THE NOVEL NOW

Burgess has qualified his "Student's Guide to Contemporary Fiction" so modestly and variously in his introduction that one hesitates to further question its utility. It is intended as a survey-summary to enable younger readers to "organize their reading economically." However college students will have outstripped the limited critical annotations here, and high school readers (also a designated audience) won't have time—or spend it—on many of the minimal writers included. Then again its deliberately extensive overview is in a sense restrictive, since Mr. Burgess, who is a very stimulating cicerone, has obviously curtailed criticism to the point of providing convenient categories with accessible annotations. He defines the novel and some of its earlier exponents, traditional forms, and then topically arranges (Utopias and Dystopias, War the Roman Fleuve, etc.) a numerically impressive representation of American, English and European novelists. A list of writers and their works appears at the end of each chapter (and admittedly has already dated this)—the comment, as such, is usually charitable; the book is to be appraised within its self-declared intentions and limitations.