West to Eden
When one thinks of Jessamyn West, he thinks of a writer of intimate stories. "The Friendly Persuasion" was a warm, winning tale of a Quaker family of the Civil War era; "Cress Delahanty" was an equally beguiling account of an adolescent girl. These have been Miss West's two most popular and rewarding books…. [They] established a reputation for style, characterization, humor, and impetuosity.
In "South of the Angels," her most ambitious novel to date, Miss West works on a larger canvas. This is an outsized, overpopulated treatment of a classic theme: the American pioneer on a new frontier. Miss West's craftsmanship is obvious here; her characters, as usual, are real and sympathetic. Yet whatever "South of the Angels" may be, it is not intimate. (p. 23)
[One] might expect satire to be a key element in any novel of land booms and investment opportunities in [Southern California, a] region of wonderful nonsense…. But Miss West is not concerned with satire here, even the gentle sort she applied in the account of her brief Hollywood period, "To See the Dream." Rather than a story of real estate, this is a multiple story of people who migrated to a golden (often gold-plated) land in pursuit of health, wealth, and happiness. Humor, yes; but, Jessamyn, where is thy sting?
Essentially this is a serious work of mass characterization as townsite, church, homes, and families are built. Within the time span of one year we are concerned with a dozen or more major characters, and a score of minor ones. (pp. 23, 50)
LeRoy Rounce, the Quaker preacher, [is] a minor character, but one of the most memorable in this book by an author who has always drawn her Quakers well.
There are others, too many to catalogue, too many to keep in mind as one reads. Miss West weaves together their loves, guilt, ambitions, prejudices, sex drives, disappointments, and hopes into a fabric of community interdependence and growth. In doing so she writes a pageant as well as a novel, and like so many pageants it is overly long and too abundantly cast. What one misses in this big California book, which for Miss West is a new literary dimension, is the spontaneity, the warm-blooded, generous élan of her shorter works. (p. 50)
William Hogan, "West to Eden," in Saturday Review (copyright © 1960 by Saturday Review; all rights reserved; reprinted by permission), Vol. XLIII, No. 17, April 23, 1960, pp. 23, 50.
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