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Coloursof Hope Michael Gecan, ed., Seen Through Our Eyes. Random House, 1972. $6.95. 237 pp. ANNETTE KOLODNY Once upon a time a group of very young people tried very hard to be honest. They even found a teacher in their school who, searching for his own honesty, encouraged theirs. So pleased were they with their written efforts that they decided to share them; so they found a friendly publisher and put together a book. End of fairy tale. The friendly publisher and his blue-pencilling copy editors turned out to be the same kind of people for whom the book had been intended, only they didn't seem to know that. So, scribble, scratch, cut, chop, the original words slowly got changed. "Why make a fuss over Nieman-Marcus prices in Texas," queried one copy-editor, "when you can find the same items here in New York at Bendel's or Bergdorf's? Nothing unusual." And another: "Better change all these slang terms to 'marijuana,' so people will be sure to know what it means." And still another: "Periodic sentences, must have straight-forward periodic sentences. Otherwise it sounds too much like talking." And that, unfortunately, is some of the reality behind what should have been a blockbuster of a book. Not that the book isn't worth reading. On the contrary, it certainly is both for what is there and for what isn't. Charles Reich puts his finger on the problem early in his Introduction, when he says, "Understanding the new generation is in part a problem of understanding new languages." But the argot of the Yalies, as I remember hearing it and reading it when I taught there myself, is not always the cadence of this volume. I sense an energy loss, as though some quintessential balance of perspective has been edited out. But then the book really wasn't intended for those who speak the language; it was, as its dedication indicates, for their parents. Did Random House then edit the material with its prospective readers in mind, sugar-coating their pill on purpose, making it suitable for the summer cruise and country club reading list, or did they edit it simply as they would any other book of essays, hearing in their heads the established language patterns and accepted vocabulary with which, alone, they feel comfortable? Either way, the betrayal of the original language points up the essential dilemma with which so many of the pieces try to THE CANADIAN REVIEW OF AMERICAN STUDIES VOL. III, NO. 2, FALL"1972 cope- among them, Peter Mareneck's self-conscious letter to his parents, beginning with the hope "that I can explain something about the way I'm living now," or editor Mike Gecan's final optimistic suggestion that "we knock at the doors of our homes and neighborhoods and that, when the door is opened and we are face to face with our fathers and mothers and friends, we offer them some part of what we are: our limited and specialized knowledge, our powers of analysis and criticism, our love for art, our youth, our energy, our clumsy love." The offerings, I fear, have been badly mauled in translation; which is even more disturbing when we realize that, in a sense, these young writers' 'style' is their meaning. My hunch is that Chuck Levin's "Hello" drove copy editors to suicide and, as a result, probably best survived the blue-pencil gauntlet. After all, what can you do with "HelloHelloHelloHelloHelloHelloHelloHello HelloHelloHello"? His pastiche of paragraphs and erratic syntax rather subtly makes fun of the whole notion of one person trying to edit another's deepest feelings. Take, for instance, the following piece of the Levinfree-association puzzle: What about the thoughts of youth? First of all, that has nothing to do with anything. Life, among other things, is a circle. Age means everything/nothing/something/all of these/none of these. You and I are of the same circle; neither is in front of or behind the other. We are all going in the same direction, so let's talk about everything and not feel ashamed. Shame is purple in color. I said that because...

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