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War I. By then, however, significant quantities of coke were also being produced from coal mined (, utside of the Ci,nnellsville district. Furthermore, firms began turning away from the hechive ovens used in Connellsville toward i newer techn· a] of the ccire principle of American republicanismEcitial ] Listice Uildei L, irl'.By le) I I, it bec. 11112 Taft's IlliSSiun to destroy Roc, sevelt's political comeback and consign his 1(, yalists to oblivion. In the end, Taft's ideal triumphedthe judicial system would resolve the nation's social, eec)noinic and political problems, with the Supreme Court having the last word. Readers of these two welledited volumes will sce how Taft mcived to this pc,sition, and will condude T. itt was . 1 biggei m. 111 than histc,ri. ins give hiiii credit. Richard Jensen University of Illinois, Chicago ( Emeritus) K. iv Bovle. Process: A Novel. Edited by Sandra Spanier. Uib. ina: University of Illinois Press, 1001. 0) 6 pp. IS]{ N: 0252026683 (Cl(, th), $ 24·95. What is The Great Cincinnati Novel: Nothing much Conics t(} tliind, does it' L. itely . 1 11ui711cl of outst. inding filius have been set in the Queen Citynic ,st famously perhaps " Rain Man" with Dustin Hoffman : ind inost infamously the powerful misrepresentation " Traffic." But () litside of Toni Morrison's magnificent Bejoi, ed, a novel in which the Queen City offers the most general of settings, it is difficult to think of an important novel set in a recognizable Cincinnati. That has changed with the publicaticin c, f Process, a recently discovered novel by the prolific Kay Boyle, who spent her adolescence in Cincinnati between Ic) I 6 and I 922 before becoming one of the L<, st Generation (, f American expatriate writers in Paris in the I9209. Boyle wrote for all the hot literary magazines during the I 92OS, published a wonderful menic, ir of her lost generation pals lifeing Geijjuses Together), married Latirence Vail Cwhc, se first wife was Peggy Guggenheim) and raised a bunch of children, became well known for her I 944 best seller Avalanche and for her New Yorker columns, 64) t blacklisted in the I 9GOS, and recmerged as a very visible S: iii Francisci) area activist prc, fessor and writer in the I960s and I 9709. She was still writing and politicizing when she died in I 992. And,it turns out,while she lived in France during tile winter cit I 92425 , she wrote Process, a bildungsroman that describes growing up iii Cincinnati during that period. Boyle' s heroine Kerith Day searches for her identity amid workingclass Cincinnati neighborhoods that had developed befc,re and after the Great War. Burdened by a family in financial and cmc,tional decline and living above her father' s auto repair sh(, p, Kerith yearns fc, r : in escape through reading, art, and politics. She experiences her sexual awakening with a French student la kindred spirit),raises funds to buy her freedom by working as a stenographer, and ultimately flies from her family, from convention, and fri, m her city and country in order t(, explore the new order as it was develi, ping in France. () cess h, is ii() w been published : it last, th. inks to the University of Illinc, is Press and the expert editc,rial efforts of Sandra Spanier, a specialist in LI,st Generatic, n writers who discovered Piocess in a forgotten box at the New York Public Library. As Sp, inier indicates in a wonderful introducticin that places Prc, cess in its intellectiial and artistic mileau, the novel is fairly experimental and not a little reminiscent of Joyce's Pc, rtrait of the Artist. Cliaracters qucitc Gertrude Stein and William Carlos Williams, and they understand America as a gented, puritanical, and stifling prison. unly this novel, unlike iTiost mc, dern novels, is unabashedly feininistKerith and her mother zvork together tc, free themselves frc, in industrial and social confines, and they retreat t(, gether to primitive, natural landscapes as an . inticic, te to lower middle class, masculine drudgeries. Though it eschews stream of LY,nsciousness and relates events in chronological order, Process includes lyrical passages that contrast with the style of mainstream realistic novels: " Streets cuil int() the hills und wired iiiclines abc, ve them stand shaip like lc,nglegged birds in fume. The hills lean : tway from the smoke, lean away from the river that cleaves them." As sentences like those indicate, Process offers a taste of Cincinnati : ls it existed severityfive years ag L ). The novel opens at the Tyler 1): ividson Forintain anci describes cobblestoned Walnut Street. Kerith and her friend take the trolley to Mt. Auburn and the Island Queen ferry from downtown tc,Coney Island. They drive into the fields and pastures around town, stop at a black man's cabin, and share his homebrew. Enraged by wcirking conditic, ns in her empli, yer's factory, Kerith attends Cincinnati labor rallies at the " Labor Temple ... past the Ohic) Mechanics Institute" and pr() mc, tes the unic, nizing ideas of William Z. Foster and Lincoln Steffens, her mother hosts a gathering in support of Sacco and Vanzetti. Iii the summer, Kerith tries to beat the city's heat and humidity; in the last scene, she runs throiigh the snow in Eden Park, laughing with her fiancte and her mother, and ready tc)get away. In I 9 IO, my grandfather, who had attended Ohic) Mechanics Institute and who was what we would call today a civil engineer, was working on an additic, 11 to the Cincinnati Art Museum. The woinan who became my grandmother was a twentyyear -(, ld art student from Hudson, Michigan, who no doubt smoked, bobbed her hair, Fall 2002 Reviews 4I ...

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