Midtown Blogger/Manhattan Valley Follies: Rebecca West- NY Times

Featured Author: Rebecca West
With News and Reviews From the Archives of The New York Times

In This Feature
Reviews of Rebecca West's Earlier Books

Articles About Rebecca WestRelated Links

Sarah Kerr Reviews 'Selected Letters of Rebecca West' (Sept. 9, 2000)

First Chapter: 'Selected Letters of Rebecca West'

E. O. Hoppe/The Mansell Collection

Rebecca West

REVIEWS OF REBECCA WEST'S EARLIER BOOKS:

'The Return of the Soldier' (1918)
"Though its style is occasionally a trifle strained, a trifle 'Precious,' the novel is on the whole, well written, and its plot well handled. . . . a clever first novel, a little too consciously subtle, perhaps, but showing real talent."

'Ending in Earnest' (1931)
"In these pages . . . we may catch the variety of Rebecca West's interests and the playfulness, not less than the sharpness of her mind, better than in any formal book of criticism. For she is perhaps more often the accomplished journalist here than the critic . . ."

'St. Augustine' (1933)
"For all the author's modesty . . . she has no mean grasp of Augustinian philosophy and theology, and her book, though simple, is far from superficial. . . . West has done a robust bit of biographical compression; done it with zest, but also with reverence. It is a balanced book."

'The Harsh Voice' (1935)
"Rebecca West has produced four miniature novels . . . which are chiefly remarkable for their technical brilliance. They have a smooth high glaze . . . but its brittleness and its occasional meretriciousness seem to prove that something besides craftsmanship is required."

'The Thinking Reed' (1936)
". . . an absorbing, sometimes penetrating and sometimes improbable story . . . What finally does satisfy us as thinking beings, what does make the scenes significant as well as thrilling, is no creative purity on Miss West's part, but a critical purposefulness."

'Black Lamb and Grey Falcon' (1941)
"In two almost incredibly full-packed volumes one of the most gifted and searching of modern English novelists and critics has produced not only the magnification and intensification of the travel book form, but, one may say, its apotheosis."

'The Meaning of Treason' (1947)
". . . accounts of the British treason trials of William Joyce, John Amery and others . . . It would be easy to turn this review into grouped quotations to display the vigor of her thought, the shape of her sentences, her knowledge of psychology, her sense of terror and of exile, her humor, the profundity of her ethical judgments, her vignettes of people and her panoramas of places."

'A Train of Powder,' reviewed by Diana Trilling (1955)
"[I]f now and then Miss West's prodigality verges on garrulousness, this can be readily forgiven a writer who so much of the time has so much to say that we would hate to miss it. Actually, rather more fatiguing than Miss West's occasional overabundance . . . is the endemic ascendancy of her intellection over her feeling."

'The Fountain Overflows' (1956)
"This is her first novel in twenty years and, although it is clever and moderately entertaining in a leisurely fashion, it lacks entirely the diamond brilliance, the fierce intelligence and the incisive vigor of an obviously superior mind that we have learned to expect in any book by Rebecca West."

'The Court and the Castle' (1957)
". . . indicate[s] to us what a very 'high' Calvinist Miss West has become . . . Miss West's concentration on the theme makes it possible for her to get well under the surface of most of the works she deals with."

'The New Meaning of Treason,' reviewed by Sidney Hook (1964)
"[A] revised and expanded edition of Rebecca West's now-classic study of the English wartime Fascist traitors . . ."

'The Birds Fall Down' (1966)
"[U]ltimately Dame Rebecca comes through like her own best characters. Her follies as a writer only set off her virtues. In 'The Birds Fall Down,' she has done more than dramatize the Russian soul. She has found out the Russian in all of us."

'Rebecca West: A Celebration' (1977)
"Too often, a 'celebration' of the sort represented by this volume is a patronizing tribute to longevity rather than to the sustained high quality of an author's work. Fortunately, it is impossible to condescend in this way to Rebecca West . . ."

'This Real Night' (1985)
"[T]he posthumous second installment of her unfinished 'Saga of the Century' . . . the novel has a sketchy, uneven feel. . . . To say it doesn't work is not to deny its fascination. The whole ghostly, unfinishable saga project . . . bears striking witness to what an extraordinary, and extraordinarily honest, writer Rebecca West was."

'Sunflower' (1987)
"This uncompleted novel . . . was begun in 1925, two years before [West] entered psychoanalysis. . . . The favor done her by publishing this large fragment now is doubtful."

'Family Memories: An Autobiographical Journey' (1988)
"Rebecca West's 'Family Memories,' assembled from material she wrote during the last years of her life but never polished for publication . . . is one of the most absorbing memoirs I have ever read."ARTICLES ABOUT REBECCA WEST:

Lillian Hellman Reviews Gordon N. Ray's 'H. G. Wells and Rebecca West' (1974)
"It is surprising then that Gordon N. Ray . . . one of the country's great bibliophiles, has allowed himself to fall in love with Rebecca West. As a woman I envy Miss West her distinguished admirer; as a reader I was often turned off and made suspicious."

TV: Moyers and a Provocative Dame Rebecca West (1981)
In a review of a TV interview with West at the age of 89, John J. O'Connor writes, "Dame Rebecca emerges as a formidable presence. When she finds something or somebody 'disagreeable,' the adjective suddenly becomes withering."

Dame Rebecca West Dies in London (1983)
West's obituary quotes the New Yorker editor William Shawn, who said that "Rebecca West was one of the giants and will have a lasting place in English literature."

Revealing Truth (1983)
In a tribute to West, a New York Times editorial said, "As eloquent as she was intelligent, she expressed moral disapproval with an intensity that can cause shivers."

New Life for Anthony West Tale (1984)
Rebecca West's threat to sue any British publisher of her son's autobiographical novel, "Heritage," effectively blocked publication of the book until her death.

A Review of Anthony West's 'H. G. Wells' and 'Heritage' (1984)
"Some readers will . . . wonder how the ogress Mr. West portrays could possibly have been the same woman who wrote Rebecca West's books. Others will feel . . . that only someone who had been badly wounded could write as virulently as he does about his own mother."

Film: 'Return of Soldier,' A Story About Amnesia (1985)
"When 24-year-old Rebecca West wrote 'The Return of the Soldier' . . . amnesia was not yet the exhausted device it was to become . . . I had no idea that anything depending on amnesia could still be so affecting, largely because of the splendid, perfectly integrated performances by Glenda Jackson, Julie Christie and Ann-Margret."

A Review of Victoria Glendinning's 'Rebecca West' (1987)
"Throughout the book she shows West to be a formidable, frequently rebarbative public and private person with a taste for histrionics . . . The type of swift biographical portrait and conspectus that Ms. Glendinning aimed to write involves literary standards she is often not up to."

Rebecca West: This Time, Let's Listen (1991)
Larry Wolff writes that the most valuable lesson from "Black Lamb and Grey Falcon" was "to recognize unequivocally that Eastern Europe was a necessary part of Europe."

A Review of Carl Rollyson's 'Rebecca West' (1996)
"[West's stature] remains ambiguous more than a decade after her death. It is likely to stay that way in spite of Carl Rollyson's thorough and engrossing biography . . ."

Where Victims Turn Into Aggressors (1999)
In a reconsideration of "Black Lamb and Grey Falcon," Walter Goodman writes that West "discerned no poetry in this conflict and would have had no difficulty in recognizing the spirit behind it in the pictures of the latest refugees being hounded by the latest purifiers."

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Sunday, March 15, 2015

Rebecca West- NY Times

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