Too Black and White
RASMINSKY, JUDITH SKLAR
Too Black and White WASHINGTON AND BALTIMORE By Julian Mazor Knopf. 212 pp. $4.95. Reviewed by JUDITH SKLAR RASMINSKY Assistant editor, Harper & Row; contributor, "Commonweal" Washington and...
...The only astonishing part is John's presence...
...I have no doubt that his feelings are genuine, but one should not allow such an attitude to persist...
...But at the same time, John is ashamed of Bessie—of the fact that she wears his mother's five-year-old coat, that she won't stand up to his mother...
...In "The Boy Who Used Foul Language," Bessie the maid is a warm, whole person to 10-year-old John, while his parents, dimly perceived authority figures, are loveless and threatening...
...The simplification of the complex relationship, the purity of the wish fulfillment in these stories, seems to be part of the nostalgia...
...The 1940 dateline is really just an excuse...
...The account of this is so beautifully detailed and authentic that it almost leads the reader to believe he understands it...
...Not today...
...Washington" and "Baltimore" have as their premise the friendship of a now much older John and several blacks in the Washington ghetto...
...Instead of attempting to discover what is really happening between them, however, Mazor cops out by saying that Yankees and Southerners inevitably come to blows...
...His work is full of details—what people wear, their ailments, their locations—¦ which are splendidly accurate, but their thoughts are a sort of byproduct, accidental in nature...
...Several take place in the early '40s, when, as we all know, things were relatively "uncomplicated...
...The trouble is the "uncomplicated" part...
...We "understood" one another...
...but when they are absent, only bland complacency is the result...
...Of the six stories here, five deal in some way with the relationships between blacks and whites...
...The tale itself...
...Mary Jane," which is set in the present and has to do with two adult people, gives Mazor away...
...but this summer, when Spiro T. Agnew has been nominated for Vice President of the United States, it is enraging...
...To me it seems perfectly clear that this is the least of their troubles...
...One can accept the '40s stories if one considers them as period pieces, real enough for their time...
...In "Baltimore," John returns to Billy's store to celebrate Tracy's birthday, during which, each year, Tracy recounts a tale of his Army days (1942...
...Mary Jane, a 21-year-old beauty from Roanoke, Virginia, is married to Stedman Greer, a lawyer from Buffalo 10 years her senior...
...It is absurd to expect 1968 readers to accept its assumptions uncritically...
...The amazing thing is that the author views this state with nostalgia...
...in fact, I can't imagine why they got married in the first place...
...His publisher says he writes with "uncomplicated honesty...
...of white promoters who think they can hoodwink a gullible black fighter, is stunning and funny...
...Washington" is the story of how this friendship came to be (John, sick, penniless and alone, is nursed back to health by friendly Billy, slightly belligerent Ringo, and friends Ruby and Tracy) and is almost impossible to believe since it presupposes that white John could hit black Ringo in a Washington street without attracting anyone's attention...
...Thinking about blacks and whites has changed so radically in the last few years that Washington and Baltimore was really dated before it was published...
...Oh, we had our problems, but in cities like Washington and Baltimore, everyone knew his place, more or less...
...contributor, "Commonweal" Washington and Baltimore would have been an annoying book to read most any time in the last few years...
...and perhaps from this standpoint the nostalgia and sentimentality are justified...
...It is curious that Mazor should leave his premises so unexamined, but that is his method and it is one that does not admit much analysis of motive...
...When they are present, as in "The Boy Who Used Foul Language," the story is rich indeed...
...It's not that Julian Mazor doesn't write well, or that his book isn't interesting—or even honest...
...Mazor would have us believe that their marriage is on the rocks because she claims to respond to Negroes as individuals while actually patronizing them, and he blindly accepts them as a class—while being quietly as bigoted as his wife...
...The ambivalence is honestly portrayed, not just summarized, making this the strongest story of the collection...
Vol. 51 • October 1968 • No. 19
