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BOOKS

MIRACLE ON SAN JAIME by John Cantwell. Chilton Co., $3.00.

-reviewed by Jack Parrish Some novelists are essentially writers of ideas. The main aim of their stories is to express and dramatize a thesis and their readers' response to them is in terms of whe ther or not they agree or disagree with their views. Sinclair Lewis and, more especially, Bernard Shaw were examples of this type.

The essential concem of others is human beings. They are preoccupied with exploring character and the inner depths of men. Their essential aim is to write believably and truth fully about what people are in a given set of circumstances and when readers agree or disagree with their characters' views, it is the characters they are disputing with, not the writer.

John Cantwell, the author of MIRACLE ON SAN JAIME, belongs in the latter group. Two men come to the Spanish island of San Jaime in the Mediterranean. One of them, Robert Clover, a devoutly religious Australian lawyer, is seeking refuge. His marriage has just broken up be cause he and his wife have learned heis sterile. The visit of the second, Buck, a militantly irreligious and carousing Canadian lawyer, is only

one incident in his life-long flight and avoidance of his homosexual tendencies.

Clover, seeking relief from his unhappiness, has an affair with one of the island girls. She becomes pregnant and he therefore decides that though he loves her he ought to go back to his wife since the fact that he is not really sterile means they can save their marriage. He deeply regrets the girl's plight but divorce when one's marriage can be saved is against his religious principles.

Buck, while drunk and unable to find a woman to use as a means of avoiding himself, becomes involved with one of the island boys who uses the incident to blackmail him. Tempers flare and a stabbing takes place, with one boy dying in the arms of the other.

Buck then uses the stabbing to clear himself from the blackmail. The story ends with his comforting the girl in her grief and proposing to marry her so as to help her out of her situation. Perhaps neither of them can ever be happy again, but this one chance is the only hope of a better life for both of them.

The behavior of some of the characters arouses melancholy and sometimes irritable reflections. Clover only wants to do what is right but mattachine REVIEW

his religious scruples are not so much commendable as infuriating, theologically sound though they may

be.

Buck's flight from himself has prevented his doing anything with his life. He has great talent, but is al ways too busy fighting himself to think of anything else. In one thoughtful sequence he is shown carefully going over something he has just written, weeding out every phrase or word that keen-eyed critics might spot as an indication of deviant tendencies. By the end of the story he has considerably matured but nearly half of his life has already been wasted in his perpetual conflict with his inner battle. While his proposal of marriage is a noble gesture, even

PARK BEAT by Reginald Harvey. New, York: Castle Books, 1959, 189 pages, $3.00.

-reviewed by Wes Knight

Eight hours of the lives of about a dozen assorted people whose paths cross casually, intimately, or violently on a hot summer night in Central Park. The author knows his Central Park geography, and uses that plus a carefully thought out time schedule as a trellis on which to hang Several limp stories which wouldn't stand up otherwise. There are about three and a half simultaslightly related (i. e. neous) plots: the policemen, the Puerto Ricans, and the queers.

The police are concerned with. their concern for humanity and are

that in some ways is still an avoidance of himself.

However, the important fact is that it is as people that you disagree with the conduct and views of these persons. Mr. Cantwell's aim has not been to preach or to take sides. All he has attempted to do is to show what would happen if certain types of people who had had certain previous things happen to them came together. What happens is only inevitable. It arises out of their characters instead of being superimposed upon them by the writer. At the same time he has not only done an excellent piece of writing, but has also written one of those extremely readable stories that once started are impossible to put down.

overly flattered by the author. One sneaky little plainclothesman wiggles his tail all over the place and after catching his first "pervert" reluctantly, lets him go with a ser-

mon of two sentences. Extremely unlikely. He would never have gotten the job.

The plot of the Puerto Ricans has the dimensions and coincidences of a Greek tragedy, but his "Puerto Ricans" don't seem real.

And that of the queers is even deader. They are very dull queers.

These three sleezy tales finally culminate (?) in the inevitable boy and girl intending to live happily ever after, but that's another tale, the half one that I didn't tell you about. Its purpose is to reorient the Westchester reader after two 29