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Reviews 277 Nevertheless, the narrator is faithful to his authentic sources — folk history and narrative. Greenbrier’s little ‘incidents’ along the way become his Etc. — the second part of the title. He tells, often with great skill, about meeting the devil as a goat, a ghost brakeman, a hornless, candyeating bull, suckegg remedies, The Boom Explosion, the No-Belt (Nobel) Prize, and so on. And his catalog of railroad characters, his family vignettes and memories seem to bear the closest scrutiny. Sometimes, his language is superb — witty, brief, honest. It is easy to see the old traditional story­ teller spinning history and folktale together through those Oklahoma hills where he was bom. There is a vitality and authenticity in Pa and the narrator that carry the reader easily from Chapter 14 to the end. Unfortunately, the book is presented with a lot of posturing. For instance, the jacket declares “The People are wise to the praise of critics nowadays,” then prints sixteen opinions by non-critics that praise. Further, the publisher writes that the text has over 50 misprints and was never edited. Finally, Burnt River House wants readers to know, as it told this reviewer, that “our first book won’t have anything to do with the shady side. This is a family-type book, a good clean book, true to life.” That is all nice, downhome talk, but the book is loaded with people who are beaten, killed, maimed, burned, stung, abused, starved, and Pa is capable of anything. Given all of this, Railroadin, Etc. cannot match Woody Guthrie’s Bound for Glory, but it is worth reading just to see a folk narrator juggling that hive of bees, his bag of stories, his family history and his Pa through three weeks of Depression adventure and initiation. GEORGE VENN, Eastern Oregon State College I, Leo: — An Unfinished Novel. By Lew Welch. (Bolinas, Ca: Grey Fox Press, 1977. 82 pages, $3.00.) On Bread and Poetry: A Panel Discussion with Gary Snyder, Lew Welch and Philip Whalen. (Bolinas, Ca: Grey Fox Press, 1977. 47 pages, $2.50.) There is a lot of good writing in I, Leo and it isn’t as it’s subtitled, An Unfinished Novel. Unfinished is an idea. The book goes for 82 pages then stops. It did not give me the sense of something unfinished. It is about a young man, Leo (Lew was a Leo), in a certain time, at a certain place — it was not long ago but seems distant —Portland, Oregon —•1948-50— living on edge of skidrow—G.I. Bill —Reed College—turning on to literate friends and beginning his life of Art, Poetry, Painting, Romance and the Scholarly Pursuit. The prose is surprisingly careful and formal, even kind of old fashioned. Surprising because the book was written while Lew was 278 Western American Literature heavily under the influence of Jack Kerouac’s idea of “Spontaneous Prose.” (You do hear an echo of Kerouac here and there.) Careful prose like Joyce’s Dubliners, but innocent, innocent as only Lew could be innocent. Lew was good at description and narrative. The description of the Kamm Building is detailed and fine—a once pretty brick building gone seedy, become just another rooming house for the down and out, the washed out, and the weirded out of our society, whose lives have narrowed to a state of near perfect non-inspiration. The kind of state where the only thing left to do in the way of an inspired act is to either paint everything you own silver or paste up on your wall a newspaper print of Raphael’s Virgin on the Barrel Top or one of Abraham Lincoln. It’s tough living on some levelsof our society. Leo plops down among them with his painter friend Prosmo. For sure the place needed a shot of the mercurial. Leo painted his room: one wall black, one wall moss green, two walls and the ceiling gray, and the floor an almost black, green. A pretty good indication of how things were then. But down the street was the great American urban refuge, the ubiquitous neighborhood Chinese-American restaurant. This one the prototype of its...

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