Alfred Yule, the worn-out veteran, whose literary ideals are
those of the eighteenth century, is a most extraordinary study of an
_arriere_--certainly one of the most crusted and individual personalities
Gissing ever portrayed. He never wrote with such a virile pen: phrase after
phrase bites and snaps with a singular crispness and energy; material used
before is now brought to a finer literary issue. It is by far the most
tenacious of Gissing's novels. It shows that on the more conventional lines
of fictitious intrigue, acting as cement, and in the interplay of
emphasised characters, Gissing could, if he liked, excel. (It recalls
Anatole France's _Le Lys Rouge_, showing that he, too, the scholar and
intellectual _par excellence_, could an he would produce patterns in plain
and fancy adultery with the best.) Whelpdale's adventures in Troy, U.S.A.,
where he lived for five days on pea-nuts, are evidently
semi-autobiographical. It is in his narrative that we first made the
acquaintance of the American phrase now so familiar about literary
productions going off like hot cakes. The reminiscences of Athens are
typical of a lifelong obsession--to find an outlet later on in _Veranilda_.
Pages:
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57