Criticism > Short Story Criticism > Gordimer, Nadine (Vol. 17) - Honor Tracy (essay date 1965)

Gordimer, Nadine (Vol. 17) - Honor Tracy (essay date 1965)

Honor Tracy (essay date 1965)

SOURCE: "A Bouquet from Nadine Gordimer," in The New Republic, Vol. 152, No. 2633, May 8, 1965, pp. 25-6.

[Tracy is a English novelist and travel writer. In the following essay, she provides a mixed review of Not for Publication.]

There is no living writer of short stories more interesting, varied and fertile than Miss Gordimer at her best. In this new collection, however, she does not always come up to her standard. The lyrical freshness is dulled, as so often in the works of maturity: now and again, humanity degenerates into motherliness; and several pieces are too long for their weight. This may be due to their being written in the first place for American magazines, for American editors love stories to be "extended," either from a simple respect for quantity as such or from the need to lure their readers through the jungle of advertisement. But whatever the reason for it, some of the work included here...

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