The View from Afar

AS IT Is ON EARTH (111 pp.)--Jules Remains--Macmillan ($4).

In the 27 novels that comprise Jules Romains's Men of Good Will, characters wander across the face of history, vaguely searching for their meaning. When the final volume was published, it was clear that for all his effort, despite brilliant vignettes and telling insights, Romains had achieved only a grandeur of detail, a vivid anatomical drawing of French society. Now, in a slim volume that might also be a coda-like summary, Romains abandons the study of history close-up and attempts a view from afar.

Posing as "an alien curiosity" from outer space, Romains reports on the earth as it might appear to a canny Martian.

Romains's Martian observes everything with an innocent eye. Earth's landscape is scarred by "agglomerations" and "filaments" called cities and roads; its inhabitants "walk about in flexible, artificial envelopes called clothing." But soon he is dealing with the more interesting question of earth's society. "Morality," he writes, "seems to be a product--and a precarious one--of civilized life, and corresponds to no profound needs within the individual"; as for religion, its "prayers, rites and ceremonies suffice in the eyes of many, particularly women, to excuse other aspects of behavior." Man's accomplishments, he finds, suffer from their very perfection; in fact, man's basic fault seems to be his inability to leave well enough alone. Artists "seek novelty by gradually turning away from perfection." Art, music, literature and architecture are diminished by "introducing numerous elements which the concern for perfection had either eliminated or condemned during the course of time." Philosophy, jealous of the progress of science, tries to "acquire something of science's prestige by dissimulating the meaninglessness of its task behind an incomprehensible jargon."

Systematically, Romains's extraterrestrial observer examines each of man's achievements and judges each a sad reminder of its better past. But inescapably, a question arises: How can this Martian be so filled with nostalgia for a world he never knew? It is then that the mask falls away--it is not a book of discovery, but a book of reminiscence. Romains, an old man (now 76), has written an old man's book, and in the end, he offers a warning drawn from the only lesson Men of Good Will taught: there is one art man has never perfected, and that is the art of getting along with other men. Unless he masters it, Romains concludes, his very genius will lead him to catastrophe.

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