Books: Halfway House

THE UNPOSSESSED — Tess Slesinger — Simon & Schuster ($2.50). Last week a new novelist burst, like a modern Pallas Athene, full-panoplied from the aching head of Uncle Sam. Critics who always lift an eyebrow at such new arrivals noted a few chinks in her armor, but to the gaping crowd of plain citizens she seemed indeed a well-armed lady. Her utterance was racier than classic, and the bird of wisdom on her shoulder looked more like a mockingbird than an owl. But she was obviously a messenger of the gods, and Publishers Simon & Schuster announced her as such. The Unpossessed is the latest news from the U. S. “intellectual” front. Far from being a funny story (except perhaps to those who visit asylums to get a good laugh), it would be a tragedy if it were not so excruciatingly true to what many a Manhattan intellectual calls life. Literary historians will class it as an excellent example of a transition novel, the typical bill-of-fare of a halfway house. Oldsters will not be amused or touched, while most members of the generation that still, with lessening confidence, calls itself young, will admit that The Unpossessed is a telling caricature, the work of an artist who will undoubtedly do even better. Miles and Margaret lived unhappily together. He wanted to love her but he had a New England conscience which was always shutting her out. In the end, when he persuaded her to prefer abortion to motherhood, it was he who was shut out. Jeffrey, whose time was spent getting himself seduced against a literary background, had luckily acquired a solid woman in his wife Norah. He was always thankful to come home to her, but neither would he let her have any baby but himself. Bruno was a too-coherent professor whose Jewish intelligence paralyzed his will. When the Magazine he loved to talk about starting finally came to the point of starting, he let it fizzle out in a gargantuan defeatist joke. Though he loved the girl he might have had for the asking and knew she was headed for disaster, he never lifted a finger to save her. These and other characters stand out from the energetic flow of Author Slesinger’s narrative, but what makes the book both entertaining and impressive are its gurgling eddies of talk, its glittering shallows and broken rapids.

The Author, young (28), Manhattan-born, went to an Ethical Culture school, Swarthmore College and the Columbia School of Journalism, then did publicity work and odd jobs on Manhattan newspapers. She has traveled widely in Europe, is still a spinster. At present she is teaching something called “creative writing” at a girls’ school (Briarcliff Manor, N. Y.).