Word: lawrison
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John Ratte takes us on another happy trip to Lawrison, which some residents of Lawrence, Mass. may suspect is their home town. Ratte, in Mr. Ssizle and the Tree Thieves, shows a real artist's eye for the colors of New England, and while his piece doesn't really say very much, it is a clean and softly done...
Ratte is alleged to have put out the entire issue, and whether or not this is true, he has certainly contributed the only things which have any considerable merit: the cover and his study of "Lawrison, Mass." It is too bad that he did not get his board to authorize the promised reply to i.e., which would have filled the vacant spaces and perhaps have aroused slightly more interest than the present production...
...material which did appear, only the "Lawrison" piece could be described as successful. In a flat and unpretentious voice Ratte describes a way of life, or the change which it is undergoing. The voice is personal, the viewpoint biographical, and yet the tone is often that of a Dos Passos report to the nation. Perhaps because of the relaxed tone, perhaps because of the form, the reader does not expect any more of the story than he gets. A mood and perhaps an insight are offered, and whether or not this is enough, it is unquestionably all there...
...significance to his recent adventure. Emotionally, he does not give a damn, and intellectually he is either somnolent or at loose ends. It is perhaps not necessary that prose have a point, but it seems reasonable to demand that it achieve an effect, as Ratte does in the "Lawrison" piece. It also seems reasonable to require that in a piece about two people some coherent picture of these people should emerge...
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