VEHICLES FOR FANTASY
HICKS, GRANVILLE
Vehicles for Fantasy (viewed by GRANVILLE HICKS fHE GHOSTLY 'TALES OF HENRY J AMES.-Edited by Leon Edel Rutgers University Press. 66 pp. $5.00. MR. EDEL HAS PUT TOGETHER a fat and immensely...
...4.00...
...Savoy has tried to cover...
...American Me treats of the problems pf the children of Mexican parents in the Los Angeles area, using a novel device...
...Even local police departments have begun to recognize their responsibility for positive programs...
...They carry a slight emotional charge, however, and the reader knowsTihe author is not aeepiy involved...
...Here again there is an encouraging note, although it is not within Hartinann's province...
...Not all the stories, "however, are so well known, and there are four early stories, one of which, "The Ghostly Rental," is reprinted lor ^ the first time since its magazine publication in 1876...
...Edel's interpretation of this tale is not altogether clear, and perhaps could not be, but he does establish the fact that it ends on the note of self-acceptance...
...First, the author gives a story in the words of the children themselves, and she has a fine eye and ear for meaningful details and colorful phrases...
...In such times, the word' "sociological" is generally used to describe any book that accepts the obvious truths of life, and does not attempt to rationalize bestiality and inhumanity in terms of a given set of scientific or pseudo-scientific a priori concepts...
...Hansen, and others, have shown that thousands of the ' iiiorc-desii able-because-Nordic" immigrants were paupers who were shipped to the new world at public expense to get them off relief rolls...
...or of Ann Petry's "The Street," for example, that is obviously due' to the broad expanse Mr...
...Purists of both languages will probably have nightmares after perusing it, but it supplies a key to the "second-generationitis" of the area...
...Edel presents and substantiates a thesis of considerable importance...
...The cult of Henry James, like any other cult, has its less admirable features, but on the whole it has been a good thing...
...Nevertheless, his account of terror in a Tennessee village, his portrayal of Kern Roberts' fathers — to whom the crusade against white injustice was a lifework, his story of Kern's "unmasking" in a New England prep school are brilliantly done...
...The society is the United States of the last two decades, cleaven by inhumanity into a white world and a black one...
...He shows that the aims of the "Americanizers" were vague and confused, and therefore it was easy for the racists, superpatriots and militarists to capitalize on the undoubtedly wholesome aspects of their programs...
...America's Color Scheme Reviewed by ANATOLE SHUB ALIEN LAND...
...3.00...
...And most important of all, he is objective and sympathetic, even when his situations might call for hysteria...
...3.50...
...It is interesting to read the stories with this thesis in mind...
...The writing of them "seems to have acted as a kind of self-therapy," and in the end James was cured...
...In so doing, he makes clear his conviction that the basis of any and all solutions to the haunting "problem" is "simple human kindness...
...333 pp...
...The ghostly stories, Mr...
...Improvement is noted in the movements of returning Mexican-American veterans in organizing for civic affairs, in union and community group proclaims for improving human relations, in federal welfare and housing legislation, in the FEI'C...
...Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co...
...320 pp...
...Only naturally, there are patches that are bare...
...THESE ARE THE DAYS when contemplation of the psychic navel is all the rage in literature, when the disintegration of rationality into disturbing bits of chaos seems to be the first duty of the "artistic" writer...
...There are-eighteen...
...What he has chosen to do instead is to •ketch, in bold outlines, the whole canvas of White-Negro relations...
...By Edward George Hartmann...
...EDEL HAS PUT TOGETHER a fat and immensely readable collection of James's stories, including "The Turn of the Screw," 'The Altar of the Dead," 'The Great Good Place," "The Beast in the Jungle," and other famous and familiar tales...
...But the volume is not merely a superior kind of entertainment...
...It is bad enough for high school histories to ignore this aspect...
...THE MOVEMENT TO AMERICANIZE THE IMMIGRANT...
...Alien Land" is a haunting reflection of the gloomiest cloud on America's conscience...
...By Beatrice Griffith...
...The people of Mr...
...The man is Kern Roberts, who looks white but is one-fourth Negro...
...Anatole Shub is assistant editor of The New Leader...
...Hartmann discusses the great "Americanization crusade" of 1015-1921, which many of the immigrants of that earlier day will recall with either bitterness or sarcasm...
...The stories of the nineties, on the other, hand, are loaded with meanings that sometimes canbe formulated and sometimes can't...
...Widespread protests and federal action in giving his remains a hallowed resting place hold out hope that there has been a change in our attitudes which will find expression in the less dramatic aspects of inter-cultural relations, in spite of the Dixiecrats...
...Many of the former are more interested in medieval superstitions and Fascist propaganda than in the welfare of their charges...
...it's a mistake not to...
...In such times, a plainly "sociological" novel like "Alien Land" is especially Welcome...
...If he had been, he might not have distinguished so sharply between the "old" and the "new" immigrants...
...THE LAST TWO STORIES in the volume, both written after 1900, drive home Mr...
...While "Allen Land" lacks the unified compelling drive of "Native Son...
...Edel has taken a certain sector of James's work, and forced it to yield some of its meanings, thus enhancing the satisfactions that these extraordinary stories give...
...Her account is particularly telling in its exposure of how far apart are the professions and actions of both Catholic and Protestant organizations...
...This, as he says, was a period of great discouragement for Henry James, who had felt with some bitterness the decline of his reputation as a novelist and had turned, with even more disheartening results, to the stage...
...stories in all, as exciting ai»d satisfying collection as one could ask for...
...It is recommended to all our citizens, but especially to those Senators who conscientiously split legalistic hairs just to avoid some "simple human kindness...
...For in this fine study of America's race relations, Willard Savoy has not limited himself to the mental gyrations of one man affected by a problem...
...341 pp...
...Then she presents a companion chapter in which the sociological and economic background of the story are examined...
...1948...
...Unfoi tunately, the author does not seem aware of the magnificent contributions of the late M. L. Hansen...
...New York: Columbia University Press...
...Savoy's story are vivid individuals, forcefully delineated...
...Edel maintains, were vehicles for his fantasies, some of them compensatory, some of them regressive...
...E. P. Dulton & Co...
...The Beast in the Jungle," as a condemnation of the waste of life, is linked with affirmation of "The Ambassadors": "Live all you can...
...He points out that twelve of the eighteen stories were published in a single decade, the last ten years of the nineteenth century...
...Granville Hicks is the well-known journalist and writer, and author of the recently-published book "Small Town...
...There is an extensive bibliography...
...His writing is crisp and intense...
...AN APPENDIX gives the best collection this reviewer has seen of new words introduced into the mixed English-Spanish speech of the youngsters who are trying to live in two cultures...
...many of the latter display "for white people only" signs...
...Instead, he has used the con.fticts engendered in one man to illuminate a whole society...
...He lumps it with the "other manifestations of American distrust"— nativism, Know-Nothingism, APAism, Ku Klux Klanism, and immigration restrictionism...
...Educators nowadays base their work on a democratic cultural pluralism, rather than attempting to eradicate their original life-patterns...
...She thus deals with a wide range of topics: the "zootsuit" riots, delinquency, the Mexican family, the employment, housing, health, educational and legal problems of the immigrants, Mexican leadership, and the church...
...If ever a writer deserved and indeed demanded sustained critical examination from many points of view, it is James...
...The funeral home in his own Texas community refused to hold services when his body was returned from the Philippine campaign—because he was Of Mexican origin...
...No one can doubt that James is involved in these stories in the deepest possible way...
...in a profusely documented report of this kind it is serious, (Clarence Senior is research associate for the Bureau of Applied Social Research of Columbia University...
...In a long introduction and in notes on the various stories, Mr...
...How the man tries to exist first in one world, then in the other, is the story that unfolds...
...These two books, from widely different approaches, support this hope...
...FELIX LONGORIA IS NOW BURIED in Arlington National Cemetery...
...The National Security League, for example, demanded that the immigrant believe in the "wisdom of America's wars"—• in spite of the Mexican and Spanish examples which disgrace our supposedly lily-white honor...
...Edel's thesis with a triumphant flourish...
...Henry James had exorcised his ghosts, and entered intq the amazingly fruitful period that crowned his career...
...Mr, Savoy could easily have given Vi a bitter, one-sided portrait...
...A novel by Willard Savoy...
...At about the same time James abandoned the ghost story he had begun, "The Sense of the Past," and salvaged one of its themes for the final story in this collection, "The Jully Corner...
...The four early stories are strikingly good, and the one James chose to neglect, 'The Ghostly Rental," is a "trick" story of the most successful kind...
...Our Second Generationists Reviewtd by CLARENCE SENIOR AMERICAN ME...
Vol. 32 • April 1949 • No. 17
