Word: meres
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...novel." That is enough of a disclaimer to protect it from the accusation that it is not a novel at all but a profound and beautiful question-mark. It transcends, certainly, any pat classification into which you might try to slip it. The plot, except as a mere framework or skeleton on which the study of character hangs, is completely inconsequential. It could have developed a dozen different ways in a dozen different places without affecting the story's main interest, and this is its weakness as the plot of a novel. Incidents have been "dragged in by the ears...
Oliver Alden, who denied himself the easier road when he was yet a mere compilation of chromosomes--and chose to be a male, is the protagonist of Santayana's story. Born of Epicurean Dr. Peter Alden and hypocritical, timidly tyrannical Mrs. Alden of Great Falls, Conn., he denies himself the easier road all through his life. He is a real Puritan, as Santayana explains in his "Prologue." "He kept himself for what was best.... His puritanism had never been mere timidity or fanaticism or calculated hardness; it was a deep and speculative thing: hatred of all shams, scorn...
...play for his fellows. He accompanies his father on a cruise because he thinks he should and actually enjoys himself somewhat, but refuses to spend additional time with his father in the Mediterranean because it is his duty to return to America to college. But Oliver is no mere prig, no stuffed-shirt; it is his heart as well as his mind which calls him to duty, and it is by virtue of this extremely vivid impression of his character that Santayana shows his real insight. It would have been easy to draw a caricature of Oliver--not one novelist...
...pleasures as evidence of some lack of physical passion, the author makes it clear that for Oliver puritanism did not mean chastity or priggishness. "It is a popular error," says he, ''to suppose that puritanism has anything to do with purity." Nor was it ''mere timidity or fanaticism or calculated hardness: it was a deep and speculative thing: hatred of all shams, scorn of all mummeries, a bitter, merciless pleasure in the hard facts. . . ." Oliver's loneliness may have arisen because he never realized that "all ladies are women," a discovery that Mario made...
...party which last week read him out, and his late government rested largely upon its support. It is a matter of common knowledge that the Radical Socialist party is less "Radical" than the Socialist, and the term "further on the conservative side" as used in the Crimson was mere editorial comparison. As for "Gallic tastes", Laval's disregard for the League of Nations has been notorious, and as long as he remained Premier his conduct must be taken as representative of a majority of Frenchmen. Whether or not it would have been easy to dissolve the "league" is a debateable...