The way [Andrew] Wyeth paints: no thunder in his picture, just a modulation of blues to make you see the sky's a bit strange and, like a letter shoved under the door, the dog's white muzzle lifted to the far-off sound. Truth got at sideways to ease the pain in it. Quick storms of terror flash past in [Shadows in Paradise] and suddenly are gone, like eerie tableaux set into the wall of the subway….
I think that Remarque, in this last of his novels …, was trying—with a noble disdain for pathos—to face what it was to be a thinking German in the time of his life. He comes through as a tough, brilliant, sophisticated realist: another of those who teach us that even though indictments do no good, they must be drawn and presented. Shame for his German people clings to him. Innocent himself, he and his protagonist wear their nationality as Philoctetes his rotting foot: the unearned badge of God's resentment….
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