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637
Race is of course an issue, but in terms of the innovations that fictionists
such as Wright, Reed, Major, Wideman and others are attempting, the crucial
matter is something they share in common with their white colleagues of the
same style-Ronald Sukenick, Gilbert Sorrentino, Steve Katz, Carl Krampf,
Raymond Federman, and several more. "There might be a problem," William
Demby argues, "but not between black and white, but between the middle–
aged and the young. Some critics, I am sure, just aren't with it. That's all."
That the fiction which comes as the end product of Reed's and Demby's new
aesthetic matches so closely the work of other American innovators suggests
that their argument against European determinations applies for all Ameri–
can, non-colonial work.
A final word about the nature of O 'Brien's form . The interviews lack the
structure of a well argued essay, but just for that reason they stand a better
chance of capturing each writer's truth, since whatever comes up is fair game
and need not fit the limitations of a strictly coherent thesis. Yet each talk has
its order, an organic one which may take the form of Cyrus Colter's distin–
guished, measured eloquence, Reed's strategic pauses and rapid-fire attacks,
Alice Walker's well crafted essay-answers, or Charles Wright's sly chuckles
across the long-distance wire from Vera Cruz. For various reasons O'Brien
was not able
to
complete interviews with James Baldwin, Imamu Baraka, and
Cecil Brown. Otherwise his book is the most complete record one may find on
black literature today, for what each writer tells O 'Brien and for what O'Brien
so skillfully tells us about each writer and about black literature in general.
Jerome Klinkowitz
THE TEACHINGS OF DON JUAN
THE ADVENTURES OF DON JUAN.
By
Richard Gardner. Th. Viking
Pr. ... $10.00.
Erudition seems to be taking over pornography, for better or
worse denaturing it. Since this has happened before, with Petronius and with
Rabelais, one may take
it
as not o.nly fashionable but traditional that so broad
and subtle a scholar as Mr. Gardner should amuse himself with a degrading
little scheme: transpose the greatest of erotic legends, Don Juan, from its high
place in drama, opera, and even philosophy, down to the stickiest realism of
the picaresque novel. The gag is academic, assuming the history of literary
