Sunday, July 28, 1963
BOOKS
A Lovely Flower
On The Dunghill
THE BLIND. By Luis Harss.
Atheneum. 403 Pages. $5.95
The notion of the flower on
the dung heap has captivated
many a writer, for more than
adequate reason. The contrast
"one achieves by the juxtaposition
is oftentimes wondrous.
If one can successfully steer
a course between the Scylla of
corrupting the flower with the
dung and the Charybdis of focus
ing on the compost heap instead
of the flower, you’ve fecund soil
for the growth of literature.
South American novelist Luis
Harss, one of twenty-five first
novelists Atheneum Press has in
troduced during the past year,
must have thought long and care
fully about the contrast and the
dangers, for this novel is a min
or classic of both.
In his instance the dunghill is
South America of the decaying
upper classes. Holed up some
where on the western coast of
the continent they are languidly
resisting the change, the revo
lution that is bringing the teem
ing peasantry in waves over the
old ramparts of privilege. Even
in Buenavista there is evidence
in the form of a beatnikista who
boasts openly of his proletarian
origins and proclivities. He, Ju
lio, nevertheless is not without
his patrician tastes. They assert
themselves most emphatically
when he longs for and gets the
last flower of the defeated aristo
cracy —a beautiful girl who
stands out in splendor from the
social refuse in which and from
which she has grown.
She, too, has her longings—for
vitality, for the violation of the
conventions which prevail over
her life, for transplanting to a
soil less odious. Her feelings and
motives are inchoate. She can
find nothing but ennui among her
own. But, by accepting the ir
ritant of a disreputable lover, she
can derive pleasure by offend
ing.
A living body of course tends
to attempt purgation of that
which is foreign to it, but the
Blaine Writes Book
On Transportation
A transportation expert at the
University has just published a
book which helps to untangle the
complex web of laws regulating
privately-run transportation in
dustries.
In “Selected Caser and Case
Studies in Transportation Regu
lation And Management,” Prof.
J. C. D. Blaine gives 1000 ex
amples of legal cases and in
dustrial management problems
with discussions which clarify
their significance for the trans
portation industry.
A professor of transportation
in the School of Business here,
Dr. Blaine has recently returned
from India, where he spent six
months as a consultant on trans
portation problems in that coun
try.
The first section of his new
book contains legal cases which
illustrate the constitutional bases
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faded aristocracy of Buenavista
is too feeble successfully to car
ry that off. The inevitable con
sequence must be violence and
death and dislocation. Harss do&
not bow to inevitability, nor de
termine that this shall occur. But
having set the conditions in his
little world, he pursues them to
their unavoidable, eminently
credible denoument.
Certainly, if his first novel is
anything typical of him, Harss is
going to be an important man in
the letters of the New World. As
a prose stylist alone, he handles
the English language as though
he invented it specifically for his
own use. When he plunges deep
into the opaque mirror of the
human mind in conflict with the
soul, he can speak with a terri
fying eloquence. His Tyresias,
who for purposes of concise state
ment packs the vices and virtues
of his world into one debauched
person, will possibly not be so
memorable as a Scrooge or the
man without a country, but he will
certainly go down in literary his
tory as a telegrapher of note.
Within the confines of the first
page he has fixed mood and tone
for Harss to play a fugue in
credibly complex and diabolical.
“Youth was the melancholy,
the vanishing age, Joaquin used
to say. If you, were lucky, you
kept its merrfjries intact; if not,
you still carried its remains in
you, it cast its shadow down the
rest of your life; and that was
why you couldn't go back: be
cause it was all with you, there
was nothing left to go back to.
Men don't change, they relapse,
he said; we all wish we had the
courage to repeat our follies, but
that’s out of the question, youth
is an elusive thing, like love's
first expectation. It comes only
once. There isn’t enough of it
for more than that; it's the price
we pay for growing up, and we
all know that once we’ve lost our
youth we have nothing else to
lose . . . The pity was not to die,
but to age.”
Harss certainly need not age
to become a better novelist.
—WHS.
of state end federal regulations
of private transportation com
panies. Dr. Blaine said the pur
pose of this section is to “focus
attention on the role played by
the courts and Administrative ag
encies in shaping the regulations
under which transportation is
conducted by private enterpris
es in the public interest.”
Included are cases which de
fine the limits of the authority
of the Interstate Commerce Com
mission, cases on tariff regula
tion, cases in which customers
petitioned for reimbursement of
what they considered too-high
rates, end cases on the preven
tion of transportation monopolies
in which mergers attempted by
companies were restricted by
the courts.
Another section of Dr. Blaine’s
book shows how specific indus
tries have dealt with their par
ticular transportation problems.
The case histories he cites show
examples of how one large to
bacco company efficiently or
ganized its large traffic depart
ment, examples of the accurate
estimation of freight charges to
customers, and how various
transport companies have dealt
with customer complaints.
DAVID DARYL COLLINS
Mr. and Mrs. Jim D. Collins of
Pittsboro announce the birth of a
son, David Daryl, on July 20 at
Watts Hospital. Mrs. Collins is
the former Miss Joyce Ray, dau
ghter of Mr. and Mrs. Dwight
M. Ray of Chapel Hill.
PAPERBOUND
BARGAINS. . .
For class work, or for lively travel
ling companions, you can’t beat
good paperbacked books.
For prices, you can’t beat am
used paperback shelves.
Come treasure-hunting, won’t yon?
The Intimate Bookshop
Open every day except
Sunday until 9 p.tn.
Up From The Sea In Books
By W. H. SCARBOROUGH
When Ralph Dennis came to
the University in 1955, he had
a purpose of sorts. Like most vet
erans coming here on the Ko
rean GI Bill, he was a little
short of cash, long on determina
tion and impatient at what ap
peared to be the leisurely pace
of faculty and students.
Tuesday night, several months
more than eight years later, he
sat down in one of WUNC-TV’s
studios to talk about his writing
with WUNC-TV's literary inter
viewer, James Gardner. He had
changed, of course, in some fun
damental ways. The sailor of
1955 was still apparent, but
Ralph Dennis had waded into
another sort of sea. The intensi
ty and the impatience were mut
ed, and there were a couple of
new dimensions not readily dis
cernible before. He will be leav
ing Chapel Hill soon for Yale
University, where he will study
playwriting with John Gassner
and work toward his doctorate.
“It should be fun, but I hate
to leave Chapel Hill,” he said.
In 1955 you could find people who
didn't think he'd ever say some
thing like that. Because Ralph
Dennis wasn't simply a sailor
when he came here. He had dur
ing and after high school been
writing poems, and even at the
hazard of discovery continued
during his four years at sea. It
didn't figure —a man with
bristling moustache end prize
fighter instincts writing poems.
And what followed here after he
arrived didn’t figure either.
From the moment he walked
into his first class, professors
and other students knew there
wasn’t much he wasn’t going to
to challenge. Try and get by
with a pet generalization you
were accustomed to having gen
erations of students swallow
without a murmur. Dennis had
away of turning it inside out,
or more terrifying, making you
justify it.
But if he was impatient with
his professors, he bore down on
himself pretty hard too. Where
he could learn something he
thought useful he did, but that
which engrossed him could not
be predicted; it was something
no one else had thought to look
at. By his junior year he was
battling it out with English in
structors on equal terms when
it came to depth of knowledge
and understanding of literature.
By the time he took his degree
in English with honors in writing,
he had a small but devoted fol
lowing of younger students all
his own.
And he wrote. The poems gave
way in 1956 to novels one
completed, two in progress. In
1962 the novels gave ground a
little bit to experimental plays
when he began studies for a mas
ter’s degree in the Department
of Radio, TV and Motion Pic
tures. But he is now well into
a third novel which shows great
potential, and hard at work on
a dramatic adaptation. Some
time in August his “A Non-
Play” wil be produced for its
second time by the Winston-
Salem Little Theatre uncom
mon for experimental plays by
young men who haven’t looked
at Broadway with longing.
Although dramatic writing has
occupied his attention for the
better part of two years, Dennis
has also experimented with fic
tion, in often-unexpected direc
tions. About two years ago Re
flections (Magazine carried a
short story entitled “Excerpts
from the Journal of a Sad, Fat
Wordman.” It was an outrage
ously funny tale, with an odd,
underlying ground note of mel
ancholy. But it was also an un
usual updating of the epistolary
diary novel, form, out of favor
practically since Samuel Richard
son’s “Clarissa.” The first was
followed by “The Return of the
Sad Fat Organization Man,”
and a third, "Son of the Sod
Fat Married Word Man” is on
the drafting boards.
“I don’t know how legitimate
publishers will look at it, but
it ought to be fun to set Amer
ican letters back about 200 years
to see what happens,” he says.
The form has advantages that
have been neglected in recent
years.
“Part of the impact of the
letter novel is that people be
lieve you. I want the reader to
beliefe in my characters, that
they're real.”
At this point he turns a crit
ical eye on contemporary fiction
for ignoring too much the credi
bility of its tales.
“If you read a good bit of
the literature being written now,
you find people have inserted a
good bit of violence. It makes
the story move, but it’s over
worked. The world as 1 see it
contains a certain amount of
violence, but not tHat much.”
The Negro novelist’s use of
violence seems particularly out
of balance to him. “Tbe Tuskee
THE CHAPEL HILL WEEKLY
A Writer On Writing
gee Institute tables would not
support the number of lynch
ings in Negro fiction.”
Although Dennis wrote his “Sad
Fat Wordman" off the top of his
head at first, he has become
rather attached to him. “I would
like to believe in the Sad Fat
Wordman, but not too deeply.
Some of the local artists had be
lieved in him—he was sort of
‘the man living in the garret.’
They identified with him. Then
when I did the second story,
when he began to sell out, they
didn't like him anymore. I’m
going to try to win them back
with the third story.”
The Wordman, for those not al
ready acquainted with hi m
through the stories, Dennis de
scribes as an unhappy soul who
somehow remains fat although
skirting the brink of starvation; he
lives off what he can find left out
side the freight doors of the local
A&P by the night delivery men.
On good nights he dines well;
other times the shipment may be
an inordinate amount of sheep
manure intended for local lawns.
His production of literature con
sists of improbable titles on a
widely and wildly improbable se
ries of themes. His social life is
in the form of a girl, a “brain
picker,” who before she attends
a party, comes to take notes on
what he tells her about good lit
erature. Thereby she gains the
awe of her friends for her per
ception and good taste. Ultimate
ly she marries the Governor. Be
fore the Wordman, Dennis says,
she (and clearly she stands for
a lot of people) “preferred to
read about stage struck girls
from Hollywood who go to New
York to make good, get hooked
up with white slavers, travel
from one end of the country to
the other, wind up marrying the
head of the Mafia and settling
down in Bucks County in a SIOO,-
000 ranch house.”
There is a faint autobiograph
ical note here, to the extent that
Dennis has pulled a couple of
Problem: How To Protect
Atomic Power From People
THE PEACEFUL ATOM IN
FOREIGN POLICY. By Ar
nold Kramish. Harper & Row.
276 Pages. $5.50.
By PATRICIA HUNTER
Ten years after its inception:
where does the Atoms for Peace
plan now find itself? At the bot
tom of the stockpile. Or so
seems to be the answer implied
by this book which examines the
position of the peaceful atom
in foreign policy.
Altogether though, Mr. Kram
ish has tried to raise questions
in his study, not answer them.
But while concentrating upon the
technological and political prob
lems presented by the atom for
peace, he does, in turn, present
new proposals and alternatives
to current policy couched as sug
gestions.
Hopes were high, according to
Mr. Kramish, when President
Eisenhower first presented the
Atoms for Peace plan to the
U. N. in 1953. Some reasons for
the decline of those hopes and
the failure to achieve interna- ,
tional cooperation in atoms con
trol and development are explor
ed and delineated by the author.
Technical, economic, and po
litical obstacles abound in the
path to utilizing atomic energy
for peaceful purposes. One of
the most frequently occurring
barricades is that of economic
interest. Currently - the -peaceful,
atom is far less economical, far
less valued, far less profitable
then the military atom. Conse
quently, it wields much less in
fluence upon policy making
nationally or internationally.
Those who have the skills and
money to invest are rarely in
terested in an unprofitable ven
ture. So until the peaceful atom
is given more value and made
economically equal or superior
to its military counterpart, the
aid it receives and its subse
quent power to affect foreign
policy will remain close to nil.
Knowing how to utilize the
atomic materials themselves
comes as a technological prob
lem. Such elements as plutonium
have scientists searching for
ways to most effectively apply
their potential. Mr. Kramish de
fines plutonium as a trouble
some “Janus faced” element
whose potential for war is as
great as its promise for peace
time uses. Here again, the prob
lem is complicated by the easy
conversion of peaceful produc
tion into that of militaryCgfli/
trols must be set up, ther'Suthor »
feels, to guarantee against -such
facile conversion.
Besides analyzing some of the
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■I HHHHI
Ralph Dennis Os Chapel Hill
hitches in Chapel Hill garrets
and basements while working and.
writing. "There are basements '
and garrets in Chapel Hill, but!
my wife won’t let me live in
them anymore.”
For materials, you never know
where Ralph Dennis will turn
next. Anything—“journals and
letters, any stuff a book could
be made out of. A writer is the
sum and total of everything he’s
read. When you get a writer
like Dreiser, who acts like he
never read anything, he’s pretty
hard to read.” Dennis is per
haps one of the best-read authors
on the eastern seaboard. And
he is not limited in his response
to varied stimuli. In his current
novel-in-progress, he says, he
found a use for a notion he pick
institutions such as the Inter
national Atomic Energy, Eura
tom, and the European Nuclear
Energy Agency (ENEA) and de
lineating some of their achieve
ments as well as their short
comings, Mr. Kramish suggests
means by which their effective
ness might be improved. One of
their first responsibilities would
be that of enacting what Mr.
Kramish calls “a proposal for
phased nuclear arms limitation.”
The proposal centers around the
idea that "restriction be initiat
ed by applying existing legal
mechanisms to international
traffic in nuclear materials.” In
sequence the phases which he
proposes are: I. Registration of
Trade (with the Atomic Energy
Agency), 11. Registration of
Use of fissionable material, 111.
Restriction of Use, IV. Inspec
tion.
But such duties as control and
restriction are not to be the
main activities of the various
agencies concerned with the
peaceful development of atomic
energy. Their main contribution
would come from further pro
moting research into and applica
tion of the many benign uses of
nuclear science. The benefits
which atomic energy can give
to the generation of power, to
propulsion, to medicine, to pest
control, and to tood preserva
tion are among the many listed.
One of the greatest obstacles
to the accomplishment of utiliz
ing the peaceful atom is that
of the human element. Mr.
Kramish saves his most heated
words for the "professional com
mitteemen” and the high level
conferences which he feels are
too often populated with "ex
perts at paraphrasing aphor
isms” who actually have little
technical knowledge. Operating
in a elouded chamber of misin
formation, lack of information,
and befuddled policies/ they on
ly tend to stray further from
and muddle the issue. E equals
mc-2 comes to mean evasion
equals mass confusion squared
at such conferences. To combat
this trend, Mr. Kramish (who
by the way sees test bans as
ineffective steps toward interna
tional control) would eliminate
such conferences which contain
scientists who little understand
statecraft and politicians who do
not comprehend atomic-craft,
and would instead create a new
personnel to deal with the prob
lems. The basic unit for this
personnel would be the man
1 whom Mr. Kramish calls the
“political atomic servant.” This
men would have technological
knowledge as well as political
ed up reading “Love in the West
ern World.”
“The society we live in has
‘pushed women toward thinking
of themselves as love objects.
But no one has told them any
thing about what happens after
you're forty. This and another
theme fixed itself on the outline
of a story Dennis had heard, and
the novel began taking shape.
“But by the time the book is
finished, I will have kicked
enough sand over it until you
can’t see ‘Love in the Western
World’ or any other statement
either.”
It has been a lively eight years
for Ralph Dennis, and by no
means a calm lime for writing
in Chapel Hill. Word of him
will no doubt be drifting back.
savoir faire, and by combining
the two would effect compromis
es between the two camps. For
such a man to be produced a
special educational program
must be created, a program
which the author outlines in
some detail.
Mr. Kramish covers his topic
simply, avoiding complex jargon,
and attempts a cursory joust
at the myth that atomic knowl
edge is beyond the ken of most
humans. In this he succeeds in
showing that part of the prob
lem is not of harnessing the
atom for peace, but of unhar
nessing it from the ignorance
and obstacles surrounding it.
Duke Press Does
Literature Guide
The Duke University Press has
published a second, revised and
enlarged edition of “Bibliographi
cal Guide to the Study of the Lit
erature of the U. S. A.”—the first
volume of its kind to be printed
in America.
Compiled and edited by Dr.
Clarence Gohdes, James B. Duke
Professor of English at Duke, the
book is designed to help the pro
fessional student of U. S. litera
ture in acquiring information and
in the technique of research.
“It is believed that it will prove
useful to college teachers of Ameri
can literature, to reference librar
ians, and, more especially, to grad
uate students writing master’s or
doctor's theses,” Dr. Gohdes ex
plains in his preface.
The book, impressive in scope
of treatment, lists the chief tools
for the study of U. S. literature
under subject headings. It also
directs the reader to a selected
group of books which deal with the
methods and techniques of re
search in the fields of history and
literature. *'*
The volume also includes the
chief books or bibliographies in
American history, biography, art
religion and other Americana with
which the professional student of
literature is often concerned.
Moreover, the American studies
approach is balanced by sections
on comparative literature and on
the relations of American belles
lettres with foreign countries and
their literature. And skillfully pre
pared indexes assist the reader
in finding data on specific topics
or problems.
Looking for bargains? Always
read the Weekly classified ads
and save.
In The Margin
By W. H.~ SCARBOROUGH
Mayhem, Gentility And Critics
There remains little doubt, despite lack of archaeolog
ical evidence, that no sooner had homo Neanderthaliensis
scrawled his first crude pictograph on his cavern wall
VLhan a neighbor pronounced it a confounded poor ac
count of a buffalo hunt. The ensuing fracas set its
stamp for all time on the relationship between author
and reviewer-critic.
At the same time an incredible inter-dependence be
tween the two has grown up, spurred along no doubt by
technical advances that permitted both authorship and
criticism more mobility than that afforded by cavern
walls. Today the critic seems to be getting the worse of
it although becoming warier and trickier and pro
liferating and the author after a long time spent in
preoccupation with how he was pleasing the critics is
beginning to ignore him.
This is a healthy sign. For a time it looked as though
the fifties and sixties were going to be an age of com
, mentary similar to that the Roman Empire in its latter
days underwent. All the good authors were critics, few
of the critics good authors.
The- present trend had strange origins which go
back over a century to Edgar Allen I’oe and his “Ra
tionale of Verse,” or to the French critics and their
“explications de texte,” to Baudelaire and his critical
lorays. At the same time this old impetus gave rise
to Symbolism in literature it was also producing the
“New Criticism.” The New Criticism achieved an
apotheosis of sorts in T. S. Eliot. Mi - . Eliot's poems
require almost as many footnotes as his criticism. New
. Criticism has gone on to make profound changes in
the teaching of English literature and in the structure
of English departments on Universities all across the
country, while writers-in-residence were for a time
practically unheard of unless they could teach courses
on the History of Criticism. An index of the change is
the University, which will have its first formal writer-/
in-residence next year (although New Criticism, is still
only talked about in Bingham Hall). But in the flower
ing of the Lost Generation there were also the seeds
to the age of criticism that obtained in the fifties, large
ly because a number of articulate artists Hemingway,
Eliot, Robert Penn Warren were also perceptive
readers. When they played out as writers, their func
tions were divided between imitative writers and deriva
tive critics.
Lately Norman Mailer has jumped the novelistic
traces and started lambasting his contemporaries, per
petuating in a minor mode the tradition of Heming
way’s “Green Hills of Africa.” James T. Farrell while
producing the Studs Lonigan triology managed to be
come one of the most acknowledgeable students of Amer
ican literature we’ve had.
But the old impact is going. The work of the critic
more often affects the sales rather than the content
of contemporary writing. And the lowly reviewer
as separate and distinct from the critic (exception: the
New York Times Book Review) is coming into his
own. It is nonetheless a frustrating vocation for him.
Should he react violently and spew forth vitriol all
over the flyleaf of the brutal, compassionate latest he
may sell more books for an author than if he praised
it moderately. He is consistently ridden by the night
mare of failing to perceive a book for, its true worth and
have it either- become a best-seller or achieve the ulti
mate praise of his loftier legitimate brethren, the
critics.
Reviewers, have had their moments, though, especial
ly dramatic and music reviewers. Few' book reviewers
ever enjoy the prestige of Washington Post music critic
Paul Hume. Mr. Hume, you will recall, got an angry
letter from the father of a local soprano and became
famous for having provoked the President of the United
States more than the Russians. Nor, often, do they
achieve the stating of one Herr Hanslick, who reviewed
music in the Vienna of the Emperor Franz Josef. The
composer, Anton Bruckner, was being honored by the
Emperor for his addition to the brilliance of Austrian
music. As a special dispensation, Franz Jo’sef offered
to grant any wish Bruckner had. Bruckner, an other
wise impractical man, could think of only one thing: "If
it please your Majesty, would you make Herr Hanslick
stop writing nasty things about my music?”
Reviewing has fallen into disuse as well as disfavor.
If art it be, it is often a lost one. The rising tide of
books to be read and talked about finds few profession
al reviewers in business any longer. With exceptions
here and there the task is delegated to avocationists
housewives, professors, bored newspapermen. The au
thors who undergo deserve something a bit more
thorough, at the same time they need no more Critics.
William Faulkner, who could have done without
Critics, perhaps stated indirectly the reviewer’s proper
credo, when he would answer an interpretation of his
work with “It’s all right to think that if it gives
you pleasure.”
w _____
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