Man Bites Cow

...For instance, why would an uneducated farmer bandy words like "prologue," "aberration" and "Sisyphus...

...If this is not truly terrible prose, it is certainly wholly inappropriate to Newfield's character...

...When Goldberg turns to human beings, however, the contrast is painful...

...That all of Newfield's memorable qualities are imparted to us in New-field's memorable voice raises some interesting questions...

...His otherwise slangy talk is heavily interlarded with all sorts of tropes, too: Where any other farmer would say "trees," Newfield says, "on the right a stand of silver maples bare-boughed and twiggy against a seamless blue sky...

...Trying to demonstrate that his characters are shallow, he merely makes them flat...

...New-field, a physical and psychological colossus, sets them cowering--making no attempt to conceal his disgust--and goes on about his business...

...Both Newfields are characterized immediately...

...After making allowances for that tiny handful of questionable qualities I've been branded with behind my back: Newfield's niggardliness, his temper, his atheism, his silence...

...In the same way he is relatively successful at suggesting the bleak, frozen beauty of winter in Vermont...

...Newfield seems to think his view of mankind constitutes a fierce skepticism, while in fact the New-field-Goldberg view of people is simply jaundiced...

...Orin, who is eating six eggs when we first meet him, is the sort of fellow who inspires a lot of adjectives--robust, vigorous, misanthropic, overbearing, etc...

...Orin, a Vermont dairy farmer, breakfasts with his wife, Alma, before turning to the demanding chores that await him outside...

...in the mouth of Newfield and the context of Farnum it is derivative and self-indulgent affectation...

...There is nothing counterfeit about Goldberg's description of farm equipment--tractors, lime spreaders, balers--or farm animals...

...The question, ladies and gentlemen, then is this...

...At this point Gerald Jay Goldberg, who relates the preceding events through Newfield's voice, has said everything he has to say...

...And since it would be very much in keeping with the tenor of Goldberg's book to avoid subtlety, let us hint that among the authors in question, one wrote "A Modest Proposal...

...These people--the storekeeper, the school janitor, New-field's hired hand, a local laborer--are irredeemably petty, small-minded, cowardly, and lazy...

...One hopes John Wayne's agent has been sent a copy of the book...

...The hired hand's face gets the same treatment: "The creases in his face deepened and his eyebrows were tents under which his eyes seemed to be hiding out, trying to keep dry...

...Before the end of the book, New-field roughs up his loutish hired hand, is tried and acquitted on a charge of battery (despite a conspiracy of the townsfolk to get him convicted), and becomes the object of a venomous plot: The townspeople deny Newfield's identity, attempting to blot out his existence altogether...

...Irascible and bearish, he is also honest and sincere: ". . . all I ever wanted was to lead a clean, simple life and be a good man...

...Alma is a weak, watery personality with a frail body and self-effacing manner...

...His novel suggests which writers he has been concentrating on in his classes...

...Apparently Goldberg, tired of the realistic mode, opted here for Pinteresque symbolism (or something resembling it...

...His hero is one of those "rugged individualists" who defies all societal taboos, is contemptuous of men in the swarm and prides himself on his awesome self-reliance...

...The reader will profit from close attention to Goldberg's first two chapters, because having done so, it will not be necessary for him to read any further...

...Once in town (Chapter Two), he buys a mouse trap at the general store and encounters exhibits A, B, C, and D in his case against humanity...

...How is it possible for a right-thinking citizen to avoid knocking up against the mob's cunning pieties . . . ?" Hypocrisy is Newfield's great bete noire and he stabs away at it ad nauseam...

...In a Swiftian mood, Newfield announces his preference for cows over people, but it is an unnecessary distinction...

...Goldberg's sprinkling of such Joycean compounds as "nogginnote," "doom-room" and "greatthroat" is neither style nor homage...

...Even putting plausibility aside, the gimmick has seen better days...

...Of course, they hate him not only for his nonconformity but for his candor, his probity...

...A good deal more color is thrown on the canvas, but the figures never take on any greater clarity or depth...

...trying to show they have no backbone, he practically makes them invertebrates...

...Reviewed by Robert F. Moss Department of English, Hunter College Gerald Jay Goldberg is identified on the dust jacket of The Lynching of Orin Newfield as a professor of English at the University of California at Los Angeles...

...The clash between society and the individual: Goldberg climbs on this tired hobby horse right at the beginning and never dismounts...

...most of the people in this novel are no more animated than Holsteins...

...A loner, Orin Newfield has remained aloof from all ties and alliances in the community of Farnum, while prospering through his industry and perseverance...

...being an atheist, he is indifferent to the fact that it is Christmas Day...

...Early on Newfield makes an admission that is far more telling about his creator: "I've always said it, Newfield, you're better with things than people...

...another...

...Adding a little more variety, Goldberg shifts abruptly to melodrama for his windup--Newfield commits suicide after planting evidence that is certain to make his enemies in Farnum look like murderers...

...The townsfolk do not properly exist apart from the few small-time vices Goldberg allots them...

...Driving into town to buy his wife a mouse trap, he reflects on the worthlessness of the human animal ("Most people aren't worth a damn") and reveals his deep feeling for nature and wildlife...

...Ulysses...

...The literary showmanship in no way redeems Goldberg's failure to breathe life into his plot and his characters...

...I'm not a joiner," Newfield tells us, and appraises his relationship with Farnum as follows: "Can't leave you alone when you're living and, as for dying, no doubt they'll all want to have a hand in seeing me off...