Page Twelve TE RSPECTI VES BOOKS IN SEASON Sergeant Lamb's America Robert Graves Random House Oliver Wiswell Kenneth Roberts Doubleday, Doran & Co. Since the American Revolution, few novelists have attempted to do anything about the Tory point of view in that con- flict. The Guns of Burgoyne represents one effort along this line, an effort. however, which missed. But recently two successful novels, botltf holding a brief for the British side, were offered the public. Kennth Roberts has added another volume to his formidable col- lection of Americana with his latest. Oliver Wiswell, and the English author, Robert Graves, has'temporarily desert- ed his ancient Rome, and writings of the I, Claudius genre, to have a go at Sergeant Lamb's America, and the sol- dier philosophy of the good non-com himself. Those who' have followed Roberts up and down east coast warpaths and in and out- of her colonial barracks, bi- voaucs and meeting houses will have no difficulty in realizing that America's most vigorously truth-sleuthing histor- cral novelist has done a complete about- race with espionage-agent Wiswell. Heretofore Mr. Roberts' protagonists and supporting heros have been drawn from the ranks of our revolutionary forbears who, under the pen of their delineator and animator, could do, little, f any wrong, were struggling for the noblest ends and were, all in all, models f what so fondly our D.A.R. hail. But after a look at Oliver Wiswell, one ser- tirnsly wonders what the revolutionary daughters think of their dirty necked progenitors now. Through Wiswell, Rob- erts offers a picture of the conflict not as a glorious Revolution, but as a mean and unbeautiful civil war. Wiswell is a gentleman of firmness and vision. To him, the rebels are little better than the dregs of humanity and their leaders, by and large, but slightly elevated above that status. He looks upon the pack of them as a cowardly, undisciplined mob. At the same time, he does not lose sight of the fact that things might be very much better in the ranks of the red- coats. As a capable under-cover man, he is driven to near despair over the dilly- dallying of the British command; he is indignant at the general ineptness and corruptness of the English regulars; he has no use for Howe's picnic attitude towards the campaign, would prefer to see the general more frequently sans mistress, and suspects that the man gives but small damn whether or not the British win the war. But through- out the book, he views the struggle as a civil issue and not a revolution, and TA.R.'s will like him better for knowing that he is American Loyalist first, and that his foresight, at the close of the novel, leaves him with something of an optimistic view of the future. The book is so full of Roberts' typical vigor, drive and heated attack that the reader who likes his adventure in koda- chrome and close to home will stay with him to the end. By means of powerful description and stirring plot sequences, the continuity unfolds a tale of perpet- ual interest. Roberts' description of the peresecuted Loyalists on Long Island and of the relief of the fort at Ninety- Six rank well up with comparable ad- venture and bloody-thunder episodes from his other works. And when you lay the book down, chances are, if you've liked it in the least, you'll find yourself siding with Oliver Wiswell, American Loyalist. Graves' book is toned down to the point where it appears nearly pallid be- side its competior. And yet it is quietly and carefully written, stylistically more evenly and capably controlled than Rob- erts' volume. Sergeant Lamb is-and was, actually-- common soldier with a job to do, and this job he handles to the best of his ability. Graves drew his character from the only extant letter of the real Lamb, and on the basis of the decent subordination, upright char- acter and quiet manliness of that epistle, written to a superior officer upon re- tirement, Graves has painted a very real and very admirable man. Neither Graves nor Lamb are rabble-rousers in any sense. Lamb is an Englishman and one who respects English law and order and knows what it means in his day. He has nothiei but the good soldier's scorn for war and for the blind civilians and conniving politicians who bring war about. Through Lamb, Graves brings out the factual case for Britain much more clearly than does Roberts, and makes a solid contribution to the background of the Revolution. Every schoolboy, if I may resort to a familiar introduction. has had a chair at the Boston Tea Party, and the beverage, as concocted by benevolent and home-team historians. has cvCr been tasty. But it is to be solemsnly predicted that Graves' sound documentary writing wit upset many an elder when they read that the Stamp Art. hi ,lt;upipesedly gripped so many of the helpless in its merciless vise, actually did rot average more than a .penny per person per month, and that John tiancok. that fellow who wrote such anrrs nnisinerly large hand, was taking tnts himself a small fortune in th, t'-,edcllin game, and was sore afraid tat English tea would put hin where' he belonged-it being, tax in- cluded. slated to undersell him. Heigh ho. What were your ancestors? Lamb is a practical man who realizes that the protested revenue did not pay one third of the cost of collecting it; that what was happening to the little ther overshadows the more scholarly Graves. Not entirely, however, for Graves is a sound and careful writer who carries the conservatism and accuracy of his Roman writings over into this new field. He has taken an insignifi- cant man and around him written truth and simple intelligence into an histori- cal event too often sacrificed to the showmen. While we are condemning his seeming dullness let us give him due credit for veracity, scholarship and a very human approach to a subject which has grown, through the years, into something superhuman, if not in- human . . . Roberts, for all energy and preferances for realism, falls short of that in Oliver Wiswell. With his book, Craves has definitely moved up a peg. Roberts, though rousing. seems to me simply to have installed inner springs in his laurels. - a. Edelman My Name Is Aram William Saroyan Harcourt, Brace & Co. William Saroyan has added a new name to the list of typical American boys. Alongside the names of Tom Saw- yer, Huckleberry Finn and Penrod will be added the name of Aram garogh- lanian. You may not eh able to pro- nounce or remember the last name, but despite the fact that Arnem is of Arrmen- ian descent, ie is as t'r in American boy as the others t-ci a twentieth, century American. In "My Name Is Aram-. Saroyan has collected a group of short stories about' Aram and his family living in Cali- fornia. Saroyan himself says, "I do not pretend that the took has any plot, and I hereby give fair warning that notiing extraordinary is going to hap- pen in it." And while nothing extraord- inary does happen ti it, the short stories Saroyan tells are delightful. Aram is in every one of the stories; Reflections In a Golden Eye Carson McCullers Houghton, Mifflin Co. Last year, when The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter made its appearance, the critical world was extravagant with praise for a new talent rich in warmth and hu- manity, alive with insight into human personality and human variety. It was to this reviewer almost a definitive study of human loneliness and the need for love. This year the same critical world looks askance, and with reason, at Mrs. Mc- Culers' new production, Reflection In a GldenuEye. If it were her first novel (as some rumor has it that her publish- ers, scenting a good ting, have foisted an earlier work of tiers on the public) its critical reception would have been nil; but the shock of seeing so im- mense a talent gone so far astray has caused an inordinate amount of com- ment. There are undeniable virtues, un- common virtues. There is a psychologi- cal validity of almost clinical order, for Mrs. McCullers apparently possesses per- ceptions beyond the ken of those twice her age. Her language is always clear. clean and a delight. A curious balance has been effected between the music of her language and the dissonance of her plot. Yet the toosl is nothing so, much as literary tight-rope walking or an exer- cise in the Gothic novel with its horrors brought up to date to include frustra- tions, repressions, neuroses, homosex- uality, adultery and possibly some things the reviewef hasn't caught. Even in their roos desperate need, the characters ex- cite no sympathy, and the fault lies not in their abnormality, but in their lack of any human vestments. They are al- ready dead when we meet them. A woman tortured to death by her husrband's infidelity; an army captain who loves his wife's lovers; a Filipino servant who loves his mistress; an im- becile private who loves a horse; all of them secure or insecure in their illusions of love's being returned-these could have been materials for greatness. Yet there is no life here. We shed only those crocodile tears which we weep at the tragedy in a Punch-and-Judy. There is the author, standing in the back- ground, grinning satirically at her mis- erable phantoms, who cry in reedy voices, "But what do we do next?" It goes against the grain to have any author so play hob with human misery. Let us hope that Mrs. McCullers has been dominated only temporarily by her desire to achieve clinical reality and, in haste-or from whatever reason-has neglected the human dimension. For she has already shown us her potentiali- ties, and we can still well afford to be confident about her future work. - George Spelvin get lessons from Lionel Strongfort; his cousin who stole the horse; his cousin who was a great debater; these and all the rest of them are put together to help tell the story of Aram. They are differ- ent from anyone yet written about, and are put together by Saroyan to form a real and simple picture of this Ar- menian family in Fresno. There is no stress or strain in the writing; it flows along easily and smoothly, completely in accord with Saroyan's assertion that he did not know what was coming next as he wrote. There are some long stories, and some short stories-one no more than five pages, but in every one there is the easy, charming comedy of Aram, the kid from the Armenian colony who is as real, and as unreal, as life itself. - Bernard Dober -it JL.J ..9ttee Etta and the Greeks, by John E. Bingley ........... . .......... Page 1 A Heretic Looks at Painting, by John Maxon ... . :................Page 3 The Concert, by James Turner Jackson ........................Page 4 A Game of Solitare, by William Kehoe ........................ Page 5 Poetry .. .................. ............ Pages 6 and 7 Episodes in the Perpetration of a Dastardly Crime, by Dennis Flanagan .............. ...Page 8 Reviews .................................... .Pages 11 and 12 man in England in such holes as Man- chester and Birmingham made the lot of the griping colonists look like a day at the races. Lamb, too, is a complete Brit- isher, where Wiswell's sympathies are with the colony first. There is little glory and a great deal of work in the campaign for the honest sergeant. For those who will have it so, there is a touch of romance in Lamb's Indian marriage, and adventure in his special missions for Johnny Burgoyne and in the machinations of General Arnold. Perhaps the closest that Sergeant Lamb's America comes to the color and descriptive strength of Roberts' work is in Graves moving account of the long march to Boston by the surrendered British Army. In one sense it is regrettable that the two books appeared so nearly together, for Roberts has been writing Ameri- cana for popular American consumption for many years. He either has, or knows' what the American public likes to read about its early history. His is the uncom- promising brand of attack which ra- so there is opportunity to become well- acquainted with this new American boy. "As to whether or not the writer him- self is Aram Garoghlanian," the author says, "the writer himself cannot very well say. He will, however, say that he is not, certainly not Aram Garoghlan- ian." And so to bed. Best of all the stories is "Locomo- tive 38, the Ojibway." If it's true, it's a crazy story. If it's not true, it's a story every boy dreams will happen to him some day; and it's still a crazy story. But that's what makes this and the other such good reading: they are so real. Aram is more fun than a boy liv- ing in Fresno; he's you and I, doing the things we have done or have dreamed about doing. One of the things about all of the stories which makes them so delightful is the picture of Aram surrounded by the rest of the Garoghlanian clan. His uncle who wanted to grow pomegranate trees in a dry, arid country; his father who loved the "poor and burning Arab"; his uncle Gyko who gave him money to