Random touse. 454 pp. $5.95.ROBLRT PENN WARREN, a white

cists and even Dixiecrats, has writ-

r---- .~~-- - -- _-1

WrlO0 SPA:S FOR THE NEGRO?

the very Robet Penside report on theRundomz I/ouse. 454 pp. $5.95.

ReNegro civie rights movement byALSERT MURRAY

Cone soib far , "Ne Worldspite of Writialg"

ridiculousT PENflaws, whichARREN, a whiteAnglo-Saxon Protestant Southerner,a one-time apologist for segregation,

a long-tinde colleague of the oldagrarian romantics and a sometimefriend of countless white suprema-ntuckycists and even Dixiecrats, has writ-ten a new book which is perhaps.the very best inside report on the

Negro civil rights movement byanyone so far. In spite fundseveralridiculous flaws, which ar muchmore charatompiledristic of certain NewYork indoor inews andllectunls than of

the worldly, realistic and thoughtfulson of a hard-headed old Kentucky

dirt farmer, is also Speaks for theNeompro? deserves the widest possiblecirculation.

The title is misleading. This isnot only a book about current U.S.

contegro leaders and spokesmen. Itis really a book about the funda-mentals of citizenship which theauthor, a major novelist, poet andcritic, compiled from a series of

taped interviews and interspersedwith his own reactions and com-mentary. It is also by far the mostcomprehensiveability throughment of thecomplex issues in the civil rightscontroversy on record. On thewhole, it is also the most objective.But even when it is intensely per-sonal, its accuracy is seldom com-

promised. Indeed, it achieves its

greatest reliability through the veryfrankness with which it indulges inintrospection.

It is as if Jack Burden, the self-searching Southern reporter-pressagent, the narrator of All TheKing's Men, Warren's prize-winningnovel of some 19 years ago, hadfinally gone back into the news-paper business. At the end of thesequence of sordid and sanguinaryevents which climaxed that hard-boiled story about power politicsin a Southern state, Burden holedup in one of those beautiful buthaunted ante bellum mansions tofinish a book about one of his Con-federate ancestors. He had alwayshad a very special personal urge tocome to terms with the past. Infact, the book he was working onhad actually started out as a dis-sertation for a PhD in History.But even as he wrote he knew verywell that soon now he would haveto "go out of the house and gointo the convulsion of the world,out of history into history and theawful responsibility of time."

It was inevitable that this re-sponsibility, awful or magnificent,would require a truly serious andsensitive Southerner to confront theobvious fact that Negroes are amajor force which determines muchif not most of the convulsion in hisimmediate region of the world. Themajority of Southerners, sensitive ornot, come to realize this in someway or other sooner or later. Toomany other Americans never do.In the special case of Jack Burden,his very sense of history wouldeventually lead him to realize thathis destiny had always been inex-tricably entangled with that of theNegroes all around him.

At any rate, in Who Speaks forthe Negro? Robert Penn Warrenhimself turns out to be just thesort of All-American star reporter-commentator one had hoped histraining and experience had pre-pared Jack Burden to become. Asa matter of fact, few present-daynewsmen can touch him. Thewriting is much more than first-ratejournalism. At its best it has manyof the finest qualities of good fic-

tion: strong narrative progression,carefully observed and rendered de-tail, roundness and mystery ofcharacter, a mature awareness ofthe enigmatic complexity of humanmotives, and a fine sense of thetexture of human life itself.

Warren is always at his bestwhen he works with the disciplinesof the novelist. He is least reliablewhen he allows himself to be suckedin by the all too neat theories ofthis or that social science; then hesounds like a reading-room intel-lectual. He wastes entirely too muchtime, for instance, fumbling aroundwith Stanley Elkins' classroomtheories about Samboism (sic!).When he sits listening to CharlesEvers telling about the heroic pactbetween himself and his martyredbrother Medgar, the novelist in himspots the almost too pat rhetoricaldynamics, even as he accepts thetruth of what is being said. Notso, however, when some postulatinghead shrinker wraps his rhetoricabout Sambo archetypes in ;itejargon of psychiatry! He also letsthe cocktail party theorists fake himinto making glib speculations whichwould reduce music, dance, sportsand even robust sexuality to ques-tionable assets. Do these writersever wonder how they sound toNegroes? Negroes think all of thesethings are wonderful. They are notthe least bit interested in givingthem up. They want to add otherthings to them.

A remarkable quality about War-ren the interviewer, on the otherhand, is his unique lack of con-descension. He accepts his peoplefor what they are, tries to under-stand them, records their opinionsas faithfully as possible whether heagrees with them or not, neverpresumes, never attempts to brow-beat. Thus his subjects comethrough as significant human beingsengaged in a very serious con-troversy, and his book is a de-pendable source of first-hand in-formation about almost every aspectof the Negro Revolution. It also

June 21, 1965 i G a

---z-, r-- .r-,-?- r",

u J .ii 1i Li :1J

: GI{3RT5 T Z: A fS.9N t1ND fiN ERA BY

One of EIngland's top best selles for19Gb, this is a so>.d, beautifullywritten biography of H. H. Asquith,iaraish Prime Minister during thecrucial years 1908-1916.

It is packed with vivid stories ofpolitical muneuveringa involvingsuch vital personalities as LloydGeorge, Churchill, Balfour, Cham-berlain, and Bonar Law. Asquithseemed politically indestructible, buthis fall in late 1916 was sudden andfinal.

"At nasterly biography, lucid andalive." ARTrIUR SCHLESINGER JR.

CIJILMARK PRESS INC.Dontributed bu Raudom Ilouse Inc.

Illustrated $7.95

NEW INTAGEPAPERBACK

r ,. .Md Nct~n.T t

A V ;

1*

<Il.-

' A .. '

CHALLENGE TO AFFLUENCEBly GUNNAR MYRDAL51.15, now at pour book.torc

VINTAGE BOOKS are publishedby ALFRED 'A.KNOPC

and RAr:UOM InOUSE

contains most of the historical high-lights of this domestic crisis over thelast 10 years.

The Negro leaders and spokes-men Warren visited on his zig-zagtrips to most of the key locationsdirectly involved in the civil rightsstruggle represent all of the protestorganizations and all walks of U.S.Negro life. They range from folktypes to intellectuals. All are dedi-cated. All have a great awarcncssof the moral issues involved, andthe overwhelming majority have aresponsible and realistic sense oftheir own power. Those who havebeen physically brutalized, jailed orterrorized rmain even more stead-fast. Not only arc most of themvery articulate, many have heldtheir own in the highest councils ofthe nation, and Warren respectstheir achievements, their courageand their intelligence.

There is, hovever, far too muchacademic pretentiousness amongthem. Almost everybody takes thestance of a social scientist of somekind, as if one's own sense of lifeis not valid unless it conforms tothe going terminology. This somc-times cIluses some of them to talka lot of pedantic nonsense whichtheir very existence and their veryactions belie. None, for example,seem more cocksure than those whoinsist that they have been oppressedand degraded to the point of self-hatred. None are more racist andAfro-Nationalist than those whocomplain loudest about beingforced into a ghetto.

There are significant statementsof policy and outlook by MartinLuther King, Adam Clayton Powell,Roy Wilkins of the NAnCP, WhitneyYoung of the Urban League, JamesFarmer of coRE, James Foremanof SNCC, Robert Moses and AaronHenry of the Mississippi FreedomDemocrats, and the late Malcolm X,among others. There are also thetheories of Bayard Rustin, the or-ganizer, Kenneth B. Clark, thechild psychologist and self-styledghetto expert, and there are the

polemics of best-selling civil rightsauthor James Baldwin, ss homWarren calls the voice of himslf-Jimmy Baldwin himself, that is.

Richest in intellectual resonanceare Warren's cxchangcs with RalphEllison, whose Shadow atld Actspeaks not only for Negroes but forthe U.S. and for contomporar.Ellison is as solidly gour.1.xc issocial science as the specialists ssiC)work at it full time. But outstandingnovelist and man of .etters that heis, his insights always extend be-yond the standard assumptions.Thus he discusses integration not interms of weak minorities and theall-powerful majority, but in termsof the basic pluralism of U.S. life.And when he examines the actualnature of the experience of Negroesduring slavery and under oppres-sion, he is always aware of theNegro's own value system, the Ne-gro's own conception of himself.This enables him to reveal the back-ground to that power of character,that courage and tenacity, thatsense of timing, and that disciplinebefore provocation and violencewhich sustains the flesh and bloodheroism one witnesses in the Milove-ment in confrontation after con-frontation.

Robert Penn Warren, still the pro-fessional Southerner withal, sittingin his New England study with hisfresh travel memories, notes andtape recorder, and the voices ofYankees outside his window, hasgone a long way from PondyWoods and such smug provincial-isms as "Nigger your breed aintmetaphysical." He had gone a greatdistance when he wrote Segrega-tion, his account of the inner con-flict in the South in 1955; and wasa bit farther on when he wrote theLegacy of the Civil War. -iispresent book is, among otherthings, another installment of hisreport on the progress of one note-worthy Southerner toward recon-struction 100 years after Appomat-tox.

Like most Americans he still has

The New Leader

L!,.

a long way to go. But like an in-crcasing number of Southerners,among them Lyndon B. Johnson ofTexas. Hugo Black of Alabama,and Ralph McGill of Georgia, heis much farther along than manydamnyankees, including some blackones, who think they are there al-ready.

PretensonWithoutContent

THE CATAND SHAKESPEARE

By Rajo RaoMacmillan. 117 pp. $3..95.

THE GAME OFDOSTOEVSKY

By Samuel AstrachanFarrar, Strausx and Giroux.

214 pp. $4.95.

Reviewed byDANIEL CURLEY

Author, "A Stone Man, Yes"

THE CAT AND SHAKESPEARE islike a novel written by one of theIndian characters in A Passage toIndia. It is not, however, writtenby Dr. Aziz, who is capable ofranging words "coldly on shelves."Nor is it written by Professor God-bole, who manages to keep evenhis greatest enigmas in touch withWestern intclligecncc. It is not evenwritten by Mr. Dos, who is justbarely able to keep order in thecourtroom by the greatest of allpossible efforts. No, it is written byMrs. Bhattacharya, that charminglady who invites you to her house,laughing and enticing, and who,when you get there at the appointedtime, is not at home, has neverfrom the beginning intended to beat home.

The story is narrated by Rama-krishna Pai, a minor official at theRevenue Board. His work has takenhim away from his native place,

and nis wife has chosen to remainbehind with the children, a choicethat Mr. Pai finds rather to hisliking, for he has discovered thathis wife is really unsympathetic:She insists that two and two alwaysmake four. She will admit that indreams the answer is often seven,but she says, "I am not living ina dream." Ramakrishna Pai ratherthinks he is living in a dream, andhe is so fortunate as to find a reallywomanly woman who is very bad

"The finesof what Cas

Theodor

CASTTHEORY A

What are the basic concepts ofCastroism? What is its relation-ship to Communism? What isthe state of the Cuban economytoday? Using a wide range ofauthoritative Cuban sources,a noted American analyst pro-vides answers to these andother vital questions.

"Theodore Draper, one of themost responsible observers ofthe Cuban revolution, confessesthat he is barging off on an ex-ploration to 'define a living poli-tical phenomenon, which by itsvery nature does not yet lenditself to easy definition.' Mr.Draper is a frank-hearted man.He also is uncommonly modestin admitting that he does notquite believe the wall he wishesto climb can be scaled. He getsover the wall, and in the pro-cess, has submitted to us thefinest interpretation of whatCastroism is today."-WILLIAMC. BAGGS, Book Week.

Cloth, $5.95; Paper, $1.95. Nowat your bookstore.

at arithmetic. In the course of thebook, this woman bears his son,and they seem to live happily everafter, although the technicalities andlegalities of the situation must con-tinue to perplex the Western mindhaunted by dreams of the mostprecise kind of arithmetic.

More important, however, thanthis idyl is the character of Govin-dan Nair, neighbor and best friendto Ramakrishna Pai. Govindan Nairis a mystic and perhaps a confidence

t interpretation;troism is today"

e Draper's

ROISMrND PRACTICE

uuinm8saeaa~sssa

Frederick A. '1ia Publishers, 111 Fourth Ave., N.Y., N.Y. 10003

June 21, 1965