Newspapers / The Chapel Hill Weekly … / Feb. 24, 1963, edition 1 / Page 11
Part of The Chapel Hill Weekly (Chapel Hill, N.C.) / About this page
This page has errors
The date, title, or page description is wrong
This page has harmful content
This page contains sensitive or offensive material
Sunday, February 24, 1963 The First Time Out Was Vintage Cary AISSA SAVED, fir Joyce Cary. Harper & Roiv. $.1.95. ill 9 Fayes. By W. H. SCARBOROUGH The first novels of many fine writers are memorable for being either extremely good or aby smally bad; but the majority of them tend to be a bit indifferent —indicative of a talent still trap ped in a verbal cocoon. This republication of Joyce Cary’s first novel flatly declines to rest comfortably in its pigeon hole. It is not characteristic Cary, nor is it really an indiffer ently written book. First pub lished in 1932, it has had to wait thirty years for the remainder of the world to catch up to it in its attentive scrutiny of a continent in transition. The cataclysms of the fifties and this fragment of the sixties have largely changed the terms in which we think of African upheavals, not to men tion the manner in which Africans are wont to upheave. Cary was himself an admini strative officer in Nigeria, and his tenure there gave him a sup erb chance to focus the novelist’s eye on his subject. In his time the coming of the white man as serted itself in theological terms foremost, in political terms sec ondarily; Africa was still large ly a theocracy in Cary’s time. Cary wrote of this upheaval in terms of the impact of imported ideas and what can happen to them in native hands. His novel is ample proof that fundamental ist Christianity in the hands of a native can be just as deadly as a submachine gun. Since Cary chose to write in a frame of reference that borders on being anthropological, and un derscored the emphasis in a pre factory note to a later edition, it is necessary to give some atten tion to his thesis. The Nigeria of Post World War 1 was still the face of chaos on which British Colonialism had sketched a few casual designs, in the form of col onial administrators who attemp ted to work with native councils CURRENT BEST SELLERS Fiction 1. Seven Days in May . . . Knebel & Bailey 2. Fail Safe . . . Burdick & Wheeler 3. The Sand Pebbles . . . McKenna Non-fiction 1. Travels With Charley • . . Steinbeck 2. Silent Spring . . . Carson . . . Schulz WILL’S BOOK STORE Lakewood Shopping Center Durham Shop Monday, Thursday Friday nights til 9 DRIVE IN! I f/PARK FREE VL II AND SHOP LEISURELY \jWg. Park & Shop Lot Columbia Street y Wider Variety Greater Convenience at established stores and shops Free Parking I B IIIcfcHTH Self-Service while you shop I_ L Ij. or •** f° r with Huggins lAJwiiaUiiUl clerk-service 107 East Franklin Street WE STAMP YOUR TICKET Books in a semblance of government. In effect the administrator became a sort of Godhead in his own right, a figure to be circumvented or feared and obeyed as the need arose. Practical anarchy never had a better opportunity to as sert itself. The administrator on one hand had the colonial bure aucracy to which he could not avoid playing the mendicant fool, on the other a native theory of public responsibility in which graft and nepotism were the es sence of democracy. Mission aries were there at the pleasure of the administration but not with ouot their means. Their sense of responsibility mattered little; they dealt in a commodity as readily convertible to native ends as coca-cola and cotton cloth. God and Jesus could become in the hands of parishioners an instru ment of violence or an incon venience that could be as easily shucked as a loin cloth. Omnipo tence to a native was just that: an incautious missionary could be swept away in the flood of religious fervor turned to riot before he was aware of what was afoot. The parishioners of the Rev. and Mrs. Carr were proof of the pudding. Most of them had been derelicts from their own people, patched back together again and imbued with a good dose of evangelical fervor which bore* a disquieting resemblance to an old fashioned head hunt. At the worst possible time—a dry season when crops were fail ing and local Gods were in Cov entry for not producing rain, the mission—missionaries and all found themselves carrying the Word across the Niger in a cru sade that wasn’t planned for all the right reasons. The mission’s native concept of conversion was by the sword and the fire, even though the Rev. Carr tried man fully to preach. / It was not his message that came across. The pagan mind quickly surmised that the White Man's god was playing hod with the rain situation, and the con verts didn’t discourage the no . lion—after all, what’s the use of 8 God who isn’t going to punish heathens? Aissa, a statuesque tribeswoman who’d seen the light could have cared less. Her cas ual husband was across the riv er. and he could cast a shadow even in divine light. In the en suing riot she didn’t manage to get back across the river; she was quickly branded a witch, thoroughly beaten and jailed, los ing a foot in the process. After escaping and returning, she and the mission’s prize convert led another assault that all but con sumed the province in revolution. Aissa, of course, is a superb ve hicle for Cary’s concept of the primitive mentality in the grip of a foreign idea, and her agonies in his hands are as intricate and exquisite as the mating dance of a flamingo. The Message, however import ant it may be to the structure of the novel, is not the source of its excellence. Cary’s almost whim sical, understated style of narra ting events produces a sort of vertigo that leaves the reader disquietingly disoriented in ai landscape barren of fixed points. Its coarse texture, colored liber ally with blood, with the juxta | position of humor and stark tcr -1 ror, perhaps draw closer to the subject than any simple account of tribal behavior. The later Cary would have done it differently to be sure, but for what it is, his first is a little i I gem. All A bout Frederick II Fine Research, But..* THE GREAT ISFIDEL. By Joseph Jay Driss. Random House. $5.95. J f .il Pages. The art of the historical novel is a sometime thing. Rare exam ples approach really top-notch quality (Robert Graves's “I Claudius”), but the bulk are in tr.e grand old tradition of Alex andre Dumas the Elder, who em ployed a hefty staff of ghosts to take his skeletal plots and flesh them out with an appropriate In The Margin By W. H. SCARBOROUGH PNMBMMMNMMMMMMMNMMKNMHHMMMCHMNNMMnMNMMMMMMI ('housing The Heir Apparent Hemingway and Faulkner are safely cold, and it is now polite, not to mention necessary, to select a new crow'n prince of American letters. Time Magazine, in its characteristic straightforward style, scattergunned pre dictions all over the place in a recent issue, dropping names and tailing all over itself trying to lay the ground rules by which the new ruler would be chosen. It would appear from Time's article the world will have to wait a couple of decades until the current crop is ready for harvest. An earlier Time judgment in which J. D. Salinger appeared to have won the show even before the death of Faulkner, had to be reversed; Times critics have tired of Glasses w r ho live in stone houses. Most other critics have maintained a discreet silence and a commendable reluctance to name anyone as pre-eminent, perhaps realizing such behavior to be little better than handicapping horses. In the midst of all this we remembered a book by Mal colm Cowley, whose Viking Portable edition of William Faulkner rescued him from oblivion. The book, a collection of articles Cowley had written for various publications over a period of years, appeared as “The Literary Situation.” After reading it, one could readily believe that the cause of serious letters in Am erica has all the vitality of yesterday morning’s kippered herring. The book appeared in 1955, and things, of course, have changed since then. However a disturbing number of Cowley’s observations have proved correct: the shrinking market for short fiction, the increasing attention publish ers must give to the balance sheet. The most interesting and perhaps significant portions of the book consist of four chapters under the general heading, “A Natural His tory of the American Writer,” and a final chapter, “The Next Fifty Years in American Literature.” If Cowley’s history is within hailing distance of accuracy, the an nointed few have been described and little more than a search to find the best embodiment of Cowley’s modern man of letters should be necessary to sec them among the modern crop. Most writers, Cowley says, are prey to a number of things which set them apart an overdose of isolation, a penchant for reading, a singular search for the right words to describe a precise situation or set of circumstances language makers as it were, stylists in extreme cases. The impulse to write is not a neurosis, a sublimation for something omitted from the realm of experience. He may share something in common with the alcoholic in that he experiences extremes of emotion. At the same time he is politically liberal or apolitically anarchic; he tends to prefer a mode of life akin to that of the patrici ans, the aristocrats. Cowley pulls up way short of label ling him a “superior being.” The real determinants of excellence in the next literary generation have little to do with literary models: social, technological, political, economic upheaval and change. Writers in the nineteenth century often began as minis ters; later the emphasis switched to newspapers, finally to the universities, and the change in origin is perceivable in the nature of the literature. Today’s young writer more often than not teaches in creative writing classes, may often become a teacher of creative writing without ever having written for publication himself. None of the young group has yet begun articulating the myths and archetypes of his own time, a prerequisite in which Cowley firmly believes; hence, they arc doom ed to failure until they do. He might be challenged on this latter point by Salinger, and the peculiar pattern his family of Glasses make, and by a goodly number of others who have put forth an image of man. The man thus ad vanced may be unattractive, lonely, insecure, frightened and hollow. It could be an accurate reflection after all, of mankind as young novelists must experience it. The criterion by which Cowley jwould judge the great ness to come will be the extent to which new forms of literature are created. The novel of Hemingway and Faulkner cannot express what is happening now. The subjectivity of the age past must be supplanted by a new objectivity, a new attention to what happens between people rather than what takes place inside each. We have now become a little suspicious of critics who tell us that such and such a new work breathes new life into the atrophied form of the novel. Few of them in this generation have, and it often seems none of them will. Perhaps Cowley is correct; when a novelist turns the conventions set by the Hemingways, the Faulkners and the Fitzgeralds inside out and makes it sing in a new voice, we’ll have excellence once'more. Certainly that sort of revolution is what made the last generation so memorable. They would probably be the first to rail against their conventions as models for anyone else. - THE CHAPEL' HTIX WEEKLY amount of verbiage. A heavy tide of historical backburners during the late forties pretty well saturated the market and led to one memorable parody of the genre, plus general abatement of the market. After the excesses of that era. historical novels have settled down to a diet of less blood ami gore, more careful research into historical fact. Still, historical novels are in that grey area neither real fiction nor good his tory. Texas author Joseph Jay Deiss has almost raised the business to a calling, his thick, careful biog raphy of Frederick 11 took five years to research and write. In the course of the work he found it necessary to learn modern Italian, brush up on his Latin and French, then worked back into the 13th century to study the Italian of his hero. As a fin al hedge against artificiality >ie started the novel in an abandon ed goat hut in the Aeolian Is lands, later moved to a Medieval tower which served as a refuge from Saracen raiders. His on site research was minute and exhaustive. If anyone knows any thing about Frederick 11, it must be Mr. Deiss. And he does. Compared to his time, Frederick was a beam of light piercing the darkness of a crypt. His Grandfather, the fierce and barbaric Frederick Barba rossa, had almost succeeded in putting the Holy Roman Empire back together in the 12th century. His death was the signal for the glue to come unstuck, with the help of Popes, warring princes,, pretenders to the throne and such like. Frederick’s father had con trived to hold on to the Kingdom of Sicily and little more. Freder ick was raised as a ward of Pope Innocent 111 in the remnants of his kingdom, but largely he was little more than a waif in the streets of Palermo, free to wan der among Saracen and Christian alike, absorbing the knowledge of the streets. Attaining his ma jority in the Sicilian fashion at the age of 14, he began at once to put things aright, first by mar rying Costanza of Aragon, widow of the King of Hungary. She was a number of years his senior, but in her dowry were S(H) knights the nucleus of an army he did not have. Our modern experience of children give us ample knowl edge of the guile of children, but Frederick set something of an all-time mark. Through care ful manipulation and duplicity, he paralyzed Pope Innocent’s plans for using him to subjugate •Europe to the Papacy to regain his power. Once crowned Em peror of the Holy Roman Em pire, he was able to regain arm ed might; once armed might, a deadly battle to confine the Church to realms of the spirit. Frederick was excommunicated three times, married three times. Although German by ancestry he was a Sicilian by preference, and his court became one of the truly magnificent seats of learn ing for all time. Poets and scien tists found him a ready patron who could match them in intel lect; he spoke nine languages, but preferred Arabic, lie brought peace and properity and stability to his realm lor decades. The Papist penchant lor in trigue never abated. After a seri ous defeat at Parma while at tempting to go to the aid of his son on the German throne, he took ill. appeared to suffer from megalomania, and retired to Sicily to die. It was Europe’s last fling at unity for centuries to come. As fascinating as his subject is, as thorough his research. Mr. Dciss’s novel is badly flawed. Too Often, his Frederick tells a tale all too reminiscent of the memoirs of a latter-day indus trial baron. The initial fallacy of assuming that fictionalization of this particular bit of history would bring it alive was fatal. iMr. Deiss had the materials of a superb and comprehensive biog raphy. His predilection for the novel form is regrettable.—WHS Pack 828 Holds Blue-Gold Dinner Cub Scouts of Pack 828, one of the largest and most active Cub Packs in the Orange District, join ed their families in their annual Blue and Gold dinner Tuesday night at the Community Church. Special guests at the dinner were Bob Booker, Orange Dis trict’s new Scout executive; and Gene McJunkin, chairman of the Commission on Education at the Aldersgate Methodist Church, Pack 828’s sponsor. Cubmastcr Fred Hawkins rec ognized each den and the den mothers: Mrs. Homer Webb, Mrs. George Scheer, Mrs. C. A. Kirk patrick, Mrs. Stuart Vandivierc, and Mrs. P. D. Midgett. The Rev. P. D. Midgett and Mrs. Midgett led the group in singing. Stuart Vandiviere presented awards: Gary Price and Mike Bawden received the Wolf Badge. John Campbell and Gary Price receiv ed the Wolf Arrow Points. John Campbell, Steve Bawden, Ji m Kirkpatrick and Jim Vernon re ceived the Bear Badge. Steve Bawden and Jim Vernon received the Bear Arrow Points. John Ben son and George Scheer received the Lion Badge and Arrow Points. Bob Ritchie received the Assist ant Danner Badge. I hHIIP nw j". . ■' ir’m m , V * I j|j 5 I dd If * .Jr® . 1 iirr BS *fip * > \ v I s SR ‘ ■ 4 . -• § AUTHOR IN (’LASS Professor Loren Mac Kinney, who is finishing a book on “Medical Practices in Manu script Miniatures and Texts,” is shown Medical History: From Peony To The Mystical ‘Caladrius’ By DOUGLAS EISELE Ever hear of an out-patient clinic or a medical hospital in the thirteenth century. A. D.? Or see a mystically-empowered "Caladrius" bird that could save a man’s life just by looking at him or let the patient die by failing to turn his head? Chances are you haven't, be cause these and other practices and institutions identified with medical history are little known to the general public, Bui they'll soon gain in popularity, if a lo cal scholar has his way. The scholar is Loren iMacKin ney. a Kenan Professor of Medi eval History whose knowledge of early medicine could probably qualify him as reputable practi tioner in the years 500 to 1500. He might need some stars to gaze upon, several sprigs of peony, a jar of leaches to suck blood from particular patients and an array of herbs and someonc to help hold his more unruly clients. And, of course, he'd have to know of the scores of spots on the human body from which blood should be drained in order to bring relief from a specific disease. These and other practices view ed through the 20th Century eye as medical oddities are only a few among numerous findings which Dr. Mac Kinney is incorpo rating into a detailed volume nearing completion for publica tion. His research deals with ‘‘Medi cal Practices in Manuscript Min iatures and Texts” another way of saying he’s studying ear ly medical practices by examina tion of extant small paintings de picting them. The job has taken Professor Mac Kinney to the best libraries in almost every European coun try, including nations behind the Iron Curtain where much of the data for his research exists. Now, in a comfortable study at his home here, the University professor is recording the medi cal evolution into a two-part vol Chamber Music Tuesday Evening “An Evening of Chamber Mu sic," sponsored by the Tuesday Evening Series of the UNC De partment of Music, will be heard on Feb. 26 at 8 p.m. in Hill Music Hall. Performing a program of Corel li, Mendelssohn, Martinu, and Mo zart will be Edgar Alden, Mary Gray Clarke, and Wilton Mason of the UNC Music faculty, and Doro thy Alden, director of the Chapel Hill Youth Orchestra. Mr. Alden, Miss Clarke, and Mrs. Alden are also members of the North Caro lina String Quartet. Mr. Mason has just returned from a Kenan . Leave of Absence. Corelli's Sonata da camera a tre. Opus 4, No. 4, to be perform ed by Mr. and Mrs. Alden, vio- EVERYTHING IN BOMS . IK UM HOMME "The South’s largest ad most complete Book Stem" AT FIVE POINTS DURHAM, N. C. above as be lectures in a class in Medi eval History at the University. He has devoted extensive research to the evo lution of medicine. ume with reference as far back as 510 A. I). The heart of his research are the "miniatures,” or small paint ings, themselves. He has found them from Leningrad to London, from Istanbul to Stockholm, from the 6th to the 16th century. He has chosen them not as satires upon the methods of early medicine, but rather as pictorial evidences of the various stages through which medicine has pass ed and the tools it has used in progressing to its more modern stage. Maybe, he says, the historians of (lie future will look with simi lar interest at methods of the 20th Century and smile inside at the crude and mystical approach es used. The first part of Dr. Mac Ki nney s book deals directly with photo reproductions and minia tures depicting medical practices from the year 510 to over 10 centuries later, about the year 1550. For tlie unscholarly layman in terested primarily in what he can see and read for himself, this is the more interesting part of the book. But then comes part two, which is a detailed list of all known "miniatures” in the world and where they can be found. They include those incorporated in Dr. MacKinncy’s book, and sev eral thousand otticrs scattered elsewhere about the world. Dr. Mac Kinney says the book will be of interest to doctors, li braries, medical historians and "the general intelligent lay pub lic interested in history.” No doubt there is reason for interest in the evolution display ed. ft begins with early out patient clinics or hospitals, pic tured clearly in brilliant colors and in blacks and whites of miniatures, dating over a thous and years. Next comes the diagnostic clin ic, wherein the doctor lias turn ed to analysis to identify the ill ness for which relief is being sought. lin. Miss Clarke, ’cello, and Mr. Mason, harpsichord, dates from 1694. Musicologist Homer Ulrich writes that in this opus one feels that "there is a succcsful attempt to write dignified, melodious pieces of music, free of formal restrictions and free of pomp and empty display.” The Mendelssohn Trio in D min or, Opus 49. will be performed by Mr. Alden and Miss Clarke, and Mr. Mason, piano. In a change from the instru ments local audiences have come to expect, Mr. Alden (violinist) . will play the viola and Mrs. Al den (violist) the violin In the Three Madrigals for violin and viola by the contemporary com poser Martinu. The forerunner to today's urin alysis, star gazing, the mystical Caladrius bird, the taking of a patient’s pulse or the listening to a heart beat all were seen in diagnostic clinics in the second stage of development A third section of the presen tation involves "materia medi ea,” or the materials of which medicines are made. It was a sort of primitive approach to modem botanical pharmacy. With the sources and uses of medicines established, the next step in the presentation deals with the application both ex ternal and internal —of the med ication required. One interesting miniature il lustrates the belief that the cure for lunacy was to place a sprig of (>eony around r the patient’s neck. Or, if you thought of it in time, a piece of peony worn during a long trip would protect the trav eler from all sorts of danger tii.it growing out ot organic diffi culties or tite worst kind of ex ternal attack. Mechanical treatment of in firmities by surgery finally coir.es into play. In this stage, the doctor may prescribe bleeding from the arm at the elbow joint for one disease, or the same practice from the left ear lobe for another. Cutting and burning could cause the bleeding, but leaches were also effective. As early as the 13th century, miniatures were drawn that es tablish the practice of suturing —or stitching to close external wounds. Obstetrics is yet another field of interest in the extensive study, as is the use of baths in water thought to be effective in the treatment of varied diseases. Over 100 paintings, copied from originals held in libraries around the world, will be included in the book. The book is expected to be on the market within another year. Dr. Mac Kinney said. It is being published by the Wellcome Medical Historical Li brary of Ixmdon, England. DON’T MISS THE SAND PEBBLES By Chapel Hill’s Own Richard McKenna Harper Prise novel, book risk choice, best seller, aad critic’s favorite! You’ll get dwtte plea sure from this literary sensation of *63, knowing it was written right hen in Choel Hill! Autographed Copies ss*6 THE INTIMATE BOOKSHOP 119 East Franklia St Open THNP.M. Page 3-B
The Chapel Hill Weekly (Chapel Hill, N.C.)
Standardized title groups preceding, succeeding, and alternate titles together.
Feb. 24, 1963, edition 1
11
Click "Submit" to request a review of this page. NCDHC staff will check .
0 / 75