“Obviously what Mr Cannan says is largely platonic doctrine, to many incomprehensible; but spiritual emphasis at this time is so needed that the book is justified in spite of its frequent cloudy and chaotic passages.”
+ − Springf’d Republican p8 Jl 8 ’20 220w
“Mr Cannan, weary of criticism and all negative activities, has turned to mysticism; and this book is the result. It is sincere, passionate and interesting, but it lacks structure, and so is a little difficult to read.”
+ − The Times [London] Lit Sup p417 Jl 1 ’20 1850w
CANNAN, GILBERT. Time and eternity; a tale of three exiles. *$1.90 (2½c) Doran
20–7059
London is the abode of these three exiles. One of them is an Englishman, Stephen Lawrie, at odds with the world about him and with the war, living in voluntary seclusion in the London slums, trying to solve the riddle of the universe in silence and inactivity. The other, Perekatov, is a Ukrainian Jew eking out a precarious existence in London as a correspondent for a Russian paper. He obtrudes himself on Stephen with whose face, seen at a public meeting, he had been impressed. There is much spasmodic, intangible talk between them and their intercourse ripens into friendship of a sort. Valerie du Toit, the third exile, is a South African of French Huguenot extraction, who has come to England athirst for the eternal verities. With elemental force the spirits of Stephen and Valerie meet and melt into each other. This kindles insane jealousy in Howard Ducie who acts the Othello to Valerie’s Desdemona, smothers her in her sleep and has himself run over by a train. Stephen accepts the tragedy as a happening in time which can not interfere with the eternity of his love.
Ath p1035 O 17 ’19 240w
“Mr Gilbert Cannan’s novels are important novels, but they are not good novels. They are the illustrative material of his essays and they do not illustrate them in any creative fashion. The theories shine through too glaringly, as in ‘Time and eternity.’ Mr Cannan started out with a naive creative impulse, but the events of the past six years have aroused in him, as in many of us, so much impassioned thinking about life that the material of creation itself slips from his grasp.”