Sunday, August 25,1963
BOOKS
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Anna Sevier
. . . Author Os ‘Early Summer’
The Cup Os Youth
Runneth Not Over
EARLY SUMMER. By Anna
Sevier. Atheneum. 177 Pages.
(3.95.
Precocious young lady novel
ists have been with us long
enough for the debut of another
to create no particular ruckus.
After the critics discovered that
Francoise Sagan was going to
get older than seventeen, they
even stopped commenting on it
and started getting testy at be
ing pestered by requests for mo
vie money and cokes.
If Anna Sevier, a young lady
from the mountains of Virginia,
had heard about critics, she un
doubtedly threw salt over her
shoulder to ward them off. Cer
tainly she didn’t bother to put
on a Sunday pinafore for them,
and in her first novel, she has
broken every rule the old suds
try to impose on the literary
conduct of such as she.
As a consequence her first
novel proves both disarming and
disappointing disarming in
that Anna Sevier is already as
good a writer as some authors
ever need be disappointing
in that her slim first volume is
a little tea cake of a thing that
doesn’t convey enough oI her
flavor.
For a story, “Early Summer”
has just about the quantity of
plot that a telephone conversa
tion between two coeds meeting
at the end of a summer can
boast. It is considerably more
formal in structure, however,
vastly more subdued, and gives
considerable strength to the
suspicion that Miss Sevier has
sat at the feet of her elders,
say perhaps Elizabeth Bowen or
Katherine Ann Pqrter, or may
be Virginia Woolf.
In fact, not since “Where the
Boys Are” has a beach party
served to shore up the structure
of a novel. This, however, didn't
start out that way. Authentic
beach parties never do.
Grey Andersen has finally
managed at the age of twenty to
elude her parents and take a
four-day excursion to Cannes
before she must return with them
to America after a sojourn in
Paris. For a while it appears
that Miss Sevier is having her
young lady say in effect, “get
ting there is half the fun.” Such
is the nature of the interior
monologue the reflective, per
ceptive Miss Andersen conducts
CURRENT REST SELLERS
Fiction
1. The Shoes of the Fish
erman . . . West
2. Elizabeth Appleton
.. . O’Hara
3. City of Night
. . . Rechy
Non-fiction
1. The Fire Next Time
. . . Baldwin
2. My Darling Clementine
. . .Fishman
3. The Whole Truth and
Nothing But
. . . Hopper
WILLS BOOK STORE
Lakewood Shopping Center
Shop Monday, Tbaraday
Friday nights tH «
with herself as the night train
hears the Riviera.
It is quite a monologue, and
it serves as a perfect showcase
for Miss Sevier’s virtuosity.
Time and again the splendid
phrases turn with nary a sprain:
“When it rains in Paris there
is never a taxi” —a bon mot
worthy of sometime Parisian
Gertrude Stein. Or again, as a
representation of mood so many
travelers have known: “—I feel
the first steady swells of ela
tion. the first tides of excitement
that I have brought this scheme
to its completion, that I am ar
rived now at the brink of my
own self-imposed precipice.”
On her snapshot of the French
as a type: “—Like a shy child
in strange company. They can’t
forget for a minute that they’re
French and you’re not and
that makes you different. So
they peer out from behind in
visible skirts at you and act
as though you're not really there,
and you know that later on
they’ll sit somewhere over their
aperitifs and talk about you in
little liqueur-scented whispers.”
Or again in a philosophical
cast: “Good people want to have
little demitasse doses of happi
ness to linger over when they
can only remember.”
—“I don’t think I’ve ever had
an adventure before. Not an
all-alone out-on-your-own adven
ture that belonged to me and
nobody else,” she muses on.
After this we really expected
something fully as rousing as
the travails of the lady in D. H.
Lawrence’s "The Woman Who
Rode Away.” But this is not to
be. Deliverance, it seems, al
ways comes at the hands of Am
ericans, with an occasional help
ing hand from whatever com
patible nationality happening to
be at hand.
We were tom between saying
that it was one heck of a bust
as a four-day beach party and
accepting at face value the young
lady’s protestation that this was
a breakaway from childhood in
to fully realized womanhood.
The emotions have wild adven
tures up and down the spine, and
the shivers provoke much talk.
For a girl of twenty, methinks
the lady doth verbalize too much.
Still, we realize that Miss Sevier
is drawing a portrait of life as
■a woman experiences it in that
region lying between recogni
tion and expression. At first
blush both ere imperfect. Repeti
tion either blunts or sharpens
both.
Certainly Anna Sevier, first
time out, has made a number
of recognitions and is struggling
womanfully with the expression.
She should very shortly be recog
nized in her own right. We’d like
to meet both her and her heroine
five years later.—WHS.
DOG DAYS
DOG SALE
Hot days
and hot bargains
at the cool, cool
Intimate.
Slow paperback sellers
and shopworn books
half-price and less.
Our regular bargains
mostly half-price
and less.
Ail This Week At
llie Intimate .
Bookshop
Chapel Hill, N. C.
Open Every Day Except
Sunday until 9 PJML
A Friend Recalls Odets
‘He Had An Inner Unrest...’
By W. H. SCARBOROUGH
When Clifford Odets died last
at 57, he had undergone as
many transitions as the actor
who plays three roles in a one
act play.
He was best known as one of
the fiery young men of American
drama in the thirties, and as
such he is best remembered. His
was the voice of protest heard
loudest on the American stage,
that registered its objections to
the state of things most suc
cinctly.
He wrote in an era when there
was much to protest—Che great
depression with its starving of
the spirit and the body, of so
cial injustice. His was the coun
terpoint to the inner plaints of
Eugene O’Neill. Together they
sang a fugue of distress, anger
and despair about an America
that had had its optimism cut
clean out.
He had, before he was thirty,
the satisfatcion of seeing three
successful plays running simul
taneously on Broadway—" Wai
ting for Lefty,” “Till the Day
I Die” and “Awake and Sing.”
They were to be followed by at
least five more, each of which
in its own way would make his
tory in the drama of the Nation
and provide the Tennessee Wil
liamses and the Arthur Millers
—especially the William Inges—
the techniques on which to be
gin the drama of the present.
Echoes of him are heard in Ed
ward Albee, the coming young
man of the future.
He had an ear for capturiiig
authentic dialogue and making
it sing on the stage. His plays
became not merely believable
but almost confused with reality.
This was understandable. He
had been born into hardship and
oppression. He had also ait his
teeth on drama as an actor in
the Group Theatre, which was
to produce more than one major
playwright and one major ac
tor. He knew how a line would
sound on the stage, how it should
be played.
As he grew older his plays re
flected changing times and a ma
turing playwright. But as the
forties wore on into the fifties
he began taking a new tack. No
longer were his works quite the
American parallel of Germany’s
Bertholt Brecht. He was ex
ploring something new with plays
such as "The Big Knife” and
“The Flowering Peach." They
‘Experimental** For Self-Revelation
The 20let Series of Student
Productions of New Plays:
FOR THE LOVE OF A
WORM by Sally Cook, direct
ed by Anne Williams; TEN
CARS " BEFORE HOPE by
Jon Phelps, dircted by Blair
Beasley, Jr.; and I WANT SO
MUCH: I'VE GOT SO MUCH
TO GIVE by Elizabeth Smith,
directed by Shari Stem; The
Playmakcrß Theatre, August
11, and 15.
By JOHN CLAYTON
The one-act ‘experimentals”
as they are frequently called
here in Chapel Hill are rarely
as good as the major produc
tions, but they are frequently
more important both as theatre
and as as direct expressions of
the University’s prime purpose
of producing students willing to
commit themselves to the ef
fort and the anguish of develop
ing their own understanding ra
ther than passively digesting the
dice eadh of those who teach
them has achieved. Playwriting
can be and frequently is the ulti
mate exercise in self-discovery
and self-revelation; it tests the
direction and breadth of the
playwright’s concern as well as
die subtlety and profundity of
the understanding he brings to
bear upon the facet of life that
has engaged his attention.
It is for this reason (as well
as others) that the creation of
new plays is a far greater Uni
versity imperative than the pro
duction of old ones, especially to
those who would rather serve as
intellectual obstetricians than
embakners.
Os the three plays produced
last Wednesday and Thursday,
by far the most rewarding in
the magnitude of its concern was
Mr. Phelps' portrait of an old
lady left to live out what remains
to her of life in one of those in
stitutions designed to cater to
the aged, infirm, and unwanted.
What rendered Mr. Phelps’ exer
cise remarkable was not his situ
ation, which was slight, nor his
plot, which was negligible, nor
his social philosophy, which was
nonexistent in so far as he rep
resented it, but rather the rangtt
and complexity of human rela
tionships he was able to conjure
up through his perceptive de
velopment of the central charac
ter. Briefly, his play dealt with
an afternoon ia the life of the
old lady when she is visited by
a young couple who reject her
THE CHAPEL HILL WEEKLY
could not be understood iB terms
of the early Odets. The critics
attacked savagely or defended
passionately, yet few seemed to
comprehend what was taking
place. At any rate, Clifford
Odets wrote his last play in 1954,
and. appeared permanently to
have turned to Hollywood and
TV. '
The man beneath the protest
and the skillful craft was not.
however, reflected in his stage
pieces. Periodically he would
escape the involvements in va
rious ways. One of them was
to come to Chapel Hill, where
he had friends. Here he would
stroll the campus, browse the
library, argue with students and
participate freely in discussion
of Chapel Hill’s then-burgeoning
activity in drama. One of his
best friends, Paul Green, recalls
him, not as a playwright, but as
a man capable of profound in
fluence on his environment —a
man of compassion and warmth
who may well hawe written best
when there was * something to
protest against, but who could
lose his quarrel with the world
very quickly under terms of
truce.
“He had in him an inner un
rest, an inner unhappiness, which
made him; want to reach out, to
do things, to change things. Cliff
used to get mad on these left
wing things, and when he did,
he wrote his best plays,” Mr.
Green reflected last week.
“When a fellow hits his voice,
it’s as good as anything he’ll ever
do. Cliff hit his voice with his
very first play. It was a bull's
eye. And he never surpassed it.
Oh, he may have done eight ma
jor plays, but you know it’s sort
of like the young coon hound
who grows up and the first time
he trees a coon he really lets go.
After that he may bark the same,
but never with the complete fer
vor he had that first night he
broke through. The old American
Success Story took hold, of
course. Cliff was ‘hailed’ and
all that. America’s always on
the lookout for the White Hope,
and this is so terribly unfair to
a young writer to plume him up
beyond all reason. No mhn can
live up to the expectations that
sort of thing creates. We should
be thankful Cliff was as good as
he was.
“O'Neill’s plays were 80 per
cent inside himself. It was a
subjective dialogue. Abuut Cliff,
you had the feeling he’d heard
desperate appeal to take her
home with them. Mr. Phelps
softens the obligation of the
couple by making the relation
ship « distant one, toughens it
by revealing that the old lady
had raised the orphaned young
woman, offers them an out by
introducing the existence of a
son who has direct responsibility
for the old lady, and allows them
to rationalize their refusal on
the standard ground of inade
quate medical attention at home,
crowded quarters, young chil
dren, and so forth. Against the
pull and haul of these factors is
voiced the cry of the old lady
that the only future she faces
in the institution is “to die or
go crazy.”
If Mr. Phelps had contented
himself with allowing his char
acters to verbalize the situation
outlined above his play would
have had little to recommend it.
His distinction lay in whet -he
enabled the old lady to suggest,
a distinction made manifest by
Credible Folks From The Mill
THE MAKE-BELIEVE MAN.
By Elizabeth Fenwick. Harper
& Row. 183 Pages. (3.50.
By J. A. C. DUNN
After weeks of a tundra of
tedious tension from Harper’s
“Novel of Suspense” mill, Eliza
beth Fenwick has successfully
combined a believable situation
with people who matter—not that
they are important people. On
the contrary, there is not an en
tity in the lot. But they are
familiar people whom you would
not like to be in the situation
Miss Fenwick places them in.
Literary pundits and similar
scratchers of the skin of fiction
doubtless feel that the household
intruder is a musty gimmick,
worked until its cogs arc worn
round and its bushings decidedly
bushed. But for almost anybody
who lives outside a hospital, an
asylum, prison, an institutional
dormitory, on shipboard, or in an
army barracks, a man forcing
his way into your house poses a
threat whose stature easily
matches, at moments, those of
World War Three, or mortgage
foreclosure. The threat is ac
centuated when the householder
becomes a hostage in his own
ODETS IN CHAPEL HILL Playwright Clifford
Odets, who died Aup. 15 at 57, is shown here during
the early thirties on one of his many visits to the Uni
versity. Left to right are Dubose Hayward, author of
“Porgv;” Odets; Paul Green and Carolina Playmakers
director and Dramatic Arts Professor Frederick Koch.
his dialogue, that it was real.
“It is a great loss he is gone
so early. He was in his prime,
only fifty-seven, and we might
have looked forward to some fine
plays in eight or ten years. He
might have found another era
of protest, this time on the inter
national scene. He could very
easily have shown up the dan
gers of this perfervid nationalism
which threatens to throw us into
nuclear war. He could have put
Barry Goldwater on the stage
better than any other playwright
in America.”
Mr. Green corresponded regu
larly with Odets. His last letters
came from Hollywood, where he
was working on a new one-hour
TV series, built around a perm
anent cast of twelve headed by
Richard Boone. Mr. Green had
asked him several times to come
the exceedingly skillful playing
of Myra Lauterer. It was in the
vision of what life with the old
lady might mean that the dra
matic tension was sustained, and
the quicksilver changes, the
slight accent*, the subtle shift
in tone from warmth to queru
lousness never allowed the audi
ence to make a, simple choice.
The character never became a
generalization. Always she was
a particular person possessed of
all the frustrating ambiguities
of the living individual, “com
pact of jars” in Shakespeare's
phrase, and always we had to
adjust to the new evidence. She
was warm and loving, no, she
was a busybody: she was lucid,
no, senile; healthy, no, an in
valid; driven dotty by the en
vironment, there because she
was going dotty; reasonable, un
reasonable; and each little flash
revealed vistas of what life with
“Granny” might be like. In the
process of this characterization,
the play grew quite beyond the
home.
The usual treatment of this
kind of situation is with hoods
who have either just escaped
from prison or are bent on ex
torting ransom, sometimes both.
Ransom is pretty old hat these
days. But the psychotic intrud
er is innocently psychotic. This
is the horribly sinister tiling
about Cliff. He is such a nice
feilow. Other than being a bit,
plump around the jowls, he is
clean-cut, courteous, well-man
nered, a hard worker, and quiet.
He is also crazy as a June bug,
but this does not appear until
he has been forced to move
from his comfortable lodging in
young Norma Hovic’s mother’s
house after Norma is widowed
and comes home with her small
son to live with her mother. And
then Norma’s mother is called
away to help at the birth of a
daughter-in-law’s child, leaving
Norma alone in the house.
Then Cliff appears. Cliff wants
his old room back. He has been
in Chicago, where he has had
a little trouble. It is not a little
trouble at all; It Is a lot es
trouble, but he describes it as
only having hurt his feelings. It
is not hard to have serious mis
givings about -a man who re
acts to Cliffs kind j>t trouble
to Chapel Hill for an extended
visit, but Odets was busy. His
last letter came July 10. On Ju
ly 23 he was operated on for
a severely ulcerated stomach.
The surgeons found cancer,
totally unexpected. On August
15 he died.
Mr. Green is not certain, but
he had heard that immediately
prior to his death he had been
planning to rehearse a musical
version of his play, “Golden
Boy.” Whether this would have
led him back to his first love,
the legitimate stage, cannot be
said. Perhaps he was a victim
of the creative malaise describ
ed by John Gassner, who once
said that “most American play
wrights. when they quit getting
angry, lose their talent.”
Mr. Green disagrees, especial
ly as regards Clifford Odets.
maudlin soap opera to take its
rightful place in the main stream
of our dramatic heritage. For
if Mr. Phelps’ play is an ex
ceedingly minor trickle in that
stream, it nevertheless is flow
ing in the right direction which
is to constantly explore and test
the Tao. The major playwright
is rarely content to merely il
luminate dark corners. This was
the failure of the school of
naturalism. Implicit in his work
is the moral question, “What is
right action?” The old lady dem
onstrated in this vintage how the
specific tends to confound the
generalization and how rarely
we have the good fortune to be
confronted by simple questions.
Wisely, the playwright left his
audience with the burden of de
cision, forcing it to become ac
tive rather than passive partici
pants in the quest.
As for the rest of the eve
ning, Miss Cook's play for chil
dren, For the Love of a Worm,
(Continued on Page 4-B)
with only hurt feelings.
And then there is the business
of the changed lock; the milk
delivery chute; and getting 11-
year-old Jimmy safely to and
from school; arid the Hausens,
whose innocent though somewhat
exaggerated concern for their
neighbors’ welfare results in a
chillingly ugly psychosis scene.
The conclusion drops off some
what. and the hero and heroine
emerge suitably entwined „on
page 183, but unlike most heroes
and heroines destined for fiction
al entwinement, Norma and Mr.
Bennig are ineptly, believably
human. Norma falls somewhere
in the vast range of innocuous
anonymity between Little Orph
an Annie and Scarlet O’Hara, and
Mr. Bennig is just as far from
being the Milquetoast of Tooner
ville as he is from James Bond
age.
All the nerve-racking process
of finding the smiling Cliff, who
disappears ominously after his
unsettling appearance, is told at
greyhound speed in prose that is
greyhound lean. Except for Ifar
per’s insistence on obviously com
mercial formula brevity, “The
■ Make-Believe Man” is a refresh- '
ingly pipe fruit in Harper's bar
rel of often questionable apples
of suspense.
In The Margin
By W. H. SCARBOROUGH
' • .:V ',.#'l
IT hat They 're Saying About Annie
P>etty Smith’s fourth novel, “‘Joy. in the Morning”
has been on the .stands for a week at this point, and
it early sales are a fair index of success, the book and
its heroine, Annie Brown, will be climbing onto the
best-seller list for a long, profitable i>erch.
The Intimate Bookshop where all the copies of
Joy care autographed by Miss Smith reports that
first-week sales are every bit as good as those of “The
Sand Pebbles,” Chapel Hill’s last sale key jangler,
which went hand over hand up to the crow’s nest, hit
the number two slot and settled down for a long watch
at No. 3.
Miss Smith writes from New York, that although
the Sunday New York Times Book Review frowned at
Annie old-maidishly, Orville Prescott made it all up
in the Monday review. Same for the New York Ilerald-
Tribune
“ The reviews seem to be one-third ‘Joy’ and two-thirds
‘Tree.’ Therefore ‘Tree’ is having quite a big sale now,”
Miss Smith wrote.
Generally the critics have been most favorably in
clined toward Annie. They’ve found her engaging, ap
pealing, a little provincially naive, with a funny way
of expressing herself to be sure but nevertheless,
we must have that nice young Brown couple around
for dinner some evening, they appear to be saying be
hind the literary lorgnettes.
A sampling of the reviews:
ORVILLE PRESCOTT
The New York Times
“It is exactly 20 years now since the publication of
Miss Smith’s first novel, ‘A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.’
hew modern books have been so beloved and few have
contained so large a dash of autobiography. ‘Jov in the
‘Morning’ probably won’t equal the popularity of ‘A
Tree,’ but it is certain to touch many hearts. And it
seems equally inspired by personal experience. This is
the story of Annie’s life as a teen-age bride in a Middle
Western college town. Betty Smith, just out of her
teens, studied at the University of Michigan. Annie,
like Miss Smith, came from Brooklyn, and also like Miss
Smith, Annie was enthralled by words and books and
began to write plays at a precocious age.
“ ‘Joy in the Morning’ is exclusively Annie’s book.
Some old sourpusses may compare Annie to Polly
anna. But their scorn won’t keep the many thousands of
women who are going to read ‘Joy in the Morning’ from
loving Annie—even though they may want to shake
her every now and then.”
JOHN K. HUTCHENS
The New York Herald-Tribune
“The tree that grew so wondrously in Brooklyn has
been transplanted, these 20 years later, to Mid-Western
soil, and the agreeable news today is that it flourishes
nicely out there, too. This is not to say, you understand,
that ‘Joy in the Morning’ is a sequel to the sensational
seedling that Betty Smith planted way back then.
“If I may say so w.ithout suggesting a comparison of
which Miss Smith must long since have grown weary,
I would observe that ‘Joy in the Morning’ lacks the fresh
ness and vitality of ‘A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.’ It does
not, as Lewis Gannett said of that earlier book, ‘sing.’
But it would be a stony-hearted reader of ‘Joy in the
Morning’ who did not find himself moved by Annie Mc-
Gairy, of Flatbush, as she walks across the Mid-Western
campus and worries lest a cop will ask her to leave, as
she eavesdrops outside a classroom, taking notes and do
ing assignments on her own, as she awaits and experi
ences the birth of her first child
“ Miss Smith, it will surely occur to you, has overlooked
no ingredient to round out a new re-telling of an old
story. But then it will also occur to you that the re
telling has a simple, unpretentious air of truth. It can
make a big difference in favor of such a book as hers.”
W. G. ROGERS
The New York Herald-Tribune Sunday Book Review
“Looked at from one point of view, there are only
two kinds of novels, and each kind possesses undeniable
virtues.
“First there are novels that break new ground. They
toll a story, but a story never heard before lots of
things, for instance, happen in our century that didn’t
happen before and can be turned into fiction only in
our day. Or they tell a story in a different way, a new
form, from an angle being explored for the first time.
“This is the warm, earnest glorification of the ever
lasting common man, the salt of the earth, and in geiv
eral of purity, decency, love and goodness- All’s right
with this world. Thousands and thousands of readers
will eat it up, alternately smiling and weeping, smiling
and weeping.”
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