ustxtxb_obs_1965_10_15_50_00013-00000_000.pdf

Since 1866 The Place in Austin GOOD FOOD GOOD BEER 1607 San Jacinto GR 7-4171 TEXAS’ LEADING BUMPERSTRIP SIGN MAKER 1714 SOUTH CONGRESS AVENUE P.O. BOX 3485 AUSTIN, TEXAS TURA PRESS Hickory 2-8682 ,aiNP. Hickory 2-2426 this score. I did reflect on how much of the capitalistic system the communists have appropriated and on how much of the communistic system the capitalist countries have adopted, Let it be hoped, \(as I ferhave imposed controls through a sense of New York City Everyone’s on the move throughout William Humphrey’s latest novel The Ordways about a Northeast Texas family which somehow manages to embody The Old South and that other fantasia, The Great Southwest. If the whole restless Ordway clan isn’t converging on the family plot near Clarksville for Graveyard Cleaning Day, the narratoran Ordway, naturally is recounting the family legends about the two great treks made by great-grandparents Thomas and Ella and -grandfather Sam. social responsibility, and not solely as a means of acquiring power. We have had an evolutionary process going on since the thirties, accomplishing many things that the communists brought about by bloody revolt. FRANKLIN JONES drawn wagon, laden with this dead weight, attempt to ford the surging Red River and enter a new land: The stones keep them from being swept away at first but eventually the load pulls them under and a son is drowned. The first part of The Ordways abounds with this imageryheadstones, Graveyard Cleaning Day, Thomas’ unhealing, suppurating legs \(which rather put a damper on festivities when he joins his fellow Rebs phrey and his narrator can be forgiven those occasional, tortuously qualified passages that make me suspect the Ordways and a Humphrey or two can claim kin with a famous Mississippi writing family: Old Thomas Ordway was said to have been amused by the recollection of the incident, perhaps because it was a tonic to the pity, piety, and abhorrence with which, like the broken idol of a discredited creed, or as if he were the victim of a blood sacrifice, he was generally treated. I should like to think that “pity, piety” bit is welcome parody, but I’m not at all sure. Fortunately, the last half of The Ordways lets Humphrey give full play to the wit that relieved solemnities in Home from the Hill with that inspired creature, Opal. Luttrell. Here, Tom’s boy Sam, now head of his own family, leaves the farm near Mabry around 1900 to search the length and breadth of Texas for some purported neighbors who abducted his infant son, Ned. Since the neighbors wereaside from this jolting lapsegood people who could be counted on to care for the child, there’s nothing to keep Humphrey from playing Sam’s quest for infinitely more laughs than tradition allows. The tradition is, of course, October 15, 1965 13 NOT WITH A BANG Harris Green Humphrey is suitably grave dealing with Thomas, as resonant a symbol of the Confederacy as any I’ve ever encountered. \(The Old South was, after all, something blinded, crippled survivor of Shiloh, Thomas Ordway hobbled in from Tennessee, home of most great Texans, with little luggage but the bones and headstones from the family graveyard. Surely Humphrey says all there is to say about the professional Southerner’s cherished burden of the past when he has the Ordways’ ox s #44NNIMINP~#4,41M04~INN~0#11~#04~ BOOKS, ANYONE? Most comfortable whites have some good, serious books in their home that they’ve already read and have no further use for. A book that isn’t being read is like a bed that isn’t slept inwasted, for that time being. Unread books impress friends, just like extra bedrooms do; but you know .. . Now it happens that there’s a Negro college in Wacothey let whites in, but none comewhere they’ve just built a brand new libraiy that can hold 50,000 books, and they only have 15,000. Most of the shelves are therefore bare. Some of the books that are there have no place in a college. Drop in there some time, on your way to Dallas or Austin, and see for yourself if you like: See an earnest-faced young Negro boy or girl sitting in that fine new library reading, with the shelves two-thirds bare. Paul Quinn’s trustees have started a drive to get good, current college textbooks and other good, serious books into that library for their students. If you’d like to help, you ought to know that this is a church-related college. Some of the students who are here can’t pass ordinary entrance exams in public colleges, often because the rural Negro schools they went to did not prepare them well enough. This is an appeal to readers of the Observer to examine their shelves, as well perhaps also as themselves, and see if they want to send any of their books to these Negro students’ library. And to colleges to examine their used book policies and see if theythe students, the deans, the librarianscan make some jiggle-itaround adjustment in their policies and values and provide this library some good current books. Anyone interested communicate with Bernard Rapoport at the address below. This Ad Courtesy of AMERICAN INCOME LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY Of Indiana P.O.P.O. Box 208 Waco, Texas *44#.,