Volume 20, Number 9 · May 31, 1973
The Ashes of Hollywood II: The Top 6 of the Top 10
By Gore Vidal
Number Six on the bestseller list, The Camerons, by Robert Crichton, is a mystifying work. One understands the sincerity of Herman Wouk, Number Seven, as he tries to impose his stern morality on an alien culture, or even that of the dread Marjorie Holmes, Number Ten, exploiting Bible belt religiosity with what I trust is some degree of seriousness (all those chats with God must have made her a fan). But Mr. Crichton has elected to address himself to characters that seem to be infinitely remote from him not to mention his readers. A UK mining town in what I take to be the 1870s (there is a reference to Keir Hardie, the trade unionist). With considerable fluency Mr. Crichton tells the story of a miner's sixteen-year-old daughter who goes to the Highlands to find herself a golden youth to give her children. She captures a Highland fisherman, locks him up in the mines for twenty years, and has a number of children by him who more or less fulfill her 'genealogical' (as Trevanian would say) dream.
Feature, 4682 words
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