Mad about it they still were, in 1926, when Hemingway's splendid spoofing appeared in The Sun Also Rises. But it was not everybody who had been responsible. It was mainly Anatole France, abetted by his almost unanimously enthusiastic critics. And of all his works, the one that must have seemed to fit the formula best was ThaWs, already a quarter of a century old when Jake Barnes learned of irony and pity. It is not a bad formula for the effect of ThaWs, as formulas go. It is at least as useful-and at least as misleading-as and fear for tragedy. There is, however, a surprising difference. If I tell you the story of any classical tragedy, even in very brief form, you will know at once why someone might talk about that story using the terms and fear. But if I tell you of the priest who lost his soul converting the prostitute, you will not be able to predict any determinate reaction -except perhaps that the story will have for everyone a slight bit of ironic wonder at the grand reversal. In other words, a teller will be able to turn such material almost any direction he chooses, making it into a tragedy, a comedy, a farce, a celebration of God's wonder and mystery-or a tale playing with pity and irony. It is true that the story even of a downright tragedy like Oedipus Rex can be retold, with a little effort, as other than tragic-as farce, say, or as a satire against the unjust gods. But there is, in the Oedipus material,