Surviving: 2the Uncollected Writings of Henry Green

Under the pseudonym Henry Green, businessman Henry V. Yorke (1905-1973) wrote 10 distinguished Symbolist novels in the period from 1926 to 1952. (In February Penguin will reissue six of them, including his major work, Loving , in its Twentieth-Century Classics series.) Green's strength was to cluster seeming trivia in image patterns redolent with meaning; and in Doting and Concluding , he treated sex in uncommonly modern and matter-of-fact terms. For the current volume, Green's grandson has assembled published, unpublished and rejected pieces; synopses and drafts of embryonic work; reviews, and polished jottings. Green's unfinished Mood recalls the world of Virginia Woolf, and there is a review of Woolf's Writer's Diary . In ``Excursion'' he creates a microcosmic knot of people at a train station, anticipating his novel Party Going. Pieces on the art of fiction include a two-part BBC talk, ``A Novelist to His Readers,'' which reveals the importance Green placed on dialogue. Essays about the fire squad on which Green served in the WW II blitz (``A Rescue,'' ``Before the Great Fire'') parallel the topic of his novel Caught. His work for American magazines include ``Falling in Love,'' written for Esquire (he was aggrieved not to be paid for it) and ``Invocation to Venice'' for Vogue . Among the rejects are a TV drama ``Journey Out of Spain'' (too long, they said), and ``The Jealous Man,'' turned down by New Yorker editors who promised to keep in mind Green's interest in ``books by dead authors.'' The collection sheds light on the publishing scene in Green's day and adeptly serves the cause of English letters. A memoir by his son closes the volume. (Feb.)