In the first
case I know that he often is not, in the second case I do not know
whether he is or he isn't. But I do say that, within the scope of his
vision, he is wholly convincing; that the men and women he sets into his
scene show ineluctably vivid and persuasive personality; that the
theories he brings forward to account for their acts are intelligible;
that the effects of those acts, upon actors and immediate spectators
alike, are such as might be reasonably expected to issue; that the final
impression is one of searching and indubitable veracity. One leaves
"Nostromo" with a memory as intense and lucid as that of a real
experience. The thing is not mere photography. It is interpretative
painting at its highest.
In all his stories you will find this same concern with the inextricable
movement of phenomena and noumena between event and event, this same
curiosity as to first causes and ultimate effects. Sometimes, as in "The
Point of Honor" and "The End of the Tether," he attempts to work out the
obscure genesis, in some chance emotion or experience, of an
extraordinary series of transactions.
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