length biographies since RememberingrnPoets was first published, Hall’s memoriesrnadd some lively brush strokes to thernofficial portraits, for he is a master ofrnthe telling anecdote that reveals character.rnFrost, if not quite the egotisticalrnmonster of Lawrence Thompson’s biography,rnremains a complex, overly sensitivernman whose sometimes viciousrncompetitive streak was at odds with hisrncarefully maintained public image. Still,rnhe could let the mask down. Hall’s finalrnmeeting with him was during the lastrnsummer of Frost’s life, when he and hisrnwife and children visited the poet in Vermont.rnAs he pulled off, he looked inrnthe rearview mirror and spied the 88-rnyear-old poet jogging after the car, wantingrnto remind Hall not to mention onernof his remarks in order to spare the feelingsrnof another young poet. Pound, alreadyrnwrestling with the silence thatrnclosed around him in his last years,rnseems almost desperate to set the recordrnstraight. I recall reading Hall’s Paris Reviewrninterview almost 25 years ago,rnthinking then that this poet who couldrnrecall Yeats and the young Eliot sornpainstakingly was far from mad; however,rnHall’s memoir indicates, if not insanity,rnat least severe depression and occasionalrnmegalomania, and his accountrnof how he edited the interview into coherencernis like an account of someonerntrying to assemble a Cubist jigsaw puzzle.rnThose who know Eliot chiefly fromrnhis desiccated early poetry will be happilyrnsurprised to encounter him in hisrnlast decade, when the success of hisrnstage plays and a fortunate second marriagernhad changed his appearance radically:rn”When I first talked with him atrnFaber he had been an old sixty-three,rnpale and stooped with a hacking cough.rnNow, at seventy—but with a new youngrnwife—he looked like George Sanders;rnnow he looked debonair, sophisticated,rnlean, and handsome, with a deep tanrnjust acquired in the Caribbean.”rnMarianne Moore is the sole womanrnhere, and she usually occupies a similarlyrnlonely shelf in the hierarchy of thernmodernist canon. Hall says that hernomitted the section on her from RememberingrnPoets because he felt that hisrn”recollections added nothing to commonrnknowledge.” After reading CharlesrnMolesworth’s generally unsatisfyingrn1990 biography of Moore, one is stillrnlikely to want to get at the mystery, ifrnindeed there is a mystery, behind herrnmilitant spinsterhood and the writingrnthat she begrudgingly called poetry “becausernthere is no other category in whichrnto put it.” Hall says, “Of all the poets Irnrecollect here, Marianne Moore is thernone who remains the most mysterious,rnand—not incidentally?—looms larger inrnher poems every time I read her.” Hallrnnever quite arrives at a solution to thernpuzzle, but he makes it plain thatrnMoore’s eccentric poetry and life werernall of a piece. At an interview with Hall,rnduring which she kept her hand over herrnmouth to cover the absence of a brokenrndenture, she served hmi an idiosyncraticrnlunch that seemed to come straightrnout of one of her poetic catalogs;rnMy tray held several little paperrncups, the pleated kind used forrncupcakes, which she employed asrnreceptacles. In one there werernseveral raisins, perhaps seven, andrnin another a clutch of Spanishrnpeanuts. There was a cheese glassrn(from Kraft processed spread) halfrnfull of tomato juice. There was arnglass dish that contained onernquarter of a canned peach. Therernwere three saltines and a tnifoilwrappedrnwedge of processedrnSwiss cheese. There was somethingrnsweet, cake-like, and stale.rn. . . In a moment, she left thernroom and returned with somethingrnto fill me up, but which sherncould not herself chew. From thernpackage she poured on my tray arnmound of Fritos. “I like Fritos,”rnshe croaked, covering her mouth.rn”Thev’rc so nutritious,”rnReaders of these poets will find thernnutritional benefits of Mr. Hall’s prosernmore than adequate, I suspect.rnR.S. Gwynn is editor of the Dictionaryrnof Literary Biography volume AmericanrnPoets Since 1945. He is a professor ofrnEnglish at Lamar University inrnBeaumont, Texas.rnA Piece of thernActionrnby George GarrettrnThe Critics Bear It Away: AmericanrnFiction and the Academyrnby Frederick CrewsrnNew York: Random House;rn215 pages, $20.00rnThe Critics Bear It Away is a collectionrnof eight essays by FrederickrnCrews, dating “from the later I980’s andrnearly 1990’s,” starting off, after the accuraternroad map of the “Introduction,”rnwith “I’he Sins of the Fathers Revisited,”rnan afterword written to accompany thern1989 reprinting of The Sins of the Fathersrn(1966), which Crews describes asrn”the most influential of my critical studies,”rnone that seems to have “helped tornestablish a vogue for Freudian criticismrnnot just of Hawthorne but of Americanrnwriters generally.” More than 20 years ofrnactive critical engagement since thenrnhave allowed Crews the chance tornchange his mind about some things, tornmodify some earlier judgments, and, atrnthe very least, to admit to the need for arnmuch more expanded and complicatedrncontext than strictly “the intrapsychicrnrealm” of Freudian psychoanalysis.rnMoreover he recognizes, in a personal, atrntimes confessional, stance and tone thatrnhe himself has now become part of thernpicture, someone with his very ownrnpiece of the action: “My drasticallyrnchanged relation to Sins and to psychoanalysisrnhas itself, I realize, become arntopic of academic notice, provoking responsesrnranging from puzzlement to titillationrnto dismay.” The other essays,rnversions of most of which appeared inrnCrews’ familiar public showcase, thernNew York Review of Books, are mostlyrnextended book reviews and are arrangedrnin a more or less chronological sequencernof critical concerns, moving from a fairlyrngeneral statement of point of viewrn(“Whose American Renaissance?”) to arnmore specific focus. The final essay is arnclose reading (and demonstration ofrnmethod) of John Updike’s novel Roger’srnVersion (1986). In between there arerntwo pieces on Mark Twain and one eachrnabout Hemingway, Faulkner, and FlanneryrnO’Connor.rn34/CHRONICLESrnrnrn