There is no use in explaining the value of such a book to those who do not admit it. People to whom reserve is more important than truth; people who are made uncomfortable by intimate grasp of anything—these will not read Midstream through.
The others will see here a chance to understand. And they will emerge from the book with a sense of the absolute nobility of Mr. Comfort’s frankness. If a thousand writers should give us such books we should understand better the much-befogged basis of all human problems—“human nature.” Every man draws his own conclusions about vital matters from just such introspection as this, whether it be conscious or unconscious. But every man does not have the candor and the hard-won insight of the trained writer.
It would be possible to enter into futile discussions about the “artistic” value of such a book—whether naturalism can give us as fine a work as imagination. Whatever might be the result of such a discussion, Mr. Comfort’s book remains interesting, and interest is the first value of any written work. He is neither a Wilde nor a Turgenev, but he is a true writer.
To recapitulate the adventures of the sensitive and often unwholesome boy, the degradations and victories of the young newspaper reporter, the soldier, the war correspondent, the husband, and the writer, would be to undermine the novel itself. If you want to experience them, let Mr. Comfort be the narrator.
It may not be out of place, however, to quote a few of the conclusions, in order to give a taste of the book’s direction.
This of man:
A man is clean alone, if he is clean at all.
It isn’t being superman to learn to listen to the real self—just the beginnings of manhood proper.
This of publishers and the public:
In many, not all, editorial offices, the producer is paid well and swiftly alone for that which is common, in which plots are pictured, and all but greedy imagination put to death.... I saw that it was not enough for me to get down to the parlance of men, but to leave all hope behind—not only possible intellectual authority—but, by all means, any spiritual in sight; that only frank “down writing” would do.