a.
Sunday, November 6, 1955
THE MICHIGAN DAILY
Page Nineteen
This Novel Will Remain
I
(Continued from Page 14) shoots Ray, and departs. ThisI
scene is on a par, both as to its1
Violation of secrets. Adultery, meaningless and credibility, with
violence and murder without ap- the "acte gratuit" of Gide.
parent motivation are mirroredt
before the reader's eyes.f
Yet the reader does not ques- Simple, Unforgettable I
tion the validity of the writer's]
tion. For this is more than People
g. It is literature. And. in WILDERNESS, once inhabited,
strange hinterland between A s DhESS a on abied,
ruth and fiction there is always has the tential of a neigh-
Ithe god-awful chasm of knowing. borhood. The home that Stan,
FStan and Amy emerge from Amy and the nameless dog carved
ewly-weds to aged people in this among the peppermints, stringy-
noel. y saedpson ledmath-sbarks and turpentines eventually
*novel. They have a son and daugh- became just another house along
ter who grow up, become young the road, known to the new -
adults themselves, and leave the pheras"kers."tAnws e
warm. The Amy Parker who finally ple as "Parkers." And it is the
Watches her husband in the throes neighbors, especially the female
of death has imperceptably be- ones, with whom the author brings
Nome an old woman. And their off some of his very finest char-
story moves as life moves, in the th i
slow unnoticed rhythm. Mr. White There is Mrs. Gage, the post-
it a connoisseur o time, mistress, afflicted with a husband
And, if not a connoisseur of who is queer enough to get down
women, he at least knows these on his knees and study ants, and
baffling, enchanting creatures bet- who further exhibits his eccentri-
ter than most men ever will. This city by painting pictures of dead
is an author who has the knack of trees, Jesus Christ and naked
crawling into a woman's mind and women in oils. Only after his death
s'fting her dreams in the fashion when the pictures were sold for a
of God eavesdropping between the neat 'sum does Mrs. Gage realize'
clotheslines on Monday morning. her husband might have been
His is the subtlity of interpreting worth something after all.
ti7 dream without making it pub- Then, too, among the neighbors,'
i property. Each reader feels that there was Doll Quigley and her
8-and he alone-shares Amy brother Bub. "His child's face on a
Parker's secrets. young man's body-He was ob-
But the most baffling of all the viously good-He had to be taken
facets of Mr. White's technique and poured from here to there, and
is his method of involving charac- contained by other people, usually
trs in incidents that are incred- the will of his sister Doll."
'bly devoid of motivation, yet end But the one unforgettable neigh-
P both valid and believable, bor of Amy's was the Irrepressible
One of these incidents involves Mrs. O'Dowd. Some very fine hu-,
0, the traveling salesman. Leo, mor comes out of this relationship.
a married man, stops by the Parker The nasty little digs that she and
house one summer's day when Amy poke at each other in the
tan is away and the middle aged name of friendship are a tribute
sMy is sitting on the porch. to what men like to term "female
Instead of selling dresses, as he cattiness," and causes the reader
ad planned, Leo soon finds him- to wonder if friendship among
elf in the boudoir with an un- some women is not more for the
ressed Amy. The reader is not purpose of polishing well concealed
eft doubting, though, that adul- fangs than the pleasure of any
ery-even among strangers-can intimacy involved.
ccomplished quite simply in a But, in the irony of women's
rc- Jifteen minutes. The only ways, it is Amy who sits by the bed
creature more enigmatic than a and holds Mrs. O'Dowd's hand in
un an being, the writer makes his the final moments of life.
eader believe, is that human be-
g's brother and sister.
The height of this particular The Character of Mal
irage of Mr. White's talent is
till to be reached, however, in the THE NEIGHBORS who observed
urder of Ray, the Parker's neer- Stan Parker from the road, as
o-well son, at a brothel party. A he worked with his honest tool,
trange character enters the room, never really came to know him.
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Even Amy, his wife, knew him but
little better.
It was Amy, though-and Amy
alone-who suspected the sensi-
tivity beneath his almost wooden
features. She had fear, not ad-
miration, for the buried poet in
him-the interred ghost that could
never speak and make thoughts
beautiful with the music of words.
Stan Parker was a self-contained
man and, as such, was a mirror for
Amy's weaknesses. In trying to
submerge him within herself --
something in which she never suc-
ceeded - Amy was merely en-
deavoring to eradicate the imagery
of her own lack of strength and
honesty.
Amy, in endeavoring to fulfill
her needs by controlling and pos-
sessing her family, lost a son and
never really found a husband. Ray
escaped and became lost rather
than return to the imprisonment
that he found in his mother's
home. Thelma, the daughter of
the family, traded home for a not
too rewarding marriage. Stan,
made of stronger stuff than his son
and daughter, neither escaped nor
suffocated. He survived Amy for a
natural death
Self-contained people are awe-
some because they can afford to be
honest, both with themselves and
with others. They are below con-
formity and above sham. Amy
rubbed off on her husband, but
never blended. And the reader will
always wonder, as much as Amy
did, just what Stan really thought
of this wife who was greedy for
his love.
Stan Parker was a good man. It
was he who tried to help Ray, his
punk-gangster son, when Ray was buried and resurrected. The grand-
in trouble. He it was, too, who took son, Ray's boy, still lives. And life
the time to visit the prostitute, goes on.
Lola, after Ray had been shot in "The scraggy boy, who has
her company. One feels that Lola grown too long for his pants and
would have said what she had to for the arms of his coat, has come
say only to a man of understand- down from the house of death be-
ing and kindness. And Lola's con- cause he cannot stand it any
fiding of her wounded heart to him longer. Well, his grandfather is
was perhaps the greatest tribute dead-
this simple farmer was ever paid. "What could he do?-
"How long then, did you know "He would write a poem, he said,
Ray?" Stan asked. dragging his head from side to
"All my life," she said with cer- side in the sand, but not yet, and
tainty. "I knew Ray in one body what?--
or another. Sometimes I would "It would have the smell of
look into his eyes and try to see bread, and the rather gray wis-
what else there was, but I never dom of youth, and his grand-
succeeded. And when he died, I mother's kumquats, and girls with
was holding that body up, which yellow plaits exchanging love-talk
was not so different, after all, only behind their hands, and the blood
heavier than a man who has taken thumping like a drum, and red
all he wants, they sleep then." apples and a little wisp of white
LONG BEFORE Stan's death his cloud that will swell into a horse
wilderness had disappeared. He and trample the whole sky once it
was still lost, but seaching-grop- gets the wind inside it."
ing in the maze of the jungle of Patrick White, as an author,
the soul. Sitting by the path in his made the following direct state-
yard facing the mystery of eternity ment regarding the two strangers,
these are the words, finally, with Stan and Amy Parker, in the bed-
which Stan Parker sums up a life room of a crude, wilderness but on
already spent and ending: their wedding night: "Flesh is
I believe, he said, in the cracks heroic in the moonlight."
in the path. On which ants were But between the printed lines of
massing, struggling up over an his book there is an even greater
escarpment. But struggling. But documentary of the men and
joyful. So much so, he was trem- women who are forever seeking
bling. The sky was blurred now. something in nothingness. "The
As he stood waiting for the flesh Tree Of Man" is a testament to
to be loosened on him, he prayed the indomitability of the human
for greater clarity, and it be- spirit-in the sparkling moments
came obvious as a hand. It was of life-and the face of the gray,
clear that One, and no other murky darkness of death. And this
figure, is the answer to all sums. book may last so long as the mes-
Stan Parker dies. And with his sage and people and libraries re-
death "The Tree Of Man" is both 'main.
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