Lynching Comedy

TROUBLE IN JULY--Erskine Caldwell--Duell, Sloan & Pearce ($2.50).

Briefly, Trouble in July is the story of how a colored boy named Sonny Clark is hunted down and lynched for a rape he did not commit. More elaborately, it is an account of the behavior of Southern whites during such a man hunt. In particular, it is a tragicomic study of the plight of 300-pound Jeff McCurtain, sheriff of Julie County, Georgia.

The political situation is such that Jeff runs a fair chance of losing his job whether he lies low or takes action. Worse still, a Negro named Sam Brinson, of whom Jeff is very fond, has been grabbed out of jail to be scapegoat if Sonny is not found. Jeff is reasonably sure Sonny is innocent; he knows Sam is. That he will sacrifice Sonny's life to his own political safety is, of course, a mere regretful reflex; at the same time he tries to find Sam at the risk of his job.

The manhunters gawp in her yard while the "raped" girl, dizzy with nympholepsy, shows off her breasts. Most of them know she is a slut, some of them doubt she was ever raped; but this is a nigger hunt. Later they break into Negro cabins, strip a Negro couple, whip the husband, turpentine his wife's belly, rape a mulatto girl. Before they get Sonny they drag Sam behind a car. After they have killed Sonny the girl confesses his innocence. They stone her to death.

Standpat Southerners deny such stories with heat and hatred; non-Southerners know too little to have any right to an opinion. Author Caldwell's taste for close crowding of extremes of cruelty, pity, irony, inconsistency and comedy, his occasional tendency to stack his cards, still further obscure these important facts: that the South is a country of incredible extremes; that for all his faults Caldwell is one of the best and fairest recorders of them.

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