Entered From the Sunnby George GarrettnNew York: Doubleday;n368 pp., $19.95nGeorge Garrett is a man ofnletters—a member of a diminishingnbreed that may soon vanish. For wellnover three decades he has regularlynpublished poetry, criticism, and fictionnlong and short; he has also writtennscreenplays and memoirs, and exploredn.still other.modes. This very facility as anwriter of poetry and prose has somehownprevented him from receiving sustainednattention and consequent rewards fromnthe critical establishment in this country,nespecially the East, that he hasndeserved for a long while. This is not tonsay that Garrett has been ignored, fornthat is not the case. He was honorednwith the 1989 T.S. Eliot Award fromnThe Ingersoll Foundation, and othernprizes have come his way. But on thenwhole he has not received his due as anwriter, nor has he been sufficientlynrecognized for his manifold and profoundnservice to the Republic of Letters,na service that extends beyond whatnhe has written to the people he hasntaught and others he helped, the manynbooks he has edited, the dozens ofnprojects he has nurtured.nPerhaps with the publication of EnterednFrom the Sun this sad state ofnaffairs will be altered to the good.nCertainly Garrett has carried out hisnresponsibility to his craft and to thenreading public and has earned thenpraise that this novel is beginning tonreceive and that it richly deserves. Andnjust as certainly he is first and foremostnGeorge Core is the editor of thenSewanee Review.nOPINIONSnA Durable Firenby George Coren”Literature is news that stays news.”n— Ezra Poundna novelist.nEntered From the Sun is the lastnnovel in Garrett’s Elizabethan trilogy,na glorious work that began with Deathnof the Fox (1971) and continued withnThe Succession (1983). The first novelnculminates with the execution of WalternRaleigh in 1618; the second, in thendeath of Elizabeth and the successionnof James I in 1603. The present novelncenters on the events surrounding thenmurder of Christopher Mariowe inn1593; its action chiefly concerns thenlast year or so of that same decade —nnnthe end of the 16th century. Wendiscern that the novelist has beennsteadily moving backward in time, butnthe period covered by the three novels,nespecially The Succession, runs fromnthe birth of James in 1566 to his deathnin 1625. The three novels thereforenextend over a considerable sweep ofnhistory but at the same time are focusednon dramatic events that unfoldnin relatively short periods of time.nAs Monroe Spears brilliantly demonstratednin “George Garrett and thenHistorical Novel” {Virginia QuarterlynReview, 1985), Garrett has pushed thenhistorical novel as a form to its limitsnbut at the same time not been boundnby the perceived limitations of thatnform. He has neither written popularnfiction in this vein — that is, costumenromance — nor has he allowed himselfnto be cribbed, cabined, and confinednby the facts of the period as they can benascertained through documentary evidence.nYet he has stayed within thosenfacts — and not given himself the freenrein of the costume romancer to careernthrough history and trample it.nThe facts concerning ChristophernMarlowe’s death are precious few, andnthat death will always be mysterious.nThat he was the Muses’ darling, as hisncontemporaries, especially his fellownpoets and dramatists, thought; that henwas probably a homosexual and annatheist and a spy as well, not to mentionnan extraordinarily difficult, contentious,nand hot-tempered man arenmatters hardly open to dispute. Marlowe,nGarrett believes and makes usnbelieve, was murdered by agents of SirnFrancis Walsingham, a patron of thenarts who also created England’s firstnprofessional secret service and thusnhelped defeat the Spanish Armada bynindirect means. Mariowe was on Wal-nDECEMBER 1990/27n