Chapter 3 on "The Problem of the Mr. Ramsay and echoed by Lily Briscoe re­ Fiction," introduces the author's central presents order and fulfillment, a final thesis and could, then, perhaps have served symmetry. Mr. Carmichael, like a pagan as Chapter 1. Rosenthal rejects interpreta­ deity, extends his benediction over these tions of Woolf s novels as seen through the personal triumphs. At the end of The feminist lens, stating that this politicized Waves, it is the rhythm of the continual focus tends to distort the fiction. He rise and fall of life, represented symbolically dispenses also with the "androgynous vi­ by waves, that formulates Bernard's accept­ sion" emphasized by other critics. Rather, ance of his own mortality, resulting^ in he sees Virginia Woolf s work as radical in "harmony and completion." And in Between the sense that it is dissociated from the the Acts, the power of individuals to create "story-telling tradition." As an artist, writes art, relationships, and life out of disorder, Rosenthal, "Woolf was obsessed with what that is, Miss La Trobe's ability to create, par­ we call formal rather than thematic con­ alleled by Giles and Isa's creative struggle cerns" and "absorbed primarily in creating to renew their love, is the key whereby shapes." Woolf s "reality" has to do with the Virginia Woolf affirms her vision. "texture of human life" and the effort to "orchestrate" the quality of personal rela­ Michael Rosenthal's book is valuable in tionships. Like Woolf, her characters (for many ways, among them as a consistent example, Lily Briscoe, Bernard, Miss La development of a new point of view toward Trobe), are trying to form coherency from the novels; as an exemplar of that very the chaos around them. This chaos is the point of view, making coherency and har­ "overwhelming sense of personal relation­ mony from the chaos of the life, fiction, ships, the intractableness of language, the biography, and criticism; and as a useful fact of death." With Lily Briscoe, Woolf is teaching aid, for which purpose I would saying, "I have had my vision." concede that Chapters 1 and 2 are probably more necessary (although much of the The succeeding chapters deal with each material in them might have been inte­ of the nine novels, the biographies, social grated within Chapters 3-15.) The scholar criticism, and literary criticism in the light will find the book good reading; it is a fine of the points of view summarized in addition to the flood of material produced Chapter 3. Rosenthal, of course, sees The recently on Woolf and the Bloomsbury Voyage Out and Night and Day as traditional Group. As Rosenthal remarks, "Virginia novels, written in the spirit of her favorite Woolf is very hot literary property indeed." Edwardian villains: Wells, Bennett, and Galsworthy. Jacob's Room represents her Margaret Church first attempt to break from this tradition, but in Rosenthal's opinion it does not entirely succeed, being filled with discon­ tinuities that are absorbed in no central patterns. With his judgment that Jacob's Room is thus a "sterile form," I take some issue, believing that a coherence stems from the sense in it of the Joycean recorso, as I argued in "Joycean Structure in Jacob's Room and Mrs. Dalloway" which appeared in the July 1977 issue of IFR. REED MERRILL and THOMAS FRAZIER, COMP. Rosenthal sees Mrs. Dalloway as Virginia : An International Bib­ Woolf s first achievement of formal coher­ liography ence, spatially and temporally, with Big Ann Arbor: Ardis Publishers, Ben punctuating the thoughts of the characters (Cf. Joyce's Ulysses and again my 1979. Pp. 199. article). AU Woolfs best fiction takes place, according to Rosenthal, at least metaphori­ cally, within a day. (Mrs. Dalloway, To the This bibliography, in two parts, takes its Lighthouse, The Waves, and Between the Acts). basic organization from the categories used Clarissa in Mrs. Dalloway creates form by in the definitive Danube Edition (London: means of the party, "a kind of ritual cele­ Hutchinson, 1965-78, 31 volumes): Fiction bration of life," thereby manufacturing and Drama, Autobiography, and Essays "moments of order in the face of chaos." In and Symposia. Compiled by Reed Merrill, To the Lighthouse, the coherence achieved by "Works by Arthur Koestler" (335 items),

Brief Mentions 81 also sets out separate sections for Lectures [London: St. James Press, 1972], p. 726). and Broadcasts, Contributions to Books, Since then, the fraction has changed only and Contributions to Periodicals. The Ency slightly—6 novels out of 31 volumes—and clopaedia of Sexual Knowledge and the Bantam editions of L'Encyclopédie de la Famille, both published now number 10. The bibliography makes under the pseudonym Dr. A. Costler, and a clear just how international the interest in diatribe. Von Weissen Nächten und Roten his fiction really is: (1939) Tagen (1933), the original title of which was exists in 9 languages, Darkness at Noon to have been The Soviet Land through (1940) in 32, (1943) in Bourgeois Eyes, are mentioned in the'pre­ 12, (1946) in 10, and The face, but, at Koestler's request, are exclud­ Age of Longing (1951) and The Call Girls ed from the bibliography. In "Works (1972) each in 9. The fact that translation about Arthur Koestler" (403 items), pre­ of early Koestler fictions continues into the pared by Thomas Frazier, arrangement is seventies implies the breadth, currency, by topic as well as by the individual Koestler and importance of his imaginative thought. works considered. Theses and dissertations Darkness at Noon, for example, appears as are included. Annotated references to C. E. Slepiashchaia t'ma in 1978 (New York: M. Joad's Decadence: A Philosophical Inquiry Chekhov); Arrival and Departure, as Hacsiz (1948), Langston Hughes's I Wonder as I haclilarm 1973 (Istanbul: Varlik Yayinevi). Wander (1956), W. T. Stace's Mysticism and Philosophy (1960), and Ludvig von As the above account suggests, Professors Bertalanffy's "Evolution: Chance or Law" Merrill and Frazier have provided a valu­ (from his Perspectives on General Systems able assist to those who would cross bound­ Theory [ 1975]), for example, are evidence of aries, to come to an integrated, comparative the thoroughness and, therefore, the use­ understanding of Koestler's achievement as fulness of Frazier's compilation. a thinker and a novelist.

The volume provides a number of ser­ Camille R. La Bossière vices. Professor Merrill's introductory essay on Koestler's ideas, with its epigraph from (1939)—"It is this unity underlying diversity which makes me hope that my story is worth telling"—lucidly outlines the synthesist's search for that point where the sciences and the H. BRUCE FRANKLIN humanities coincide. Centering his account Future Perfect: American Science Fic­ on Koestler's and Bisociation tion of the Nineteenth Century theories, Professor Merrill traces a well Revised Edition. Oxford: Oxford defined progress, from Insight and Outlook University Press, 1978. Pp. xi + (1949) and (1964), through ( 1967), The 404. Paper $4.95. Roots of Coincidence (1972), and The Chal­ lenge of Chance (1973), tofanus: A Summing Up (1978). The essay persuasively argues Anthologies of science fiction frequently that to know Koestler at all one must take have an ephemeral interest since they too all of him into account: the litterateur and often are based on a personal preference of the man of science are inseparable. The an editor. Frequently, also, they are collec­ thesis is analogically sustained by the very tions of well-known stories easily found shape of the bibliography. Beginning with elsewhere, presented with little or no Koestler's fiction and drama, it ends with rationale. Neither of these criticisms is an appendix listing recent scientific litera­ applicable to Franklin's collection of ture citing his works. nineteenth-century science fiction. The reissue of this 1966 anthology attests the The bibliography also shows that Koes­ interest it aroused then as well as its tler is most widely known for his fiction. In continued usefulness—not only for the 1971, he referred to himself as "only stories themselves, but also for Franklin's one-fifth of a novelist"—of his 25 volumes illuminating and provocative comments. only 5 were novels—while observing in the same sentence that one of his novels, In this new edition, there are two sub­ Darkness at Noon, had sold more copies than stantive and valuable additions—stories by all his other books put together Jack London ("A Thousand Deaths") and (Contemporary Novelists, ed. James Vinson Washington Irving ("The Men of the

82 The International Fiction Review, 8, No. 1 (1981)