Fiction Notes

51 Fiction The genial oldsters spend their days pleasantly angling for petty cash, and dodging the responsibility of larger Continued from page 20 sums. The Willises slowly get up steam for a marital bust-up. And erates her horrid little friend from sweet little Joanie does what she can Rouen who destroys her happiness to make matters worse. Mr. Taylor with Pierre and drives her eventually mulls these elements skilfully about, to crime is understandable only in the bringing them to boil in a raging New light of Existentialist values. We are England hurricane. witnessing, not just the struggle of "The Bright Sands" makes no pre two women over a man, but the battle tense at getting anywhere in a hurry, between two predatory conscious which adds to its leisurely charm, nesses. except when the book detours too The danger of over-charging fiction sharply away from the primary ad with intellectual theses is a constant ventures of Captain Cobb and his threat to Existentialist writers. Much friends. Mr. Taylor's usually neat of Mme de Beauvoir's writing has sense of humor occasionally overflows too thin a coat of fictional veneer and shifts the bemused but rational to create an illusion of life. In this tone he has established. All in all, novel she succeeds better than in though, "The Bright Sands" is a subsequent works. The credible dia thoroughly happy argument in favor —Jacket by Matulay, for "She Came to Stay." logues and realistic narrative pas of the simple, dishonest life, of which sages are partly responsible; even "... a masterpiece of Existentialist writing." ' the most convincing advocate is Cap more so, the remarkable portrayal tain Ezra Cobb, theological counter- of Frangoise. In spite of the uncon- porter. Mrs. Taylor fastens her hopes puncher and evader of wealth. ventionality of her life and concept on her son Charles, drawing him into —M. L. of love, she has an authentically a neurotic relationship that robs him human appeal. We become involved of his will, and leads to a series of ROMANCE AND SECRET TREASURE: Adeline in this pure and proud soul torn be bludgeoning disasters. Attwood's first novel, "Treasure of the tween her sense of honesty and her Mr. Himes describes the bleak Sun" (Houghton Mifflin, $3), is a story very feminine will for happiness. The odyssey of the Taylor family in a of present-day Indians living in the world she inhabits, too, is the very vivid style that is frequently moving foothills of the Andes. Nevertheless, recognizable city of Paris. Her asso and always effective. But he is not its plot is wanton and barbaric ciates are painted after life among content to develop the tragedy in enough for inclusion as a colorful an the artists and actors from Mont- herent in the Taylors' family dilemma, ecdote in Prescott's history of Peru. martre to the Dome. Simone de Beau and insists on pUing up one mischance When Illoma's betrothed makes his voir's characters, as good Existential after another until the senses reel. way back to his mountain village, ists, are privileged to experience the Trauma, paranoia, venereal disease, after having had the skin stripped "astonishment of existing." Knowing blindness, crippling accidents, im from the soles of his feet,.the Indian that they are born out of theoretical prisonment follow one another with girl and her father, Quiello, decide to speculation, we share something of dismal' regularity. Charles cannot go to the Old City to pursue his en their joyful astonishment, and hail a touch anjrthing without maiming him emy. The tribe in which they are masterpiece of Existentialist writing. self or another. He gets behind the members knows a great secret: the wheel of a car and has a horrible whereabouts of the Inca treasure that accident. He becomes a bus boy and was successfully hidden from Pizarro. Notes falls down an elevator shaft. Mr. Illoma suspects that her lover was Himes may be trying to show, by all tortured to divulge its hiding place. ILL-STARRED FAMILY: Chester Himes's this, how Charles's lack of integration On the way to the Old City her father latest novel, "The Third Generation" distorts his behavior, but he under kills a man—one of a group of beg (World, $3.95), traces the destruction lines his point too heavily. In spite of gars who set upon him, in an effort of a Negro family torn apart by per its excesses, "The Third Generation" to extract the same information. Try sonal and social tensions. The Taylors has within it elernents of great inter ing to bring about her father's acquit- at first seem to have fortune on their est, and it again demonstrates that side. William, the father, is a success Mr. Himes's talents are of a high, ful and likable teacher of mechanical order. —MARTIN LEVIN. arts, in love with his pretty wife. Their LITERARY I.Q. ANSWERS three boys seem headed for the un CAPE COD CHOWDER: Robert LeWs interrupted routine of school, college, Taylor's cheerful and meandering 1. "A Tale of Two Cities" (Dickens and the choice of a profession. But novel of a Cape Cod summer, "The —the character is Dr. Manette). 2. Lillian Taylor's sense of shame at- Bright Sands" (Doubleday, $3.50), re "The Heart of Midlothian" (Scott— being a Negro, and her lopsided scale sembles the "omnibus chowder" that the Porteous riot). 3. "Julius Caesar," of values, impel her to a compulsive is the beachcomber's staple. It is com Act I, sc. i, and Act III, sc. iii (Shakes restlessness which flowers into an posed of a casual garnering of racy peare). 4. "The mob of gentlemen ever-broadening neurosis. She makes ingredients, some overripe, but pro who wrote with ease," "Epistles," Bk. job after job untenable for her hus- II, 108 (Pope). 5. Acts xix. 6. "Para ductive of a sustaining brew neverthe dise Lost," Bk. VI (Milton). 7. "Ad bemd, and the Taylors shift from one less. Into Mr. Taylor's savory mixture Southern agricultural college to an ventures of Huckleberry Fiim," Chaps, have gone a couple of amiable old 21 and 22 (Mark Twain). 8. "Tam other. For the children life becomes grifters named Ezra Cobb and Uncle O'Shanter" (Burns). 9. "An Enemy "a long, unending series of goodbyes." Veenie, a troubled young summer of the People," Acts 4 and 5 (Ibsen). They finally move to Cleveland, where couple called the Willises, and Mrs. 10. "Coriolanus," Act I, sc. i (Shakes Professor Taylor becomes a night-club Willis's diabolical teen-age sister Joan. peare) . PRODUCED BY UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED 52 tal for the murder, Illoma is forced (Houghton Mifflin, $3.50) derives its her happiness turns to bitter ashes. to become the concubine of the Teni- title from a poem by Yeats, which in Mr. Fleisher tells these tales well, ente, the brutal white official who is another part says: "Seek out reality, when he sticks to telling them, and he political sina qua nom—governor, leave things that seem." In his novel, communicates a feeling of warmth for prosecutor, and judge—in the Old for which he was awarded a Hough some of his characters. But it seems City. He refuses to secure Quiello's ton Mifflin Literary Fellowship, Mr. to this reader that he belabors his release until Illoma leads him to the Fleisher plots the courses of two subject unduly, overlaying with sur Inca treasure. She takes him high up lonely seekers after the sweetness in plus rhetoric what he has already into the mountains, into a hidden herent in reality. One of them is Ralph made quite evident. He dilates on the valley. There, having made sure he Taber, a young man running away themes of love and death with a lit will not be able to find his way out from grief caused by his wife's death. erary garrulousness that tends to difr again, she shows him the Inca gold, The other is Mabel Barnum, the com fuse the strength of his novel. Echoes and jumps from a cliff to her death. mon-law wife of a small-time crim out of "Dubliners" float up to assail This should be sufficient to indicate inal. Their lives run parallel through the eye and ear. Poetic interchapters, the romantically wide-eyed afflatus most of the book, touching only occa transposing the city images of Eliot, distending the shape of the novel. It- sionally, and the contrast between create pretentious interruptions. "The is to be regretted, because Mrs. Att- them serves to emphasize the simple Lion and the Honeycomb" is at its wood demonstrates that she is quite human aspirations which both share. It best when Mr. Fleisher is directly comfortably able—while writing the also accentuates the melting-pot at saying what he sees and feels. At first two thirds of the book—to create mosphere of the Boston slum in which other times, the cold shadow of erudi compelling mood and character. Only they live. Ralph loses his sense of bit tion falls between the idea and reality when the exigencies of an absurd ter futility by developing a feeling of of Mr. Fleisher's prose. denouement can no longer be post •compassion for a dying neighbor in —M. L. poned does successful illusion collapse his rooming house. The old rnian (sig under the weight of extravagant in nificantly named Adam) rewards TEACHERS' WORLD: "The End of the cident. —NICOLAS MoNJO. Ralph by giving him a heightened in Week" (Macmillan, $3.50) makes the sight into his personal conflicts.

Load more