Schwartz's fictional aims are suggested in his criticism of other fiction writers. This fictional "credo" is clearest in "John Dos Passos and the Whole Truth," a review of U.S.A. which goes beyond its topical subject to make a general statement about the nature of fiction….

This "whole truth" and "imagination" necessary for great literature enter fiction through a "multiscient individual," "the individual of the fullest intelligence and sensibility," who "in some one of many quite different fashions transcends the situation and the subject."…

What distinguishes The World is a Wedding from social history, what makes it meaningful today almost thirty years since its publication in 1948, is this transcendent "whole truth." Schwartz's fiction embodies this multiscient vision … especially in style and language.

Schwartz manipulates language to bracket his stories in irony and to create a distance between the narrative voice and the stories themselves. It is in...