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...