Word: mcpherson
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Childhood, that traditional turf of the first novelist, is examined at a distance in William McPherson's refreshing debut, Testing the Current (Simon & Schuster; 348 pages; $15.95). The slow awakening of youth is noted in minutely observed and somewhat magnified detail, but at a third-person remove, almost as if the author were examining his cast through binoculars...
...polite to inflict it on others." But there is no escaping from natural law. Tommy learns to place the comforting theories of his teachers and parents alongside the facts of the human predicament as he sees and hears them. The result is irony, a tone that McPherson manages with untiring subtlety and poignance...
...Current has no grand climax, none of the violent turns beloved by makers of films about youth. It presents a state of mind that existed when America seemed as green as Tommy and as vulnerable to the moment when, in Yeats' phrase, the ceremony of innocence is drowned. McPherson, a Washington Post journalist and winner of the 1977 Pulitzer Prize for literary criticism, might well be excused for showing the influence of the writers he reviewed for so many years. Happily, their shadows never appear. The author's imagery and style are wholly his own; from here...
After questioning soldiers from Bremerhaven to Grenada, combat command officers from Fort McPherson, Ga., reported that the response to the current B.D.U., introduced in 1981, was "universally unfavorable." That was putting it mildly. During last October's Grenada invasion, Marines temporarily equipped with the B.D.U. instead of the appropriate tropical gear complained that the fabric was heavy, sweaty and unkempt. Even soldiers in cooler climes agreed. Once wet, the uniform takes an excessive time to dry. The sleeves are too narrow to roll up easily, the collar too wide and the pants pockets hard to reach. Seams unravel, buttons...
...Aimee Semple McPherson, soul-saver, returned to the U.S. (via Paris) from a trip to the Holy Land, with Bibles, lamps, some Palestinian garments (to wear in the pulpit of her Angelus Temple Church of the Foursquare Gospel) and bright yellow hair (it was reddish when she left the U.S.). While she whirled away on a 200-mile week-end trip through the Catskills, U.S. Customs agents checked her luggage, levied $138 against her in duties and penalties for undeclared imports. Sister Aimee bemoaned: "I never dreamed . . ." etc. Asked if she would pay, she replied: "Oh yes, if the country...