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The
Viio nJ
The Unicorn Girl, by Caroline Glyn
Coward-McCann. $4.00.
Blessed are the pure in heart,
among which must be numbered
Fullie, the heroine and narrator of
Caroline Glyn's third novel, The
Unicorn Girl. Fullie f i n d s it
necessary to remind her teacher,
...I am a virgin, the right kind of
virgin and in the right ways. There
aren't so many like me nowadays."
Although she is aware of the heart's
darker portions, Fullie is determin-
ed to struggle against them, and she
manages to win at least a partial
victory. She manages to form a ten-
tative rapprochement between the
demands of the world and the fanta-
sies of her own inner vision-no
mean trick.
Fullie is thirteen and an unwill-
ing Girl Guide. She is also a "uni-
corn girl," believing that she is con-
stantly chaperoned by a unicorn
whose presence keep her apart
from other humans, whose presence
keeps her lonely. There are consola-
tions:
Sometimes I've thought that
being blind wouldn't matter so
much, because all the most inter-
esting things I've seen seemed to
be inside my head as it were, not
seen with my eyes at all.
Nevertheless, at the beginning of
the novel she is pulled back towards
humankind after a frighteningly
complete withdrawal into woodmag-
ic fantasy. She decides to go to Girl
Guide summer camp to be with oth-
er people despite the fact that she is
too fat to stalk properly, too self-
absorbed to follow regulations and
too sensible to treat Guide camp
with appropriate reverence.
At camp Fullie is forced to un-
derstand other people, and she
learns to help them and make
friends. Becoming more compassion-
ate, she becomes able to laugh at
herself. She retains her special vi-
sion, but she is within the world
nonetheless.
Fullie narrates her story with ad-
mirable balance. She is serious --
indeed, as she notes, she cares al-
most too much. Yet she does not ob-
scure the edge of her humor. We
ae given honest glimpses of the
bumbling chaos of summer camp,
the tragi-comic crises of adoles-
eence, the little absurdities of
everyday life.
Presently Miss Hick came in,
trying to look maternal and con-
cerned. (But I had overheard the
speech she had just made to the
rest of the company, a really nasty
speech about discipline and cleanli-
ness.).. .She wasn't too worried
about the state of my health. Girls
at school did this the whole time --
rushing out of the classroom, chok-
ing, and having to be supported to
the rest room.
The style of narration is plain,
clear, clean - its reasonableness
adds to the tone of balance that
generally restrains a subject easily
swept into hyperbole and sentimen-
tality. Although there are large por-
tions of the book that seem to go
nowhere, they pass nicely enough
and with a certain charm, like aim-
lessly watching children at play.
Miss Glyn, only nineteen herself,
has not written a "great novel," nor
made any pretense of doing so - a
fact itself refreshing. Instead, with
a careful eye and good humor, she
has written a fine minor novel.
Creating only one real character,
Fullie, a strangely believable mix-
ture of pure honesty and pure naiv-
ete, Miss Glyn has examined a sub-
ject almost inherently pretentious
in a market glutted with examina-
tions of youth. She has, however,
managed to remain almost as pure
as her heroine.
The
Global
Containment and Change, by Carl
Oglesby and Richard Shaull. The
Macmillan Co. $1.45.
This is definitely one book that
should not be judged by its cover.
The cover is revolting, the contents
compelling. The first part is "Viet-
namese Crucible: An Essay on the
Meanings of the Cold War" by Og-
lesby and the second is Shaull's
"Revolution: Heritage and Contem-
porary Option."
Oglesby's extremely readable es-
say is wide-ranging. It covers many
areas of U. S. foreign policy, and
develops an overview which is firm-
ly grounded in facts and statistics.
It is one of the few accounts of Viet-
nam which places that small coun-
try in a larger perspective. One ma-
jor thrust of the essay is its denial
that Vietnam is an accident, a devia-
tion from our normally sane foreign
policy.
Both essays confront the peace
movement in this country, head on.
It's not enough to ask for peace in
Vietnam, to plead for negotiations;
we must go to the root cause of our
involvement in that devastated
country. For Oglesby the explana-
tion is an historical one, a long rec-
ord of U.S. economic expansion and
domination. Consequently, he be-
lieves, even if we get out of Viet-
nam it will not be long before we
intervene in Thailand, Venezuela,
Guatemala and any other country
which has the arrogance to build an
indigenous guerrilla movement to
fight for national independence.
Oglesby's first task is to break
through the Administration's rheto-
ric. The superficial justifications
are presented and refuted so that
the air may be cleared. "We are le-
gally obligated to fight. We are re-
sponding to an emergency from the
Vietnamese people. Our global rep-
utation is at stake. We are resist-
ing an invasion because a) the NLF
Is the political creature of North
Vietnam, and b) North Vietnamese
troops are fighting in the South. If
we fail to contain them here, we
shall have to contain them some-
place else." Oglesby's reply to each
of these positions is convincing and
adequate, but much more could be
said by way of documentation.
Oglesby moves on to an analysis
of the Cold War and what it means
to play by the rules of the game.
Each contestant must accept certain
propositions as given: global war is
not the means to gain one's objec-
tives; a global truce line must be
drawn. It is through this process of
demarcating that the contestants
become familiar with each other
and begin to communicate their at-
titudes. The pay-off for following
the rules is that common interests,
which latently existed before,
(Cntinved en page ei h
Black Skin, White Mdsks, by Frantz
Fanon. Grove Press. $5.00.
The explosion will not happen to-
day. It is too soon.. .or too late.
I do not come with timeless
truths.
My consciousness is not illumi-
nated with ultimate radiances.
Nevertheless, in complete compo-
sure, I think it would be good if
certain things were said.
Fanon's message, hardly a novel
one, is that in order to discover his
own identity, his own role in the
world, the Negro must surmount
his drives to be white. In an investi-
gation founded on the best psycho-
logical technique, he explores the
consequences ofnwhite domination,
both actual, as in his native Marti-
nique, and effective, as in France.
While Fanon claims acute delibera-
tion, and penetrated study of the
subject, the tone of the book is of-
ten confusingly emotional.
The author's main concern is Ne-
gro-white relations and the alleged
inferiority of the black man. For
those who argue that the black is a
human being of the second order
because of real genetic defects or at
least differences, he describes the
particular brand of racism found in
his home town of Antilles. Here the
dark-skinned natives have been
speaking French for so long that
they consider themselves culturally
as well as politically French. Be-
yond that, they have ceased to view
themselves as Negroes at all. The
savage Sengalese soldier, he's a real
black. An Antillean has "risen
above" his Negro heritage and fan-
cies himself part of the white hier-
archy.
Yet the citizens have not lost a
sense of racial inferiority. A
black-a Sengalese, says-is still
less than perfect. Whiteness is puri-
ty, it is everything good, accepted,
superior. In developing this idea
Fanon examines the relationship
between a Negro woman and a
white man, and conversely, between
a white woman and a Negro man.
He maintains that both types are of-
ten manifestations of the Negro's
desire to achieve superiority over
his own. He is cleansing himself of
his blackness and entering the
white domain. On the other hand,
the white sees himself as traitorous
and his situation degrading.
By means of various psycholog-
ical tricks, Fanon demonstrates the
almost imperceptible but ever
present prejudice of white people,
and shows how this prejudice is
transferred to the blacks.
Over three or four years I ques-
tioned some 500 members of the
white race-French, German, Eng-
lish, Italian. I took advantage of a
certain air of trust, of relaxation;
In each instance I waited until my
subject no longer hesitated to talk
to me quite openly-that is, until he
was sure that he would not offend
me. Or else, in the midst of asso-
iational tests, I inserted the word
Negro among some twenty others.
Almost 60 per cent of the replies
took this form:
Nego brought forth biology, pen-
is, strong, athletic, potent, boxer,
Joe Louis, Jesse Owens, Sengalese
troops, savage, animal, devil, sin.
The underlying assumptions im-
plied in a remark such as "My Ne-
gro friend has a university degree"
are far more significant than the ac-
tual statement. And it is in this en-
vironment that the Negro himself is
socialized. For him the easiest es-
cape is to become white. But what-
ever his personal plan of action,
whether conscious or unconscious,
his blackness is always outstanding
in his relations with his white fel-
lows. He is not allowed to whiten
even his soul.
The history of the Negro is of lit-
tle consequence to Fanon. Digging
up the past does nothing to mold or
advance the social revolution occur-
ring now. Moreover, he states that
Negroes' history will never be of im-
portance if they continue in this
pattern of "whitening" themselves.
It is imperative for Negroes to
search out their real identity and
reject the white man's ill-fitting
comparisons.
To assert himself the Negro must
be a true revolutionary. He must al-
ienate himself from middle-class so-
ciety, which has become "rigidified
in predetermined forms, forbidding
all evolution, all gains, all progress,
all discovery" and in which "ideas
and men are corrupt." Only when
he is free from all-pervading white
prejudice can he accurately per-
ceive the meaning of his existence.
One of the problems of Fanon's
Fanon the Flames of Discontenzi
style in Black Skin, White Masks is
that, contrary to his promise in the
opening lines of the introduction,
he fails to deliver his arguments "in
complete composure." While he
does avoid the sheer pedantry that
could come from a psychologist giv-
ing a scientific explanation of social
phenomena, his long stream-
of-consciousness monologues be-
speak more "soul" than sociology.
One expects, even looks forward to
passages like "As we have seen, on
examination Jean Veneuse displays
the structure of an abandonment-
neurotic of the negative-aggressive
type." Psychology is the man's busi-
ness, and what is jargon to some, is
to others technical language that in-
dicates a diagnosis and implies a
cure.
The final passages of the book
say as much about the author as his
ideas, and perhaps give some indi-
cation of the true spirit in which
the work was offered:
Superiority? Inferiority?
Why not the quite simple attempt
to touch the other, to feel the other,
to explain the other to myself?
Was my freedom not given to me
then in order to build the world of
the You!
At the conclusion of this study, I
want the world to recognize with
me, the open door of every con-
sciousness.
Regina Widmann
Miss Widmann is a second-year student
at DePaul University.
The
C
The
Jour
The
Mod
Pers
a
fThe
Te c
The
The
E
ALL
HOW MANY TIMES HAVE YOU-
0 Smiled at someone Complimented some- Agreed w it h your
you totally dislike but one on their good taste boss when you thought
whe yu raly touhthe was wrong just to
don't want to offend? when you really thought make a good impres-
it was terrible? sion?
Started an argument Avoided an
you knew you could ment you k n e
win? could not win?
argu- UComplained a b o u t
w you your financial situation
in order to appear a
martyr?
Jeff Schntzer
An affirmative answer to any
of these may qualify you for
the title of MANIPULATOR.
Mr. Schnitzer is a fourth-year student
majoring in American Civilization at
Brandeis University.
*1
HEARTLAND is a collection of poems by twenty-
nine living writers associated with the midwest.
Their works reveal different outlooks and are
wrjtteain a variety of styles, ranging from such
traditional forms as the sonnet to contemporary
'experiments. While some of the writers are very
well-known, others are emerging as important
members of a new generation of poets. The editor
of HEARTLAND, himself an acclaimed poet and
author, states in the Introduction: ".. . When.
choosing poems for this volume I was interested
mnot so much in the true midland voice, whatever
that might be, but in the chorus that a structured
variety of voices forms, Put simply, without any
particular Aesthetic in mind, I searched for-and
feel that I found in abundance-good poems set
in the midwest. I wanted especially to avoid the
buckshot approach, single poems by numerous
poets resulting in chaos.... Another factor In
my selection was that I wanted the book to
have something like an urban-rural balance, and
with that in mind a few poets were left out simply
because their work would have tipped that bal-
ance." He concludes: "The vision of the mid-
west provided by the poems in this book, frag-
mented as it must be in our time, is perhaps
Imperfect, but it .Is no mirage. It is of a. real
place, and real poets offrit."
300 pp.. 6.50
HEARTLAND
P'oets of the M dwest
Selected and with Introduction
by Lucien Stryk
ROBERT SLY *GWENDOLYK BROOKS
rAUL CARROLL . R X. CUSCADEN
BRUCE CUTLER FREDERICK ECKMAN
PAUL ENGLE e DAVE RTrMt
ISABELLA GARDNER * JAMES HEARST-
ROBERT HUFF JOHN KNOEPFLS
JOSEPH LANGLAND * JOHN LOGANC
THOMAS MCGRAX * PARM MAYER
LISEL MUELLER JOHN 7.lUMS
MARY OLIVER * B~LIER OLSON
RAYMOND ROSELIEP DENNIS SCHM*Z
XARL SHAPIRO * WILLIAM STAPFORD
ROBERT SWARD * JAMES TATZ
CHAD WALSH . JOHN WOODS
AMES WIIGIW
By EVERETT L. SHOSTROM
Each of us is to some degree, consciously
or subconsciously, a manipulator. By play-
ing little games with each other, by taking
advantage of all the devices and tricks we
have absorbed during our lives, we are
able to conceal our true nature behind a
variety of masks. The price for these ma-
nipulations is often paid in terms of bore-
dom, anxiety, hostility, and side-effects re-
sulting in an unsatisfying life. In this high-
ly practical self-help book of psychology,
Dr. Shostrom, Director of the Institute of
Therapeutic Psychology, Santa Ana,
California, makes a thorough study of
the "how" and "why" of manipulation
in today's society. He goes beyond a
mere description of the situation by us-
ing first-person case studies and ex- jfl
amples from typical life situations to
offer concrete help in
moving toward a bal-
anced, constructive, and
realistic life. 256 pages
$4.95-
At your local bookstore
ABINGDON PRESS
NAME
ADDRESS
Ce rtif;
.nam(
(profes.
NORTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY PRESS * Dotalh
TE
Jun, 1967 "MIDW9ST L17
. ...MIDWEST LITERARY RLVIEW *'June, 1967