VOLUME 6 NUMBER 1 I $1.50 . NEW ORLEANS REVIEW LOYOLA UNNERSITY I Inside: Amiri Baraka Miller Williams Alain Robbe-Grillet Dalt Wonk George Dureau Mao .Tse-tung J. Mzchael Yates -Richard Kostelanetz Tennessee Williams · A Journal of Published by Literature Loyola University & Culture of the South, New Orleans Editor: TheN ew Orleans Review is Dawson Gaillard published three times yearly by Loyola University Managing Editor: New Orleans (70118). Susan B. Lindsay Subscription rates: $1.50 per Associate Editors: copy; $6.00/4 issues; Tom Bell $10.00/8 issues; $14.00/12 issues. John Biguenet Peter Cangelosi Manuscripts cannot be returned John Christman unless accompanied by a self- Ernest C. Perlita addressed, stamped envelope. Alexis Gonzales, F.S.C. All care will be taken to prevent Shael Herman loss of manuscripts, but no C. J. McNaspy responsibility can be assumed Marcus Smith for unsolicited material. Editorial Assistant: @1978 by Loyola University Stephanie Naplachowski New Orleans. Layout by Susan Lindsay Loyola University is an equal educational opportunity/ Advisory Editors: affirmative action employer. David Daiches James Dickey Manufactured in the United Walker Percy States of America. Joseph Fichter, S.J. Joseph A. Tetlow, S.J. US ISSN 0028-6400 COVER: from a painting by George Dureau titled "Self Portrait on Red." Oil on canvas, 22 x 20 inches. The painting is in the collection of Donald Marshall. Volume 6 Number 1 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW NON-FICTION fohn Mosier The NEW New Brasilian Film 3 Alain Robbe-Grillet Order and Disorder in Contemporary Fiction 16 Susan Snowden Palmer An Interview with Tennessee in Georgia 28 Benjamin Lee Wren, S.]. A God-like Hand 53 Richard Kostelanetz absurd the american novel 77 FICTION ]ames Grimsley House on the Edge 13 Dalt Wonk Snapshots 33 Miller Williams The Year Ward West Took away the Raccoon and Mr. 61 Hanson's Garage Burned Down Jay R. White Comforted and Betrayed 67 ]erred Metz Two Aggadah 72 PORTFOLIO George Dureau Drawings and Works-in-Progress 41 POETRY Gary Young My Wife 8 Amiri Baraka A Poem for Deep Thinkers 9 Das Kapital 10 Revolutionary Love 11 Roo Borson Path 15 ]. Michael Yates from The Elsewhen Homilies 20 Rainer Malkowski (untitled) 25 Beautiful Rare Willow 25 Karin Kiwus Splitting 26 Trapdoors 27 F. D. Reeve (untitled) 31 John Stone The Parable of the Instruments 38 Margherita Faulkner Suppositions 39 Peter Wild Forest Ranger 40 Mao Tse-tung The Pass 50 u Yu Memory of a Parting 51 Nalan Hsingte Sennin by the River 57 Jack Butler Concerto for Wall-Eyed Weary Women 58 Peter Steele An Australian Villanelle 66 John Creighton On Criticizing a Farmer for His Lack of 68 Imagination Jim Parins John Coons Pursued and Taken 69 ]ames]. McAuley from Requiem 70 Anne McKay from when swans were blue 74 Eugenio Montale Dear Life I Do Not Ask of You 76 Happiness at Heart 76 Book Reviews 79 Above: Paulo Urlaya (left) as Belchoir Mendes de Moraes, and Emmanuel Ca!'alcanti (right) as his faithful servant, in Ajuricaba. Photos by John Mosier. John Mosier THE NEW NEW BRASILIAN FILM "We are making the best films m the world, and they know nothing." Julio Bressane tion. It was shown at the recent festival of Brasilian film in CINEMA NOVO: THE MYTH Gramado in a special sidebar along with the best of the other short films done under the Embrafilme aegis. Rui Guerra's work AND THE REALITY was featured at the festival of Brasil ian film in Brasilia in 1977, and he is currently working in his native Mozambique. Walter For most people, Brasilian film began in the 1960's, when Lima Jr. is editing a film he recently completed, and Caca Anselmo Duarte's 0 Pagador do Promessas (The Keeper of the Diegues's Xica da Silva was a critical and commercial success Promises) won a prize at Cannes and Glauber Rocha's Barra- in 1976 when it nailed down the top awards at the festival in vento won a prize at Karlovy Vary. The year was 1962. In 1964 Brasilia. Other, perhaps less well known, members of the Rocha's Deuse Diablo na Terra do Sol (Cod and the Devil in the group are equally well employed. Land of the Sun) astounded European critics at Cannes, Nelson But in addition, the vital work of these men is not the reason Pereira dos Santos's Vidas Secas (Barren Lives) received a prize for arguing that Brasil ian film has continued to flourish. The film from the Catholic Office of Motion Pictures at Cannes, and Rui makers to watch today are not Rocha or Guerra, Lima or Senna, Guerra's Os Fuzis (The Guns) won a Golden Bear in Berlin. but newer directors: Hector Babe nco, Regina I do Faria, Oswaldo Immediately European and North American attention began to Caldeira, Carlos Prates Correia. Their work is virtually unknown focus on Glauber Rocha, and on what was called Cinema to Europeans and North Americans, as is the work of Sylvio Novo. When Rocha departed for the United States at the end of Back and Miguel Borges, two excel lent directors who are coming the decade, the majority of these same critics promptly dropped into prominence as spokesmen for Brasilian film makers. For the curtain on Cinema Novo and on Brasil ian film in general: it the person nurtured on the inaccurate version of Cinema Novo had been, they felt, essentially the work of a few people associ­ created abroad, the work of these men may come as a consider­ ated with Rocha, none of whom were working, or allowed to able shock. It is in fact a logical outgrowth of the efforts of the work, in Brasilian film any longer. original Cinema Novo group. This is a tidy story, but hardly accurate. For one thing, those The term Cinema Novo is a partially misleading shorthand for men are still at work. Glauber Rocha is currently working on a a slightly longer Portugese expression that means, simply, the feature film in Brasil. His latest film, a "documentary" on the New Brasilian Cinema. New with respect to what? Brasilians funeral of the Brasilian painter Di Cavalcanti, was partially began seeing and making films over eighty years ago. The New financed by Embrafilme, the Brasilian film umbrella organiza- Brasil ian Cinema was going to differ from the cinema of the first 3 sixty-odd years in that it would be primarily a political cinema, struggles of individuals, but on the general struggles of society a cinema whose subjects would be the social and political in which the individuals were enmeshed. In every case the problems of Brasil and Brasilians, whose aesthetics and point of individuals involved were struggling for personal freedom, the view would be distinctively Brasilian, and-importantly­ freedom to live as they wanted to live. What was constantly whose audience would be Brasil ian, an aim that should not be threatening them was a countervailing force, sometimes open, underestimated. sometimes shadowy, which has as its major aim the desire to The international triumphs of Cinema Novo were therefore keep the individual dependent, enslaved. The peasant protago­ both ironic and misleading. The films succeeded abroad but not nist of Pagador do Promessas has only one dominant interest: at home. Cinema Novo came to be appreciated not as a political to fulfill the vow he made to carry a gigantic cross to Salvador cinema of Brasil, but as political cinema. For Europeans and for Bahia. All of the other people in the film unconsciously or con­ North Americans, Cinema Novo emerged not as a penetrating sciously conspire to thwart his desire to maintain his peasant analysis of Brasil ian problems-many of which were caused by freedom. The peasants of Rocha's Deus e Diablo have an even North Americans and Europeans in the first place-but as more basic need: the desire to find arable land and farm it. sweeping indictments of Brasil itself. The cutting edge of Cinema Filmmakers are in an ideal position to see how the theoretical Novo was labeled as one long revolutionary sword, congenial problem of autonomy, whether it is national, regional, social, or to the European left, which promptly began to translate it into personal, operates in their lives. If one believes that the problem the terms of its own political systems. No matterthat the bulk of of autonomy versus dependency is real, then one begins to see the Cinema Novo films were far from being openly revolution­ how it permeates their concerns. ary, didactic, or even overtly political; no matter that Rocha, the most revolutionary of the group, openly rejected the sort of Although film is art, it is always business. Brasil, like the analysis to which his films were subjected. The label stuck. It majority of the nations of the Third World, is swamped with became film history, then film myth. the filmic junk of the United States (and to a lesser extent, of japan and Italy). The filmmaking artist will make very few films It was glued on all the more firmly by a general international if all of the national theatres are booked to show foreign films. impression that what was really interesting about Brasilian film This is precisely the case in many countries, and it is absolutely was its exotic nature and "originality." Werner Herzog, now crucial to an understanding of Brasilian film. An American the most well known of the "New German Cinema" directors, audience would have difficulty conceiving of how drastic the summed up the attitude of the Brasil ian filmmakers. "Brasil ian situation was: in 1939 the Brasil ian government demanded, craziness," he called it, and was so intrigued by it that he made and legislated, that all theatres exhibit Brasilian films at least an openly imitative film, Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes.