Show 4E Standard-Examin- Sunday Aug 5 er 1 990 ?tI ' Price is a peaceful survivor still lie I'' ( Ji By HILLEL ITALIE The Associated Press A few years ago Reynolds Price was in a bookstore and spotted the memoirs of his first editor Hiram Haden who had recently died The author immediately checked the index for “Price Reynolds” “There were like 20 pages” recalled Price 57 whose acclaimed first novel “A Long and Happy Life" was published I in 1962 “We hadn’t seen each other for the last 10 years of his life But sentence by sentence everything all the facts were exactly right It was very fair in describ- 9 9 9 9 9 t ing our parting of ways" he said The Associated : Press ‘Tongues of Angels’ is author Reynolds Price's new novel “It did say one thing that completely surprised me It said ‘There was something about him when he was 29 years old which suggested to me that he would not have a long life’ He sort of felt like there was an air that I would die young” You’d never know from the picture that appears on the back cover of a reissue of “A Long and Happy Life” showing a ruggedly handsome man with a closed confident smile the left arm pressed against a relatively battered-lookin- g tree the other arm extended down his right side And you wouldn’t guess it 1 -- Chicago Tribune the raging bulls of American literature Ernest Hemingway doesn’t command all the scholarly attention these days - While assembling an edition of James Jones’ letters George k an English professor at the JJmversity of Illinois at Champaign came across the novelist's typed manuscript for “From Here to Eternity!” stored away in bank vault with a box of baking Joda jj “Apparently somebody wanted to deodorize it" Hendrick said When he read Jones' mammoth Jypescnpt Hendrick realized that' Eternity" had been effectively jleodorized back in the early ’50s when Scribners publishing house ifelcied words passages and situations they feared would offend fiucasy readers and Comstocks era during that Hen-Bric- gun-sh- y Jones' unexpurgated manunity" was not simply stripped of script about do£ soldiers in the dirty words and erotic scenes Other deletions blurred Jones’ days before Pearl Harbor was sucharacterizations of Sgt Warden perior to the published book Hendrick said “because it gives and Pvt Maggio (Burt Lancaster you a much grittier feeling of the and Frank Sinatra for those faArmy" Much of that grit miliar only with the 1953 movie) was supplied by the latrine lanDespite the emasculation guage that Scribners found so “Eternity" still contained profaniccnsorable ty on an “unprecedented scale” At one point during the sanitizJones noted in a letter The waring process Jones reported in a time epic brought him a National letter to a friend that a Scribners Book Award and comparisons lawyer had personally counted with Hemingway which many 356 objectionable four- - and critics felt were amply justified words Much to his displeawith the publication of the two sure the total was significantly other novels that make up Jones’ lower in the published version World War II trilogy “The Thin Even so Jones was willing to Red Line” and “Whistle” Hendrick hopes to find a wider compromise with his first novel “Otherwise” he said “you readership by persuading a pubmight as well write it and then lisher to bring out an unexpurfile the mss (manuscript) away gated edition of “From Here to And I want it to be printed” Eternity” in all its lewd and proAs Hendrick pointed out “Eter fane glory pie-w- ar five-lett- er “I was called into very hazardous duty to supervise my father’s death when I was 21 years old” Price recalled “I think it’s awfully hard to do that with someone with whom you’re very close to “It's awfully hard to be that involved without coming to some sort of natural feelings of guilt which arise from the culture most of us grow up in when children think that everything happens because of us” Haden never told him of his gloomy forecast Pnce recalls A good thing too If he really had died young then his former editor might have blamed himself for not warning him in time “ Raphael Noren watched his life and changed his story in ways that kept it from closing in fear or waste” he writes in “Tongues of Angels” Price seems to have taken that path but in a much calmer fashion his optimism undimmished by age or illness his creativity shaped by a storyteller’s love for words and the spirit’s gift for laughter “If you don't go crazy and you’re not a junkie or an alcoholic or a sex fiend by the time s you’re in your you’ve gotten on top of an awful lot of problems You’ve learned a lot of skills” he said writing to rolling a hand grenade into a crowded room And if Rafe makes an appropriate grenade Pnce is the observer who now The title of his first novel seems prophetic: Pnce is a survivor — paralyzed in the legs after an operation for cancer of the spine in 984 but looking as cheerful as any longtime author who knows his books are still in print and his best work may still lie ahead “I’m as peaceful a man as you're likely to meet in America now” he writes at the start of his new novel “Tongues of Angels" ($1795 Atheneum) For Price the idea of dying young is literally pure fiction Bridge Boatner the narrator of “Tongues of Angels” is a camp counselor in the summer of 1954 He befriends a haunted n young camper named Rafe a golden boy who “steadily glows with something more than ‘greeting-carlight’ " “I've known people like Rafe certainly” explained Price a native of Macon NC who now lives near Durham “In the 32 years that I’ve taught at Duke University I've known a fair number of young men and young women that you probably didn't want to look up after adolescence Somehow it was the peak of their lives and it was all downhill after that” Price jokingly calls himself the “Betty Crocker of the novel” his favorite recipe an odd mixture of fact and fantasy He compares records where all the pieces land “I’ve always been a little bit of a test pilot in that way" Price said “I sort of enjoy the hairpin curves of letting something hug the line of my life and yet take big moves away from left to nght up or down “If you know the whole thing it bores the hell out of you when you wnte it it’s paint by numbers It’s much better to be a test pilot test the sound barrier and see if the wings come off” of Angels” is a “Tongues No-re- ge story for Bridge Rafe is already fully formed a boy with “open eyes” and “knowledge of the final jaws" The novel opens with a now middle-age- d Bridge worrying that he was responsible for another’s death Rafe’s death It’s childish selfishness the narrator later admits the idea the whole world revolves around your actions It’s also the kind of feeling experienced by the title character of the author’s 1986 novel “Kate Vaiden” winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and by Price himself after the death of his father in d se-no- us late-30- 1954 ‘Eternity’ manuscript was superior Best sellers I Among ahead Author overcomes adversity best work may - 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