Amid Victorians: A Monkey's Uncle And 2 Bold Men

Too often biography is a poor compromise between conflicting aims. The author, hoping to evaluate personality, setting, and significance, is apt to fly off in all directions, leaving little or no impression of his work as a whole, or more probably lapse into a one-sideness which sacrifices accuracy for interest. Professor Irvine's Apes, Angels, and Victorians strikes a skillful compromise, no small achievement for an author whose task is the portrayal of not one but two great men, the idea which made them both significant, and the times in which they lived. It is through the common dedication and the contrasts that Irvine finds direction for his book, and at the same time captures something of the essence of Victorianism as it is reflected from opposite poles.

Undeniably the book contains much technical exposition of both the scientific and intellectual uproar which evolution provoked--a discussion necessary because it would be impossible and undesirable to separate Huxley and Darwin from the idea which motivated their lives. The general reader will probably find the book most compelling when the author moves from intellectual controversy to concentrate specifically on the human qualities in his subjects.

As the "discoverer" of evolution, Darwin, surprisingly enough, lacked Huxley's brilliance and his ability to reason quickly. Yet Darvin's own slowness and tenacity were qualities admirably suited to the task of gradually, almost unconsciously, developing an idea. Huxley's more piercing intellect moved from subject to subject, a versatility which would have made him incapable of discovering anything except by sudden inspiration. Such inspiration, at least in the case of evolution, never came. The notion of evolution, of course, was centuries old. But to Darwin goes the credit of introducing the principle of natural selection--an el- of the unfinished The Hills Beyond, Wolfe ascends from the turmoil of his mind, and approaches some kind of artistic objectivity toward his life and toward the forces that had shaped him. In this fragment, Wolfe no longer translates his experiences directly into prose, but has begun to sift and temper them through the medium of his nearly mature artistic creativity.

In writing Thomas Wolfe: The Weather of his Youth, Louis Rubin has made probably the most clear-headed statement of Wolfe's place in American fiction. With reserve and some brilliance, Rubin walks a steady line between the idolaters and the iconoclasts, and from his steady course, Thomas Wolfe's reputation will gain a great deal of stability.Wolfe in Berlin: "You Can't Go Home Again" From the Thomas Wolfe Collection of William B. Linsdom--Houghton Library