The Key West citizen. [volume] (Key West, Fla.) 1879-current, 1951-12-24

AAe'ttf ~ ANAts At%f@is PdOAtSttNG ~
Bobbs Merrill Company, New
York and indianapolis, 400
| pages.l
In parts of this book William
! Styron has written some of the
finest descriptive and narrative
Prose which has appeared in the
| American novel in the past ten
years. Two passages are out
standing. They are the descrip-
| ton of love coming into the
summer afternoons of a mental
! ly and physically crippled girl.
and the bitter melancholy of
| Potter's Field where the UNI
known dead of New York are
buried.
| The scenes of the novel take
place mostly in Port Warwick,
| Virginia. with briefer interIudes
| in Charlottesville, Virginia, and
Greenwich Village in New York
| City.
| The author uses as his unity
ing device the funeral procession
| of Peyton Lofts, a girl in her
early twenties who committed
J suicide in New York. The body
arrives at the railroad station in
! Port Warwick. is transferred to
the hearse, and the procession
proceeds to the cemetery. The
girls mother, father, her fathers
| mistress, the family clergyman,
and the Negro servant, are in
two cars behind the hearse. Mr..
Styron then goes back into a
Lifetime of events which proceed
ed the suicide. He does this
mostly by showing selected
| scenes from the lives of the
people attending the funeral, and
internationally brings the read
er back to the funeral procession
through having the hearse break
down. stop at a gas station, and
: get involved in traffic.
The author has great powers
of characterization and is an ex-
cellent story teller The people
he selects TO move in the novel
are vividly alive and the reader
is eager to know the cause OF
the tragedy which broods over
their shattered lives.
But unfortunately, the cunlu~
lative effect of the novel is one
of spiritual squalor. The father
J is loving, dissolute; the mother,
mad, lonely, breeding upon her
hates; the daughter, beautiful,
emotionally twisted, a creature
of drunken-nights and joyless
amours. There is no nobility in
these figures. The reader is inn
mersed in a bath of pity and hor-
ror. And il is only in the highly
emotional form of Christianity
of the Negro servants and in the
completely acquiescent relation
ship of the congenitally stupid
and simple daughter Maudie TO
her mother, that Mr.. Styron
| shows any slant of light in the
darkness.
William Styron, in this picture
he gives of the south, has joined
band of some of the best names
in southern literature. Faulkner,
Caldwell, Robert Penn Warren.
Maybe they can't all be wrong
But this reviewer has only one
comment to repeat. In i943 when
Robert Penn warren's Eat
Heavens Gate" was published,
she wrote in the Washington
Post. one is forced 10 con-
clude that II Mr.. Warren has
given us representative section
81 humanity, the only virtuous
action OF which the race could
/. POSSIBLY be capable would be 70
remove itself quietly from the
earth and thus allow it to be IN
: herited by self-respecting in
l sects. This comment is as true
today Of William Styron's novel
sIAe Down in Darkness.
A Junior Selection
Glider Brother by Evelyn Sib-
3 ley Lampman, fiction for chill
o dren l0-i4. Doubleday Publish
Q ing Company, 2l7 pages.)
. Any fiction writer's guild
9 might have just cause to take
Z the author OF this book behind
1 some Chinese laundry and to the
. smell of incense strangle her
y with d Chinese cue. For years
: storytellers have built up
y whole cult Of the mystery Of the
= east and things Chinese, and
. Mrs. I.ampman without liter
= = AIRY qnaTrn skaters the whole
e shivery myth.
Il The pattern of population
Y growth In the United States
= shows foreign groups moving i'm
tito certain sections. and MAIN
: tanning for several generations
/, the vestiges of their racial and
: national Identities The China
towns OF our coastal and other
& cities are familiar illustration
; of this growth pattern.
: Mrs. Lampnlan places her
/ story in the Portland, Oregon
! Chinatown Of 1908 The place
o was at that time athrob with