PA ·RTISAN REVIEW
121
number of short stories collected largely, so far as I can see, at random,
make up Richard Stern's new book,
1968.
It
doesn't deserve that title;
but then perhaps no work of fiction could. And the funny and acerbic
portrait of a contemporary Nero, the composer-hero of the short novel,
Veni, Vidi
...
Wendt,
fiddling while America burns, is perhaps not a
bad way of speaking to our illness. Some of my best friends are ir–
relevant.
"East, West ... Midwest," my favorite story here, is also about
the radical isolation of the intellect from its own condition. Bidwell,
a minor historian hung up on Genghis Khan, is no more obviously in–
sane than the rest of us. But poor Miss Cameron who occasionally types
his manuscripts is quite mad, and so moved by the story of B6rte's rape
and impregnation by a Mongolian warrior that she fantasies ROrte's
child within her. She jumps to her suicide at the end, but fortunately
not before writing Bidwell a letter which I find incredibly touching:
Dear Mr. Bidwell,
I know I caused you trouble. My mind troubled. The man at the
window - was it not you? I would say it was real, though I know
you could not have been at such a place. But did you not mean
it for me? Sitting there with your glasses, so kindly, why not? The
world thinks Genghis a monster, but you showed me how in bad
times, he drank his saliva and ate
his
gums, slept on his elbow and
saved his B6rte. Did you not mean me to know I was to you what
ROrte was to him? I cannot quite straighten it out. But remain
Very truly yours,
(Miss) Frederick Cameron
Only Richard Stern, I think, could have guided Freddie Cameron to
such a letter. His writing throughout these stories yields a rather amaz–
ing kind of satire, at once gentle and biting.
Marcia Cavell
LIBERAL
PRESS, INC.
NEW YORK CITY
