BOO KS
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bulk of Proust's mammoth novel, since the reader, like the narrator,
is literalIy supposed to forget whole sections he has read in order to
experience the juxtaposition of past and present. Some of Mr. Shattuck's
best pages also analyze the entire action of the book, and the final
reconcilation of all the dualisms it contains, in terms of Proust's theory
of metaphor. The quality of such perceptions adds to the importance
of Mr. Shattuck's book, and his very ably argued thesis is certain to
provoke a good deal of fruitful reflection and controversy.
Joseph Frank
THREE SATIRES
THE WAR OF CAMP OMONGO. By Burt Blechmo n. Rondom House.
$3.95.
CONFUSIONS. By Jock Ludwig. New York Grophic Society. $4.95.
NIGHT AND SILENCE WHO IS HERE : AN AMERICAN COMEDY.
By Pllmelll Honsford Johnson. Scribner's. $4.50.
The War of Camp Omongo
is a vituperative, over-simplified
satire of certain contemporary values embodied in middle- and upper–
middle class J ewish culture. The setting is a summer camp for rich
Jewish boys, but the novel is pure parable and Camp Omongo, in its
celebration of confonnity, savagery, and wealth, is presented as an
explicit symbol of America. The hero of the parable is thirteen-year-old
Randy Levine, whose father is a needle-stitcher in the clothing industry.
The only boy in camp on scholarship, awkward at sports, and com–
paratively soft-hearted, Randy endures the taunts of the other campers.
For a time he resists the system itself, offering gestures of sympathy
toward feIlow victims. But when he discovers that his father had turned
union spy in order to get him the scholarship, Randy turns into a
bigger tough than anyone else around (and there are some notable
contenders). In his anguish, he pitches into the camp-wide competition
("war") with a vengeance, cheating at the garnes, half-drowning his
best friend, breaking (altogether) a tent-mate's ann, and finaIly setting
the whole camp on fire so that he can come out first in a treasure hunt.
The book indeed is so fuIl of violence that even if we don't quibble
with the rather obvious and wooden transfonnation the hero undergoes,
