It starts nowhere, it does nothing and it gets nowhere, reminding one vaguely of the three Japanese monkeys who see nothing, hear nothing and say nothing.
To apply the O’Brien test, it has no Substance. The weaver went through the motions of weaving, but he wove nothing. There is no “stuff” here.
Neither has it Form. The material—such as it is—is not shaped “into the most beautiful and satisfying form by skillful selection and arrangement.” That is to say, it violates Mr. O’Brien’s own rule.
If I were asked to give the thing a name, I should say that “Brothers” is a sort of cross between a very dull parody of one of G. S. Street’s “Episodes” and a grimy but ambitious newspaper “story” touched up with a dash of that old-fashioned freak of lap-dog literature known as the “Poem in Prose,” much petted by Turgenieff in the early eighties, a vehicle—if one may be permitted to change similes in midstream—in which you pay as you enter and as you leave, both.
You pay as you enter with a soddenly self-conscious rhapsody in G minor, and you pay as you leave with a tiresome repetition of the same.
When a Story of the O’Brien school begins like that, you feel sure it is going to lead to something disgusting and you are seldom disappointed, certainly not in this instance.
It is a sort of elegy on the falling leaves.
Mr. Anderson almost weeps for pity of the falling leaves. Listen to the patter of the Andersonian tears:
“* * * the yellow, red and golden leaves fall straight down heavily. The rain beats them brutally down. They are denied a last golden flash across the sky. In October, leaves should be carried away, out over the plains, in a wind. They should go dancing away.”