The following appeared on 4 April 1919 as part of a review of three novels that was written by the short story writer Katherine Mansfield during her time as lead fiction reviewer for The Atheneum between April 1919 and December 1920.
Why was it written? The question does not present itself — it is the last question one would ask after reading The Tunnel. Miss Richardson has a passion for registering every single thing that happens in the clear, shadowless country of her mind. One cannot imagine her appealing to the reader or planning out her novel; her concern is primarily, and perhaps ultimately, with herself. ‘What cannot I do with this mind of mine!’ one can fancy her saying. What can I not see and remember and express?’ There are times when she seems deliberately to set it a task, just for the joy of realizing again how brilliant a machine it is, and we, too, share her admiration for its power of absorbing. Anything that goes into her mind she can summon forth again, and there it is, complete in every detail, with nothing taken away from it — and nothing added. This is a rare and interesting gift, but we should hesitate before saying it was a great one.
The Tunnel is the fourth volume of Miss Richardson’s adventures with her soul-sister, Miriam Henderson. Like them, it is composed of bits, fragments, flashing glimpses, half scenes and whole scenes, all of them quite distinct and separate, and all of them of equal importance. There is no plot, no beginning, middle or end. Things just ‘happen’ one after another with incredible rapidity and at break-neck speed. There is Miss Richardson, holding out her mind, as it were, and there is Life hurling objects into it as fast as she can throw. And at the appointed time Miss Richardson dives into its recesses and reproduces a certain number of these treasures — a pair of button boots, a night in Spring, some cycling knickers, some large, round biscuits — as many as she can pack into a book, in fact. But the pace kills.
There is one who could not live in so tempestuous an environment as her mind — and he is Memory. She has no memory. It is true that Life is sometimes very swift and breathless, but not always. If we are to be truly alive there are large pauses in which we creep away into our caves of contemplation. And then it is, in the silence, that Memory mounts his throne and judges all that is in our minds—appointing each his separate place, high or low, rejecting this, selecting that—putting this one to shine in the light and throwing that one into the darkness.
We do not mean to say that those large, round biscuits might not be in the light, or the night in Spring be in the darkness. Only we feel that until these things are judged and given each its appointed place in the whole scheme, they have no meaning in the world of art.