The Shield of the Valiant
$3.00
BY SCRIBNER
IN Derleth’s Wisconsin chronicle, the familiar pattern of the individual in conflict with society is shown through a series of rebellions on various levels of behavior. There is the lifetime effort of the spinster schoolteacher and librarian to introduce standards of culture among the townspeople of Sac Prairie and protect freedom of thought in its schools. The literary career of her protégé, Steve Grendon, is similarly dedicated to the service of the town. As citizen and writer, he supports the free expression of spirit against the encroachments of the mass-mind.
The central roles of defiance are enacted in the love and marriage of the son of the local banker with a girl of inelegant origins. The girl’s ingenuous pleasure in life excites the boy’s first puzzled interest and the slanderous attention of the town. The force that urges on their love and that drives him from the security of his father s bank is also a measure of their growing maturity.
The pages of the book are crowded with innumerable lives and themes. The sturdy, fatuous citizen is represented by the banker, impregnable in his prejudices and opposing his formidable prestige and authority to any enlightened human impulse. The lesser figures include the scandalmonger, the drunkard, the nymphomaniac, the libertine, aging or adolescent, the paranoiac, and the jazz musician.
There is a curious imbalance in Mr. Derleth’s writing, as if the task of social dissection had stunned his aesthetic sensibilities. The unity of the novel is seriously impaired by the superfluity of minor character and incident. The meditations of one individual are repeated in the soliloquy of another. and the meaning of village life is endlessly discussed. Not until the close of the book does the narrative rise to any dramatic height, and then all is abruptly terminated by the introduction of still another theme — the impact of Pearl Harbor on the town.
DAVID RUDOLPH