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Reviews 161 perils of failure—alcoholism, institutionalization, singles-bar oblivion or just the sadness of an empty marriage—are presented not as moral lessons, but as objective warnings of the dangers of the route to freedom. The men in these stories are quite a problem. Either bewilderedly inarticu­ late, ignorantly preoccupied or (as in the title story), downright psychotic, they are more akin to caricature than character, and provide mostly an obstacle course for the spiritual progress of the central characters. But this is actually one of the book’s great strengths. It can be quite easy for environmentallysympathetic people to tag the knee-jerk anti-conservation element of western American culture as a masculine force gone berserk. It’s much tougher to deal with this force when the issue is brought down to the level of personal sexual politics. Although Durham at times skirts the line between art and rhetoric, the final effect of this volume is an acute realization of the separateness of women’s lives in this culture. None of the above means to suggest that this book is an axe-grinding feminist political tract. It’s not. Durham’s stories make feminism appear an altogether natural and expected course for women to take. Although they bear a superficial resemblance to the work of Bobbie Ann Mason, these stories, rough-edged and headlong, are much closer in shape and spirit to the oral narrative traditions of Leslie Silko. There is a feeling of per­ sonal evolutionary vision present here. One feels that Leslie Durham’s artistry will grow with her characters’ growth, and that this collection is a strong step forward. And that, after all, is what makes small press efforts like this among the most vital works being published anywhere in the country. SCOTT PRESTON Ketchum, Idaho Prettyfields. By William Eastlake. The Man Who Cultivated Fire & Other Stories. By Gerald Haslam. Vol. XI in the Capra Back-to-Back Series. (Santa Barbara, CA: Capra Press, 1987. 87 and 85 pages, respectively, $7.50.) William Eastlake’s work-in-progress Prettyfields is not in a class with his New Mexico trilogy of Go in Beauty, The Bronc People, and Portrait of an Artist with Twenty-Six Horses, but how many books are? One does find in this novella of a 1930s eastern prep school his trademark dialogue of ironic hilarity, his balanced and understated social criticisms, his wry, intelligent, decent, caring voice. To the Whitman-quoting Dr. Forest, the unforgivable sin resides in the moral relativism of “Who’s to say who’s right and who’s wrong?” The students get an object lesson in patriotism and its rewards from their encounter with the rag-tag remnants of the Bonus Army. At the local sanitarium their former creative writing teacher, Miss Elizabeth Mary Coca, no longer merely 162 Western American Literature loves Scott Fitzgerald but audibly communes with him. Education, as always in Eastlake, comes in many forms. Gerald Haslam’s seven new stories demonstrate his refusal to accept easy boundaries to his imaginative scope. “The World Sucks” delineates the tragedy America has visited upon herself in the afteryears of its Vietnam veterans and finds the linguistic chronicler of the Okies at home with urban black demotic. Conversely, the Jewish Black Studies professor of “Blackness” is destroyed by his alienation from his own skin. I’m afraid the intrusion of more realistic characterization somewhat compromises the hijinks of the Tejon Club boys in “The Attack of the Great Brandy Bear.” But “Upstream” nears classic status for its homegrown fusion of magic realism and the liberation of the male. The unusual coastal setting of “The Estero” is a haunting backdrop to the emerging Haslam theme of the transcendence, not merely of the human spirit, but of the spirit of life itself. In the title story the religious impulse isembodied in a wise Armenian who blends equal parts of Joyce, Nietzsche, Steinbeck, Saroyan, and local mentors of the author’s childhood. Ironically, another great influence, the grandma of “The Horned Toad,” has here aged into philistinism, red-baiting, and malebashing . She sinks to the nadir of collaboration with a Fire Marshal! This would be a wonderful tale with which to...

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