"Claudie's Kinfolks" 1954 ANDERSON, Dillon (SIGNED)
$50
ANDERSON, Dillon
[277] pp.
Little, Brown & Company
1954
First Edition
8 1/4" x 5 3/4"
Jacket design by Dan Freeman
MR. ANDERSON'S whimsical regional document, “Claudie's Kinfolks,” is a sequel to a similarly picaresque prede- cessor entitled “I and Claudie.” It is divided into eleven chap- ters, running (roughly) from Beaumont to Amarillo, with a couple of side trips into Mexico, and it would be hard to say which of these chapters seems least burdened with problems of literary form. About the only formal feature of Mr. Ander- son's book is the introduction he gives us to his two leading char- acters, when we learn that Claudie's last name is Hughes and Clint's last name is High- tower. This occurs on page eight, but apparently there is nothing symbolical in it. It's just some- thing that we had to know soon- er or later, and it is worked in rather ingeniously during the discourse of a crystal-gazer- Jules Rabinowitz by name-who is giving the fellows a free reading in a missionary effort to shunt them along as far from Beaumont as possible. On page nine Jules lays it on pretty thick: “My crystal is a new model, but what I'm seeing puts an awful strain on its capacity. It's really not built to handle a future as bright as I see for you here. You men are destined for something colossal.” Jules wasn't kidding. There was a near lynching in a town called Burdenville, followed by a dozen or so other scrapes, from a poetess to a bucking buffalo. The whole kit and caboodle are as implausible as characters, incidents, and the writing style of a purported semi-illiterate (Clint) could well afford to be, even in Texas. Clint, a fugitive from all work, and Claudie, able and intermit- tently willing but inclined to mental absenteeism, are in the “Lum and Abner” tradition— proving the continued vitality of radio, if only as a literary influ- ence. All the episodes of “Claudie's Kinfolks” are loosely strung together on the premise that Claudie is looking for rich relatives to sponge on, while Clint is busy sponging on Claudie. Mr. Anderson, incidentally, is a Houston lawyer and business man, a director of the Westing- house Electric Corporation, a trustee of the Schlumberger Foundation and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and chairman of the board of Electro-Mechanical Research of Ridgefield, Conn. His tax position, as a non- professional author, seems prac- tically perfect. BEN CRISLER.