Volume 11, Number 12 · January 2, 1969
Truants
By Bernard Bergonzi
The Blacking Factory and Pennsylvania Gothic
by Wilfrid Sheed
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 246 pp., $5.50
Expensive People
by Joyce Carol Oates
Vanguard, 308 pp., $5.95
The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B
by J.P. Donleavy
Delacorte, 403 pp., $6.95
Eva Trout
by Elizabeth Bowen
Knopf, 302 pp., $5.95
In two of these books matricidal small boys play a prominent part, and in a third an adolescent very nearly stabs the sweet old lady next door with a carving knife. If this becomes a steady trend we shall perhaps see a fusion of two dominant themes in American life: childhood and violence. Wilfrid Sheed's new book is subtitled 'a short novel and a long story.' The long story, 'Pennsylvania Gothic,' is about Charles Trimble, a depressed only child whose parents move out of Philadelphia to a small town in Pennsylvania, where the only person who takes any interest in him is Miss Skinner, the old lady who lives next door. Charles's parents are not happy and one day his father commits suicide; after the funeral Miss Skinner talks to Charles about his father's early life, and the recital ends with an obscure sexual encounter between the boy and the old lady, recapitulating, as Charles discovers, something that happened years before between Miss Skinner and his father. Charles and his mother move away to New York, but he returns when Miss Skinner is dying and is about to go through the abovementioned ritual with the carving knife when she forestalls him by dying first from natural causes. He contents himself with leaving a little scratch on the corpse.
Review, 1860 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. |