316
PARTISAN REVIEW
therefore it efficiently absorbs all the difficult problems that Reed the satirist
uncovers . No one can take seriously his rescue of Minnie at the end of the
novel, nor can anyone overlook the fact that the business she at last learns does
not have much to do with the confection ofGumbo. Indeed Reed has come
to
a problematical pass in his writing . The mythology of Neo-HooDoo does not
inform his satiric reading of Black experience in
The Last Days-it
consoles
that reading. If Blue Coal's chastisement of Minnie represents the restoration
oforder in Reed's mind, then Louisiana Red is hardly in its last days. Reed has
yet to define himself as a writer , to choose between the rigorous demands of
satire and the programmatic concerns of Neo-HooDoo.
Neil Schmitz
NewfrQm
Columbia
THE WITNESS AND I
O. EDMUND CLUBB
This is the shocking story of how O . Edmund Clubb, when
Director of the State Department' s China Office, was forced
to leave his job because of allegations of Communist sym–
pathies by Whittaker Chambers. A quarter century later, our
governmental system still has the scars from that period.
SCOTT NEARING : APOSTLE OF AMERICAN
RADICALI SM
STEPHEN
J.
WH ITF I ELD
$9.95
This first biography of Scott Nearing- orator, pamphleteer,
and author- reveals a man who reflected the radical currents
in the United States from Progressivism at the turn of the cen-
I
<b
I C;;LU;;I; '~;M;S;;'~;;'
$>0."
Address fo r orders:
136 Sout h Broadway, Irvingto n, New York 10533
