Volume 4, Number 6 · April 22, 1965
New Fiction
By Bernard Bergonzi
The Orgy
by Muriel Rukeyser
Coward-McCann, 213 pp., $4.50
On the Darkening Green
by Jerome Charyn
McGraw-Hill, 244 pp., $4.95
The Father and Other Stories
by R.V. Cassill
Simon & Schuster, 254 pp., $4.95
The Rich Pay Late
by Simon Raven
Putnam, 237 pp., $4.50
The Day the Call Came
by Thomas Hinde
Vanguard, 191 pp., $4.50
If I put The Orgy at the head of the list it is less from a conviction of its overriding merit than from a simple desire to get it out of the way quickly; it is a book whose ambiguous status makes me very uncertain about how to handle it. The reason why is to be found at the very beginning, in the discreet little note that reads: 'The goat is real; Puck Fair is real; the orgy is real. All the characters and the acts of this book, however, are—of course—a free fantasy on the event.' In other words, it should not be regarded as an autobiography, since a good deal of it is 'free fantasy,' and it isn't a novel, since most of what Miss Rukeyser writes about is 'real.' This, assuredly, is playing both ends against the middle in fine style. In fact, the 'real' parts are the best, and the reader would be well advised to start with the notes at the back, in which Miss Rukeyser thoughtfully provides quotations from Margaret Murray and J. M. Synge, describing the Puck Fair which is the central topic of The Orgy. This is an annual event at Killorglin in West Kerry, in which a goat, called the Puck, is ritually adorned and crowned and then presides over three days of festivities before being released: Margaret Murray saw it as a modern survival of the cult of the Horned God. Such a curiosity seems, on the face of it, worth a book, whether a fairly superficial travelogue or a more serious anthropological account. Miss Rukeyser, however, is more concerned with the subjective reverberations of the event in her narrator—who is presumably a 'free fantasy' on Miss Rukeyser herself—and a handful of other characters. In effect, this merely clouds the narrative and makes it hard to understand what is going at the Fair itself. There are, admittedly, passages of good atmospheric writing; not for nothing is Miss Rukeyser a distinguished poet. Even so, I found some of her more ambitious stylistic flights too much for me:
Review, 1946 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |