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than the most general physiognomy, the most uniform speech and at–
titudes and meditations.
Perhaps most unsuccessful are the two stories of a historical flavor.
I say "flavor" but I could say "odor" or "echo" or "tinge," for the past
is no more substantial than these. In "First Love," Aaron Burr figures
as a troubled, debonair shape in a black cloak, but there are no facts to
convince one that this is really Aaron Burr and not another man of the
same name with no discernible characteristics to distinguish him from
the table at which he sits. Similarly, in "A Still Moment," Audubon
accomplishes nothing to authenticate his identity but is only a
deus ex
machina
who, almost by accident, is a naturalist.
"The Purple Hat," a tale of a New Orleans gambling house and
told by a plump man in a bar, cannot be assigned an accurate adjective.
One has no idea why it was written. Like its focal point, the purple hat,
the story is an inexplicable assembly of doo-dads. I am not convinced
by the title story in which the dialogue is so cadenced it is hard not to
keep time with one's foot. And I am as languid as calmed down 01'
Man River when, in "At the Landing," I have lived through death and
a flood and a seduction and the subsequent collapse of her social position
with a southern belle. "Livvie," recording the life of a young negro
woman married to a comatose but intermittently frightening old man,
is frequently charming and reminiscent of the earlier stories, for the
protagonist here is not rummaging through her emotions, but, with a
clear and immediate objectivity sees
things
like the crape myrtle trees
whose branches end in colored bottles to keep evil spirits away. "The
Winds" offers the summertime reflections of a little girl of sensibility
and warmth, and if it were not for the language out of whose smothering
density her thoughts must struggle and often fail to rise, she would, I
think, be the heroine of an artful story. But she, unlike Livvie, cannot
observe for she looks through a haze which distorts while it beautifies
the world.
And even in "Asphodel," a story potentially as wry as "Old Mr.
Grenada" or "Clytie," Miss Welty does not completely satisfy. Here is
her familiar material: prim, evil-minded spinsters recounting with lust
and horror the antics of a philanderer and the sufferings of
his
wife.
As
in the other stories, there is wanting the confidence and directness
promised in the opening paragraphs, then deflected, finally dissipated.
One can only hope that the talent which executed "The Petrified Man"
and "Why I Live at the P.O." will awaken from this stumbling sleep.
JEAN STAFFORD
