ABSTRACT
Novels always reflect moral purpose. The new novels also surprise people with their message. There is something new in the type, however- not merely another perspective on the meaning of human life in society. There is a new grayness and dryness, a new limit to the will and intelligence of the novelists. They reduce experience. They shrink; they join with the other shrinkers; this frightened hiving replaces the challenge of individual worth. Every novel which takes any permanent hold differs both in goal and perspective from every other novel. A shadow of the athletic striving of the artist as moralist persists, but now the moral purpose becomes that of an exercise in submission. The commuting, business, institutionalized world-apolitical, bored and anxious, with passion the great danger- is questioned with some skill and tension. Virtue consists in a faithful submission, perhaps with understanding and sorrow, to the way things are.
