BOOKS
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gratuitous, irrelevant, and unbelievable; and one is not convinced, con–
versely, that the incidents in the lives of the characters could not have
taken place on any other day.
Given his intention, Mr. Morris must concern himself with the
implications of an actual event. In real life, of course, those implications
are obscure and almost unlimited; in fiction, they must be specified in
terms of the author's concerns and characters. When, for example, Proust
uses the Dreyfus case, it is as a device for analyzing character; since
it is used to help explain the characters, it serves a primarily artistic end.
In
One
Day,
however, the characters are meant to explain the event;
this is essentially a sociological function. As a consequence, the mean–
ings sought lie outside the fiction, and the event has not been trans–
formed into a novelistic event. Hence, it seems like an intrusion;
but the form that the author has chosen, which hardly seems com–
mensurate with the complexities of his intention, will not admit of
such intrusions.
Indeed, in form and style
One
Day
is almost completely conven–
tional. Constructed, in large part, as a series of character sketches, it
makes use of a form which has been more or less worn out since Sher–
wood Anderson. The pace, an easy even ramble, suits the prose, which
is efficient if often pedestrian-and often, incidentally, laced with un–
accountable Yiddish constructions ("A used washing machine she had
bought, in dryers she did not believe"). The tone is a I!K)phisticated twang
approaching, at its best, that of Pudd'nhead Wilson and, at its worst,
that of the Stage Manager in
OUT
Town.
On the whole, though, it
conveys a sense of rural shrewdness and moral placidity, a tongue-in–
cheekiness which allows for such dry insinuating observations as that of
"pigeon-breasted Miriam who read Genet in the original and spoke
brightly of how he jerked off as if she meant he left Paris quickly."
The characters, who are all "characters," :are the inhabitants of
Escondido, a smalI suburban California town. The plot, a welter of
vignettes and flashbacks, is inordinately intricate; but the main line, and
the least interesting, is centered on Alec Cartwright. During a sojourn
in Paris she has been made pregnant by Lyle P. (for Protest) Jackson,
a young Omaha Negro who, unaware of what has happened, returns
to America to demonstrate down south. Alec, on her way home after a
spell of Freedom Riding, abandons a gourmet foods basket containing
her baby in the night depository of the local Pound. This causes quite
a stir. But it is not long before the mother's identity is guessed, and it
is
subsequently learned that Alec meant the act to be a protest. The
significance of this protest remains unclear, but Alec is supposed to be a
