Ozarks

THE WOODS COLT -- Thames Williamson -- Harcourt, Brace ($2).

The Pulitzer Prize has not yet been given to a novel of the Ozark hills. This year it well might be. In The Woods Colt Author Thames Williamson has written the U. S. novel of 1933; its only serious rival so far is Anthony Adverse, which is not really indigenous to the U. S. The Woods Colt, as American as the dialect in which it is written, as the quick-tripping, minor-keyed banjo songs of the mountaineers, is as blood-stirring as an old ballad. The Book-of-the-Month Club, embarrassed by October riches, could not pass up this egregious novel, so it cannily chose both The Woods Colt and Flush (see p. 56).

Clint Morgan was a "woods colt" --"what you-uns call a bastard, only our way of sayin' it is more decent. More natural-like, too; kind of wild an' bred in the hills an' the devil be damned, somethin' that-a-way." Clint's girl was Tillie Starbuck; he was aiming to marry her and everybody knew it and kept out of his way, till Ed Prather came along. When Clint found Prather sneaking off from the fish-fry to talk to Tillie, the trouble started. Prather got away that time, but Clint went to look for him, found him in the postoffice and beat the daylight out of him. Prather had him arrested for breaking into the postoffice. Clint went quietly until a "foreign" deputy put handcuffs on him; then he bided his time, made a break and got away. He would have been safe enough in the hills, hiding among his friends and kinsfolk, but soon he was not content to hide. He began to believe that Tillie was unfaithful; they quarreled, and when his uncle's still was raided, Ozark logic said the Starbucks were at the bottom of it. Clint joined the drumming-out party that drove Tillie and her father out of the hills, and in that night's fracas shot his old enemy, the deputy who had put handcuffs on him. Now Clint had to hide in earnest.

Still his friends helped him, but now there was a posse after him. Clint headed into the back hills and began to wonder if he would ever get away. When his adoring cousin Nance found his hideout, bringing him supplies and more shotgun shells, he was mighty grateful, but when she spent the night with him he knew there was no help for him now. Cornered with Nance in the old cave where his uncle's still had been, Clint made a last stand, had the supreme satisfaction of killing Ed Prather before they got him.

The whole story, not simply the dialog, is told in hillbilly tongue; the cumulative effect is to make The Woods Colt a prose folksong. Just before the shot that ends his story Clint takes a last look at the woods where his parents got him: "They're mighty purty right this minute, they shore are. The leaves is all red an' yaller, an' they're a-movin' gentle-like, back an' forth, back an' forth, jest enough to let you know they're there. This is the fall o' the year, with the air so dang full o' haze that it looks like a lot o' spiders has been stringin' their webs around. Warm soft air, an' still it's got a bite in it, too. The days is gittin' late. Purty soon it'll be time to git out the old houn'-dog an' start out after coons, some o' these frosty nights, or maybe git a possum up a persimmon tree."

The Author. Wiseacres say that when a chameleon is put on a crazy quilt, it becomes fatally confused. On the U. S. crazy-quilt, most smart writers stick safely to their native patches, or seek like colors. Not so 39-year-old Thames (pronounced not Tems but as it is spelled) Ross Williamson. Born on the Nez Perce Indian Reservation in Idaho, son of a Welsh-Norwegian father, a French-Irish mother, his mixed inheritance has well prepared him for the kaleidoscopic environment from which he is emerging as an able guide to the patchwork of the U. S. scene. At 14 he ran away from home, was hobo, circus hand, cabin-boy on a whaler, sheepherder, newshawk. When he was private secretary to the Warden of Iowa's State Prison, and editing the prison magazine, one of the convicts reproved him for writing a sentimental story about a crook. Williamson took heed.

After working as interpreter (he speaks ten languages) under Jane Addams at Chicago's Hull House, Williamson suddenly decided he needed an education, won a Phi Beta Kappa at the University of Iowa, a Master's degree in Economics and Anthropology at Harvard. Onetime assistant professor of sociology at Smith College, he has published six textbooks. When he decided to become a novelist, he planned a Balzacian series on the U. S. panorama. Critics jeered at his third novel (The Man Who Cannot Die}, and Author Williamson made up his mind "to get off my literary high horse, to come down to earth and express myself simply." A fierce worker, he could easily write two novels a year, fills in his time by writing children's books. With his second wife he moves restlessly about the world; at present they are in Portugal. "Dark as a gypsy, nervous as a cat," he talks flippantly, fluently -- "a sort of thinking elf."

Other books : Run Sheep Run, Hunky, The Earth Told Me, In Krusack's House, Sad Indian.

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