THE GREAT DETHRIFFE

by C. D. B. Bryan ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 19, 1970

C. D. B. Bryan wrote one earlier novel about P. S. Wilkinson (1965), a square young man (actually a prig) which had New Yorker previews, won the Harper Prize Novel, and inaugurated a modest recording talent closest to Auchincloss. Now he's written a slightly older novel about a square who is gratefully not a prig and which ends up with intimations of Couples while all along the way there are explicit referrals to Fitzgerald and Gatsby in particular. Although the situation is yew different; George Dethriffe and his Alice remind the narrator, one Alfred Moulton, of Gatsby and his Daisy (""We all marry our Zeldas""). Dethriffe has a great deal of money as well as a past filled with all the classy artifacts of class. It's the former which attracts Alice while the latter will make her slightly insecure and after drilling here and there, as a model, playgirl, what have you, she marries George only to sulk and shout her way through domesticity in daily scenes of ""emotional harassment"" which abrade and erode the ""celebration of illusion"" which is what Bryan, like Fitzgerald, is trying to project. And does. There are certainly things wrong with this novel, like the first, and in particular its structure which is so loosely basted together. And if one were to return mercilessly to Fitzgerald again, just as Bryan does, one is reminded of Mencken's comment on The Great Gatsby--""no more than a glorified anecdote""--with every reason. However it really doesn't matter since one accepts the book on its own sleek and infinitely readable terms for what it is--a dressy, nostalgic, attractively expensive vista of the '20's in the '60's.

Pub Date: Oct. 19, 1970

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Dutton

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1970

Categories: FICTION