FOUR NOVELS
A FAMILY ALBUM. By David Galloway.
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
$8.95.
VIOLET CLAY. By Gail Godwin.
Alfred A. Knopf. $1 0.
ZIP. By Max Apple.
The Viking Press. $8.95.
THE EIGHTH SIN. By Stefan Kanfer.
Random House. $8.95.
Dav id Galloway's
A Family A lbum
is impeccably organized
around six pho togra phs ta ken o( some members o f a southern family
from 191 2 to 1969. T he sna pshots appear on the dust jacket, and the
novel's six sections are broken up into a description o( the camera
empl oyed, a series of fictive observa tions about the photographer, and
a close examination of the picture itself a nd the pas ts o f the individuals
in it. Gall oway is exha ustive in discuss ing wha t is visible and imagi–
na tive in making up what is no t, a nd his prim, enticing, and well–
made sentences suit his fas tidious inquiries into the pho tographs and
the dramas he invents to lie behind them.
Galloway loves details: he mines each pho to for the minutest
evidence that obj ects a nd ges tures can give. His specul a tion about that
evidence is neutral, meticulous, a nd intended to g ive the impression of
facts beyond dispute and beyond the control o f those people fixed
forever in their destinies, of which the photos represent a cross section:
Hi s back and arms and legs are stra ight, and his general physica l
development accords in every way with the textbook sta ndards for a
boy of ten or twelve.
If
a nything, his development-especia ll y of the
sexua l organs-is slightly advanced for his age. He will eventually
require the substitution of a liny dacron sleeve for one section of his
aorta, but th is is in no way apparent in the study before us.
T he more details that accumul a te, however, the more the book becomes
a monument to ingenuity ra ther tha n conviction . And the mo re it
reveals itself as a tour de (orce the less we care and , perhap s worse, the
less we believe. The biographi es, rela ted without d ialogue, sound like
mere gossi p, lives over heard in a decadent southern atmosphere tinged
with the odor o( dea th a nd develo per. Because the characters don't
speak, the narrator is no ticeabl y a t the contro ls, and events, as a result,
seem will ed: disas ter, when it strikes, does no t thrill us with its
inev itability but appears to be a nasty dig on the par t of the a uthor.
Pa ul Stra nd's dictum, that (or a good pho tograph cr iticism is
