps, to be generous, Mr. Knowles’ dim story might have taken on some life if he had vacuumed the fuzz off his prose, learned to construct a dramatic scene, and found an interest in human beings. Human beings have made excellent subjects for novels before. Novelists have described their endurances on desert islands; their taking up knight errantry ten centuries too late, their fanatic pursuit of white whales. Mr. Knowles’ protagonist is discharged from the military and is naughty with a friend’s wife. There is no other plot, to speak of. Some rich Connecticut people solidify from time to time, to rattle the whiskey in their glasses and to peer into goldfish ponds. This meager, mumbled narrative is thinned out to occupy 242 pages, the length of the Pentateuch plus eight chapters of Joshua, or of half of Don Quixote.