ABSTRACT
Mrs. Woolf's work is something Mr. Lawrence's could never be; the perfection of a type. Although it faithfully represents the contemporary novel, there is nothing to be found in it that completely resembles it. It is perhaps more representative than the work of Mr. Joyce. To take up another line, a novelist must possess not only great gifts but a great deal of independence as well. 'Moral interest' cannot be simply 'restored': Conrad's strong man, fallen, is already nothing more than a sentimental relic. This interest has to be rediscovered like something new. Mr. Aldous Huxley, who is perhaps one of those people who have to per petrate thirty bad novels before producing a good one, has a certain natural-but little developed-aptitude for seriousness. Unfortunately, this aptitude is hampered by a talent for the rapid assimilation of all that isn't essential and by a gift for chic. Now, the gift for chic, combined with the desire for seriousness, produces a frightful monster: a chic religiosity. It is at this point that one should fear for Mr. Huxley. In his last long novel, Those Barren Leaves, the adolescent self-analysis, in its scathing caricature, seemed as though it had been written under the in fluence of some momentary mystical or ascetic impulse although it was
only the lyrical outcry of a destitute heart. It wasn't yet definite enough to give form to the characters or to the atmosphere in which they lived. Mr. Huxley is at least dissatisfied with himself and the society which he photographed with such precision and desolation in his recent story, 'The Monocle'. But his nature is very strongly imbued with senti mentality, and he still runs the risk of falling into the rank of an amusing modern variant of René or Werther.1
