◆ SpookStack

i Fifteen mysterious, idiosyncratic, explosive stories by the author of Snow White Donald Barthelme’s stories in UNSPEAKABLE PRACTICES, UNNATURAL ACTS, are with- out doubt the most original, indeed the most revolutionary in American today. They re- semble the traditional short story—so highly refined in this country—about as much as the movies of Fellini and Antonioni resemble “Gone With the Wind” or kinetic art resembles Impressionist painting. Barthelme’s stories explode the limits Of the form, and of the language itself. In the main, the stories deal with various aspects of the struggle —sometimes ludicrously comic ~-to be human ina world that seems heli bent toward com- plete depersonalization, But they should not be interpreted; they have tobe read. $4.95 UNSPEAKABLE, PRACTICES, UNNATURAL } SET IN A SILVER SEA. By Sir Arthur Bryant. Doubleday. 359 pp. $5.95. By Edwin M. Yoder Jr. Sir Arthur Bryant’s kind of English social history begins with Lord Macaulay prowling the battlements of Londonderry for detail and continues by way of the Trevelyans into our time. This book is true to the great tradition: detailed yet well- shaped; objective in tone, yet almost doting in its evocation of character and landscape. Sad to say, we produce noth- ing quite like it — or haven’t since Henry Adams and John B, McMaster tried passable co- lonial imitations. Perhaps we could, if the taste and power of Samuel Eliot Morison could be blended with the appetite for detail of magazine journalism. Sir Arthur is in Macaulay’s line, and he turns Macaulay up- side down, Macaulay was a Whig —a “progressive.” Bry- ant is a nostalgic with a Tory’s love of the junk in the national attic. This survey of England from the Restoration through Victoria takes as its theme the trauma of industrialism, the fall of England from rural inno- cence, But Sir Arthur does not mini- mize the rudeness or ugliness of pre-industrial England. We are reminded that such a 17th- century swell as Lord Guilford How England’s paradise was tost Each national type is pic- tured: A rich equire, despite his high income, stalks waterfowl “all night on the ice stark naked.” Pitt, Castlereagh, Can- ning, Wellington and Peel all fought duels in high office to confirm that they were gentle- men. “Long Robinson,” « gamey cricket player, “had two of his fingers struck off... [but] had a screw fastened to one hand to hold the bat” Extravagance? There is a peck into Lord Derby’s colossal dining room. “Pray,” asked a guest, “are those great doors to be opened for every pat of butter that comes into the room?” But when Sir Arthur encoun- ters the age of steam and rail his tactics change. Technicolor dims to monochrome; the or- dure that was a sporting nui- sance in Lord Guilford’s day is a health hazard; the ease of the 18th-century squircarchy gives way to the Regency’s inanity, its dandyism, its vicious snobbery. (“A bit of straw on a lady's pet- ticoat, implying that the wearer had been forced to resort to a hackney coach, would set a room of fine people tittering.”) - Doubtless I make Sir Arthur’s portrayal of the decline of Merry England sound more schematic than itis. This is, after all, social jstory in the classic mold: ly defining, sometimes de- fining a bit too sharply. Of course we are told today that history so defined—history with ee William Styron’s triumphant bestseller ‘On July 23, 1967, a plain- clothesman stepped into a “blind pig” for a fifty-cent bottle of beer. What followed was eight days of death, devastation, holocaust. Forty-three killed, White man. Black man. Sniper and cop.