JUST ONE THING AFTER ANOTHER

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP74-00297R000201830008-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 23, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 23, 2013
• Sequence Number: 8
• Publication Date: January 31, 1965
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release @ 50-Yr 2013/10/25: CIA-RDP74-00297R000201830008-3
JANUARY 31 1965
Just One Mina After Another
P. S. WILKINSON. By C. D. B.
Bryan. 441 pp. New York and
Evanston: Harper and Row. $5.95.-
By JOHN KNOWLES
THE prolonged education and fu-
tile-seeming military service
young American men must pass
through before beginning to call their
lives their own are effectively 'drama-
tized in "P. S. Wilkinson." It is a
; quandary new since World War IL
Today it confronts the American boy
not with the open road but with the
endless stairway from elementary
school to?if he is of P. S. Wilkin-
son's background ? preparatory
school, a university, military service,
often graduate school and then, as a
? crowning irony, a "training" pro-
gram to teach him how to do some-
thing. Only at the age of 28 or so
' can he begin a job, a career, life at
last.
C. D. B. Bryan, who won the Harper
Prize with this first novel, begins
showing this frustrating, 4rawn-out
, ordeal in--appropriately--post-truce
, Korea, where Wilkinson is an
en-
asperated intelligence officer count-
ing every last one of his "547 days in
; this godforsaken place." His superi-
ors are stupid or lechers or both; the
country literally stinks, and the Ko-
rean people are to be pitied. Din-
charged in 1960 and back in America,
Wilkinson is thoroughly disappointed
' to find his life Just as thwarted here
as it had been there. His father, a
member of an old Southern family,
cannot help him or even reach him.
He loves his mother and. admires his
distinguished stepfather, but they.
'quickly disappear from the novel.
Young Wilkinson turns and turns
at the center of his problems. He
does not know :what he wants to do
'. with his life; he cannot "communi-
cate"; he is moving from idealism to
cynicism without ever touching real-
mm. His affairs with girls are un-
stable and subject to abrupt termina-
tions by him; he is lonely. Thinking
: that government work will give his
? life purpose and reinforce his slip-
ping ideals, he applies to the Central
Intelligence Agency and is rejected
on suspicion of homosexuality. Re-
bounding from this shock, he seeks '
out a . Baltimore strip-teabe dancer
Who had once told him how skillful
he was sexually; she promptly has
him beaten up. At last he enrolls in
the training program of a Manhattan
bank and resumes an affair with a
girl he had known while at Yale. Per-
haps he is going to "find himself" at
last. Then, in an effective stroke of
Irony, he is recalled to active service
as a Reservist during the Berlin crisis
of 1961.
C. D. B. Bryan graduated from
Yale, served as an officer in Korea,
and was recalled as a Reservist during
the Berlin crisis of 1961. His father,
T. Bryan 3d, belongs to an old South-
ern family, and his stepfather, John
O'Hara, resembles the stepfather in
the book. These facts indicate that
much more of "P. S. Wilkinson" may
also be autobiographical. That would
be irrelevant were it not that the
chief shortcoming of the noveys one
that occurs so often in fiction which
is closely autobiographical: the cen-
tral character is out of focus, seen in
uneven proportion and depth and
somewhat faceless. Photographing
oneself is difficult.
For example, Mr. Bryan's central
character tells us that he is in de-
spair, but he only seems exasperated;
exasperation is a useful emotion only
in comedy, not in serious fiction..
Wilkinson is all caught up with him-
self, and so he doesn't ' really catch
us. He achieves life only when the
force of the episode is coming strong-
ly from outside himself--when he is!
caught cheating, when he is beaten.
up. When he is trapped in the desert.
The author does convey the circum-
stances around the central character:
with frequent success. Korea is con-
vincingly ? steeped in mud and am-
biguity and unreality. The lie-detec-
tor test for the CIA., conducted by
a kind of Dr. Strangelove, has a calm-1
; ly chilling authority. The girls in
P. S. Wilkinson's life are successfully
evoked, particularly Hilary, whose 1
point-blank attack on him for cling-
ing to "pretty pictures" instead of '
seeing life as it is provides one of the ?
novel's most effective scenes.
In the end he resolves his doubts
and confusions enough to ask her to
marry him. We are presumably :
meant to feel that this is a very lm-
portant step toward Wilkinson's self-;
, realization. But the impression
doesn't stick. He might have asked:
her; he might not have; he did. The
novel's final effect is not of a per-
sonal dilemma resolved but a per-
sonal dilemma presented, and pre-
sented at great length. The fact
remains that the dilemma, the search
for honor and relevance in a thwart-
ing world, is an important one fac-
ing young Americans today; "P. S.
Wilkinson" conveys its frustrations
In full.
Mr. Knowles is the author of "A
Separate Peace," and, more recently,
"Double Vision," a travel memoir.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release @ 50-Yr 2013/10/25: CIA-RDP74-00297R000201830008-3