| the dark recesses of relationships that invisible family loyalties often obscure.3The Lost Traveler has lost nothing of its power and relevance in the intervening years since its original publication. Babb's novel offers a model of transparent clarity and simplicity, a counterexample to modernist skepticism regarding the communicability of language. |
| The title is drawn from the poem, "For the Sexes: The Gates of Paradise," in William Blake's "Prophetic Books." The concluding line of the poem reads: "The lost Traveller's Dream under the Hill." The two following passages likewise are relevant, underscoring principal themes of Babb's novel: |
 | | Mutual Forgiveness of each Vice,
Such are the Gates of Paradise. |
| | Wife, Sister, Daughter, to the Tomb,
Weaving to Dreams the Sexual strife
And weeping over the Web of Life.4 |
| The first theme has to do with the redemptive power of language. The second has to do with the power of family loyalties, the invisible dimensions of commitment, devotion, and loyalty that figure most importantly in the accounting system of family relations, a point I shall return to presently.5 In this, her first published novel, Babb uses kinship as structural framework to disclose and confirm personal identity within the network of family relationships. In doing so she avoids the self-absorbed tendencies of confessional literature, the laying bare of family secrets for their sensational value; nor does she yield to sentimentality or self-pity. The harsh circumstances of her early years are met with resolve, resilience,and humor. The tone is wondering and amused; memory, observation, and invention mix in nearly equal proportions. The lyrical, sometimes over-written style of her early short stories is pared down into a crisper, "simpler," more direct stylea "deceptively simple" style, wrote a reviewer of The Lost Traveler. It is an accomplishment involving painstaking revision. Seven times Babb revised the manuscript, submitting it to the critical eye of her Random House editor, Saxe Cummings. Ars longa, vita brevis. |
|
