SOURCE: Introduction to The Near and the Far, Containing "The Root and the Flower" & "The Pool of Vishnu" by L. H. Myers, 1943. Reprint by Jonathan Cape, 1956, pp. iv-ix.

In the following essay, Hartley asserts that Myers's endorsement of communism rendered The Pool of Vishnu more reductive and didactic than The Near and the Far, Prince Jali, and Rajah Amar.

L. H. Myers's tetralogy, The Near and the Far, is a unique work: there is nothing like it in the field of English fiction. Nor does it markedly resemble, except in general style and in having a philosophic intention, any of his other works. It comes nearest, perhaps, to The Orissers, the first and most considerable of them. Just as in The Orissers certain characters are made to illustrate certain illusions and delusions that beset the human mind, so here the conflicting claims of Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, and many...