THE JOURNAL OF MARY HERVEY RUSSELL

Another postponement from Fall (see report P. 379 -- September 1st bulletin). I see no reason to change the report as of that date:- ""I cannot see this as fiction -- its appeal, and that a highly specialized one, seems to me to be confined largely to a literary market, as a somewhat oblique kind of autobiographical commentary on the passing scene of Europe before and at the start of the war. Storm Jameson, speaking through a character purporting to be granddaughter of Mary Hervey of The Lovely Ship (Knopf-'39) and daughter of The Captain's Wife (Macmillan -- '39) writes of mood and intellectual response and occasional incident -- vignettes of Vienna, Berlin, Prague, Budapest, Paris, London and smaller, less important spots in Europe; of the effect of war on writers, particularly anti-Nazi writers; of the internal conflicts of the artist; colloquies between the imagined dead of both wars -- of the Czech who had known worse than death; comments on literature, on the place of the writer in the scheme of things, of the international function of P.E.N. of seekings for remembered ghosts of the past. There are gems of writing, sensitive, perceptive, but as a whole, it seems confused, omorphous, unrealized. Market limited almost wholly to intellectuals.