Lawrence, Greene and Lowry: The Fictional Landscape of Mexico by Douglas W. Veitch (review)

Reviews 153 From an examination of context, a natural step is to formal discussions and analysis and interpretation of items. Brunvand suggests that all research in folklore leads in some way to analysis. A system of classifying or an exam­ ination of context are but two means of analysis. It is fitting that eleven articles, the most of any section, are included in this third section. Brunvand offers a diversity of articles that deal specifically and tangentially with ana­ lytical methods that anyone studying folklore needs to know: historicalgeographical , rhetorical, aesthetic, structural, psychological, symbolic, and functional. The text offers more than might be dealt with in a short time, but the survey is essential to illustrate the abundance of theoretical material and the vitality of the discipline. The final and most difficult section is the fourth section — theoretical perspectives. If, how'ever, the previous essays have been carefully read and thoughtfully digested these last six articles will enhance the student’s under­ standing of American folklore. These articles reflect as w’ell as any six might the current state of scholarship in folklore: the current attempts to redefine long held assumptions and to refine new' concerns. Pivotal are Brunvand’s own essay “New Directions for the Study of Folklore” and Dan Ben-Amos’ excellent, “Toward a Definition of Folklore in Context.” As a result of reading and studying this collection with or without the companionship of The Study of American Folklore, the student of folk­ lore should gain an understanding of the scope and complexity of folklore. PATRICIA GARDNER, Utah State University Lawrence, Greene and Lowry: The Fictional Landscape of Mexico. By Douglas W. Veitch. (Waterloo, Ontario, Canada: Wilfrid Laurier Univer­ sity Press, 1978. 193 pages.) This book, by Douglas W. Veitch of St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, Nova Scotia, presents close and cogent readings of D. H. Law­ rence’s, The Plumed Serpent, Graham Greene’s, The Power and the Glory, and Malcolm Lowry’s, Under the Volcano. It also has an incisive preface by Canadian George W'oodcock. Essentially then we have Canadians writing about Englishmen who wrote about Mexico. On the surface this may appear to be an odd linkage, but the finished book dispels any such suspicion. Douglas Veitch demonstrates a keen critical understanding of each author’s work and a convincing insight into each author’s tendency to mythologize the landscape of Mexico. He says of the authors, “We have seen narrative power and complexity derive from an intricate process of shuttling between internal states and external configurations.” In my view, Veitch writes best on the conflict of these two states in D. H. Lawrence. His reading of The Plumed Serpent is sensitive and poised. 154 Western American Literature The sections on Green and Lowry have many flashes of brilliance, but are not as fully sustained as the section on Lawrence. Nevertheless, the book treats an interesting trio of English novels written between 1920 and 1940 in what George Woodcock calls “the Mexican adventure in the English novel. . . .” As such, Veitch’s contribution is a valuable, though somewhat specialized one in criticism. ROBERT B. OLAFSON, Eastern Washington University Steinbeck and Covici, The Story of a Friendship. By Thomas Fensch. (Middlebury , Vermont: Paul S. Eriksson, 1979. 248 pages, $12.95.) In 1935, a Chicago bookstore owner named Ben Abramson urged Pascal Covici, a former Chicago bookseller and publisher who had recently started his own publishing firm in New York, to read John Steinbeck’s The Pas­ tures of Heaven. Covici did so, was impressed, and arranged to publish Steinbeck’s next book, Tortilla Flat, which had been rejected by over a dozen publishers. The novel was Steinbeck’s first commercial success, and from then until Covici’s death in 1964, Covici was Steinbeck’s editor, first at Covici-Friede, and from 1938 on at the Viking Press. In Steinbeck and Covici, Thomas Fensch has collected and published much of the Steinbeck-Covici correspondence, together with connecting com­ mentary of his own. Many of the letters have already been published in Steinbeck: A Life in Letters and in journal of a Novel-. The East of Eden Letters, but others are printed here for the first time, and...