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Show The Salt Lake Tribune, Sunday, I- - '& February 26, 1078 " " Edgar Allan 'I, -- J S FW YORK James Russell Lowell, who, as a magazine editor, pule the w ritings of Edtar Allan Poe arvl, pr a while, kept up a pen paLhip with him, once described the bad boy of classical American letters in a pair of pithy lines; Here comes Poe with his 'T Poe Alan of mystery? rftj ftj .ftftfy's , W. rf$ by Iiolir llan-eo- f;, , ft . , m Newsday Writer Think of IV ) Conrad life on fall list; a 1,000-pag- e biography Character of the man figure, a father of 20 children by two wives and an abject failure in business and farming? He set off at the age of 56 gathering up weapons to B Douglas Parker Tribune Staff Writer "John Brawns Jauruey," by Albert Fried; Anchor Co.t PwiTtoubleday Inc. 233 pp., ie & 10. Thomas Hart Bentons puiar mural in the Kanas State Capitol at p Topeka depicts the abolitionist John Brown with arms outstretched holding a rifle in one hand, a Bible in the other; a gaunt figure raving through a menac- brutal board guerrilla but rabid, respected Northeastern abolitionists to accomplish disunion And it didnt fail if you consider Union troops marched off to Civil War a year ar.d a half later singing, John Brown's in body lies the grave. His soul goes marching on. The gallows had become as glorious as a cross, as Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote. the character through a the wealth of research amassed by others on the martyr and his times. With it comes a rich texture of the politics surrounding the curious John Brown, and exhul-tatioat each discovery of possible alternative motives other than those generally accepted. Finally, as if under a microscope, a new culture fanatical who brought a holy war to the Kansas border in 1856 in the cause of the Free Soil movement against the extension of slavery. Three years later he was jt Harper's Ferry. West Virginia, raiding a federal armory m what seemed like a suicide n mission, an outlaw with a price on his head, who subsequently was hanged is found for the venture m which his own children died at his side There is a distinction raised between the militant minority seeking What Motives slavery's elimination and Ibd he, as many histhose although labeled torians conclude, act who still blindly, irrationally, with retained a racist view to only bloodthirsty motives some degree by being and a touch of insanity? opposed only to the What provoked tliis stem extension" of slavery anti-slaver- y By Book B(V i(Ni- - beyond it? existing swop "John Brown recogg nised that the mass of Northerners would never Lght to free blacks except, incidentally, in the course of f.ghtmg for their own freedom, tdeir own society," Fned conBrown's plan cludes envisaged tying one to the other, black emancipation to white freedom. And because that is what happened in the fury of war we can call John Brown an American prophet over-vdielmin- this sympathetic interpretation is correct seems not as compelling as the intrigue and skill Fried uses to arme at it But what Fried also sets out with far less is to connect success his reflections on John Brown with the Vietnam anti-wa- r protest movement in the late 1960s when he was prodded to do his research The moment of extremity in the 1830s in which John Brown became embroiled became more credible to Fried as the militant war protesters took direct action in the name of conscience or righteousness Perhaps, but the jarring digressions to convey his personal protest and current events of the 1'toOs becomes more an irrelevant annoyance detracting from bringing the mythical John Brown to earthly terms. to do who, though well known, did not have the popular standing of a Harold Robbins. Sometime previously. Karl had met Asher at a party. Because Farrar, Straus and Giroux had published other books of Karl's, Asher was disappointed to learn that the biography had already-beepromised elsewhere. If anything goes wrong," he told Karl, think of us." Thomas Lask New York Times Writer NEW YORK -- The big book on Farrar, Straus and Girouxs fall list is a life of Joseph 1,000-pag- Whether The lxxk isn't so much John Browns journey as tl.it of the author, who unfolds, as if spinning a detective story', his clues toward tracking dow n John Brown Martyr or fanatic? portraying eritumr mur- often assumed goal of fostering a slave rebellion by the Harper's Ferry raid A Miss mih It is viewed as a mission allotted liehind the scenes by a ruha! of It is the legend of the raider, aljr .Salt Cake madness in this career. To him there is a strategic purpose far more subtle than the ing white, unkempt anti-blaver- y used in ders, and leaving him a fugitive hiding behind the disguise of his newly-growbeard. Fried, a professor of history at State University of Now York, sees a sense of cunning not e Conrad. The biography by Frederick R. Karl, a professor of English at City College and a lifelong student of Conrad, so impressed the editors of the publishing house that they plan to have copies in reviewers' hands by Labor Day , even though the manuscript did not arrive at Farrar, Straus until the midiie of last month Time Lapse Publishers Karl did Asher asked for a couple of weeks to consider the matter, but after a few days, he called Karl to say that they were delighted to have it and were proceeding fort ith usually nine months between the receipt of a manusenpt and publication, and that is for a novel of conventional sire, not a book four times the usual length and with scholarly apallow ' I was astonished af'er I read it, Asher sa.d, that there could have been disagreement. It's a marvelous biography of a great writer who also had a fascinating life The life and work are integrated into one narrative. Fred is a sophisticated man, and the book is tiie List large-scal- e assessment of Conrad's work paratus It's scale a book on the of Richard 's James Joyce, Aaron Beher. Farrah's editor in chief, said with evident Pioneer 'ljijTHEATRE MEMORIAL ROBERT PETERSON whose beard resembles Melvilles in its fullness, rather than Conrads Vandyke, conceded that the biography was the culmination of Conrad studies that spanned 25 years even though he had pursued other scholarly subjects time. I during that was fully armed," Karl said. fitted into the biography as into a glove " A look at the record indicates why. Karl, who took his doctorate at Columbia, had used Conrad m his thesis, studying him as a figure who came between the late Victorian period and the modem one The thesis became the basis for "A Reader's Guide to Conrad, which came out in i960 More Volumes satisfaction. Moreover, the publishing house acquired the book with relative ease The book had liven under contract to Alfred A Knopf, but after Robert Gottlieb, presif dent and of Knopf, read the work, strong differences arose between the author and 1 withdrew publisher. Karl the manuscript. said without eldltoralion. He took the step, he said, with some trepidation, because he did not enjoy the prosjicct of having to peddle a 450.(Mi0-wortypescript alxiut a writer editor-in-chie- psycho-biography- d and NAOMI g heart-rendin- g, well-reason- ... BKST SKIJLICRS New York Times Service Based on reports from more than 1,400 bookstores throughout the United States Weeks on list are not necessarily consecutive FICTION This Last Weeks Week Week On List The $lmanlhon, Tolkien 2 The Thom Birds, McCullough 3 Bloodline, Sheldon 4 The Honourable Schoolboy, eCarre S. 6 7 8 9 10 The Buck Marble, Wambaugh Hluvonv Bach The Women's Room, French Be99arman. Ttnef, Shaw Delta of Venus, Ntn Dreams Die First, Robbins Person In 1. 2 3 4 The Complete Book of Running, Fix AH Things Wise and Wonderful, Herrioi The Second Ring of Power, Castaneda The AmityviHe Horror, ; Coming into the Country. McPhee S 6 My Mother-M- Self, Friday Looking Out for Number One, Ringer 8 Inner SkttnQ, Gaiiwey KnegH 9 Gnomes Huygen Poortvltet 10 The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady. Holden (Copyright! 7 V The Male Entertainer of the Year the Road lo SALT LAKE CITY for an Evening With You and Your Family For ticket info: 801-581-83- CREAT ALL SEATS RESERVED CHRCV V $7.50 $8.50 $9.50 -: I!" Yj ir FARR Li f? js. It . A A i r'. If,,,-- C ! , (t i . i. i,$ ,i i , ' i 34.95 ,) or money order and stamped envelope to: Please send check self-address- Special Events Ticket Office Sports and Special Events Center 02 University of Utah ,"u' nckft! Salt Lake City, Utah tip Inii.w.'q 1 A romantic musical based on THE BARRETTS OF WIMPOLE STREET the love Story of English poets Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning Book 8. Lyrics by Ronald Millar ' Music by Ron Cralner Directed by Christopher Hewett - d s, Friday, March 3 1st at 8:00 p.m. University of Utah Special Events Center ELIZABETH CALL 1 much-dispute- nad cagahoiidage Ili father di.iappeaied, his mother died early. Allan adopted him (though never legally) with every generous intention, as Sinclair sees it He took Poe to England, where the child was placed in the best schools, and later sent him to the University of Virginia Allan, however, was a dedicated philanderer who had a second, illegitimate family. Sinclair believes that the adolescent Poe found out about this and therefore became a potential embarrassment to his foster father. To keep young Poe from talking, as Sinclair sees it, Allen deliberately turned him into a remittance man, paving him small doles to stay far distant from Richmond, the home town It was a role for which Poe was all tno well fitted b nature and he played it for the rest of his lift, living on hand-outexcept (or the brief, intermittent periods when he worked as a magazine editor at the then-goinwage of 10 a week Sought Refuge During pencxls of destitution and estrangement from his benefactor, tlx young Poe sought refuge with his Pcx relatives in Baltimore. It was at such a time that he became enamored of Virginia, the daughter of his paternal aunt, Mana Clemm. Poe m effect contracted a marriage with both the he was 27, she was 1.5 child Virginia and her mother. In Virginia, he acquired the ideal, unearthly love who so often appears in his poems, and in his aunt, the mother he had always needed. The three were to be one close, perennially impoverished household until Virginia died of consumption at 24. While Virginia was stdl a child, Sinclair believes the marriage was not a physical union and that indeed perhaps it never was, thanks to Poes disabilities. Poe survived Virginia by only two years. The squalid end came when he was visiting Baltimore on a tour of cities to round up subscribers for a proposed new literary magazine. Traveling alone and still shattered by Virginias death, he sought comfort in alcohol and rapidly went mad from delirium tremens. Totally broke as usual, he sold his clothes, Sinclair hypothesizes, and replaced them with castoffs. When he died in a local hospital, he was only 40, but death was already overdue. Sinclair makes the story genuinely and his interpretation of it tends to exculpate Poe for many of the failings that are part of his legend. The alibis do not, however, wholly explain why Poe seems actively to have wooed failure, why he made damaging enemies with the ferocity of his literary criticism or why he lost every job that ever promised to make him independent. Poe himself seems to have provided the best explanation in one of his most famous I stories, The Imp of the Perverse. am not more sure that I breathe, he wrote, than that the assurance of the wrong or error of any action is often the one unconquerable force which impels us and alone impels us to its prosecution. Nor will this overwhelming tendency to do wrong for the wrongs sake, admit of analysis It is radical, a primitive impulse elementary. 6C39 FG5C3 OTSOe Shous in the Round AND thru March hard-drinki- ," Presents ROBERT Now Diabetic? It wasnt, Sinclair believes, that Poe was a gargantuan souse; it was that with Edgar a little went a long way. He overracted to alcohol because, the biographer conjectures, he was actually a diabetic. In Poes day, the disease was unbeatable and hard to diagnose. Sinclair patiently goes over the poets reported symptoms, showing that this h pothesis could account for them all. For the early 19th century, Poe was, he concludes, rather abstemious. Of Poes relations with John Allan, the Richmond tobacco merchant who took him in as an orphan at age 2, Sinclair also has his own A On - , (1809-184- University of Utah in . , 1 In that same year, he negotiated with the Conrad estate in England to edit the authors letters. That work, the gathering and editing of 2,000 letters in Polish, French and English, is still going on and will be published in eight, possibly 10, volumes, by the Cambridge Conrad's E eelings University Press In adKarl had penned Although the life is full dition, of psychological insights, 20 scholarly and critical les rixnit Conrad especially in regard to artu Conrads feelings alxiut Thus the writing of the h:s father, the book is not life preseiilt d no sura prises. rio cruxes he had a form Asher ev idently denot encountered before. The whole book was writspises. The book considers the political, historiten in three years. But, cal and social side of Karl said, there was Conrads life and world, never any lessening of and Karl, he said, uses interest. I never tired of whatever disciplines are him, the necessary to throw light biographer said, "he reon these facets of Conmains a tremendous rad's life mystery " Karl a hirsute scholar 'Copy right' ssa I First Book of Season The first book of this new Poe season is a biography, Edgar Allan Poe, by a young English journalist named David Sinclair. Published at 13.50 under the unfamiliar imprint of Row-ma- n and Littlefield, it is a modest and d workmanlike retelling of the story. Its one bid for distinction is the authors promise to give some plausible answers to a few oi the Poe puzzles for example: Was his inability to cope with life based on any physical cause which a good drying-ou- t wouldnt have cured? Why did his adoptive father wash his hands of him? first Why did Poe marry his IT year-ol- d cousin? Why was he picked up at the end in a Baltimore gutter wearing somebody elses clothes? In confronting thpse questions, Sinclair has no new evidence to present. His approach is to take the evidence to use already known and subject it to one of Poes favorite ratiocination. His answers are guesses, but they make sense. On the question of Poes drinking, for example, Sinclair rejects the legend which holds that this was the key reason why his short life was an almost unbroken ordeal of penury and failure. Sinclair leans to George Bernard Shaws view that it remains an open question whether he really drank as much in his whole lifetime as a modern, successful American drinks, without comment, in six months much-repeate- Jolin IxownV Jotiriuw' ! Three raven, like Bamaby Rudge fifths of him genius, and two fifths this sheer fudge. As a summing-up- , has never been bettered. Yet people to understate the keep trying, and ease greatly they dont limit themselves to couplets. In this spring publishing season alone, there will be two biographies of Poe, a scrapbook of biographies of Poe, a Keraplxxik of pictures and writings relating to his work, and a fictional thriller in which Poe, as the leading character, performs as a detective. This is not an anniversary year; it is just any year. Poes stories are always in print in too many languages to count and are always being recycled into films, plays and musical works. As with most writers, however, who really haunt the worlds consciousness, it is as much the mans life as his art which plays on the imagination. Poe was the child of two in a day when that profession a lot in common with outrighi interpretation actors 581-096- 1 1 3SE 23333 chroma concapis OPENS Saturday FASHION PLACE MALL 262-158- 7 Of p a! . t, ,f S c c i ts C Ticket ChCf Tv HciH C' 0 ysse, Rooxd sjies Muv a: slcxfts Eu f1 Bioi aid iPfovii Carson-Marvin-Cri- ll Production & KALL R3dio |
