THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 29, 1995 TAG: 9510270730
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY JEFFREY H. RICHARDS
LENGTH: Medium: 93 lines
THE HEAT OF THE SUN
LOUIS D. RUBIN JR.
Longstreet Press. 439 pp. $21.95.
Charleston in 1940 must have been a quiet place - old money, old buildings, old families, old problems. Ironically, such a venue makes a good setting for a novel. Only a few people are needed to generate action and a few quick sketches to handle the background. All of the complications of contemporary urban life can be safely shelved. And so it is that Louis D. Rubin Jr. has demarked his territory and set us in a place where some characters, at least, are settling too comfortably into the quietude of an old city in South Carolina.
Rubin, now retired after a long academic career at Hollins College and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, returns to his home to focus on the lives of some professors and friends at the College of Charleston. At the start, there is little to ruffle anyone. The war has not come to America; no one is clamoring for civil rights; and the college, to this point, has been kept in the steady hands of President Page Carter.
The character perhaps closest to Rubin's own heart is Rosy Rosenbaum, a professor of English who spends more time teaching his classes and tidying his boat, the amusingly named Gilmore Simms (after the South Carolina novelist), than he does on his long-deferred book or on pursuing a mate. Without some kind of outside stimulus, it appears as if Rosy will forever do his job, drive his boat, put off his tome on the narrator in fiction, and admire without commitment the school librarian, Sara Jane Jahnz.
But stimulus arrives in several forms. The 1940 fall term begins with the announcement of a new dean no one has heard of, N. Joseph McCracken. He's an experimental psychologist, apparently, who loves running rats through mazes. Some of the faculty are suspicious or take an instant dislike to his demeanor, which lacks the courtly grace that marks their president. As McCracken begins to grab power, issue fiats and set up a secret lab, the quiet camaraderie among the faculty turns to noisy anxiety.
Indeed, as anyone who has taught at a small college knows, the power of the dean to ruin lives is extraordinary. Rubin understands his territory; faculty members hate getting new administrators when the old ones have let them alone.
Another goad to Rosy comes as a young journalist, Mike Quinn. Mike is Catholic from Virginia and not at all attuned to the intricacies of Charleston society. He begins a relationship with the daughter of the local magnate, who is also the chairman of the college board. Betsy Murray is too fast and manipulative for the romantic Mike; her past and her money put her in another world. But things get complicated when Mike, on his newspaper beat, begins to find stories that implicate Betsy's father in shady land deals and procurement of government contracts. Rosy and Sara Jane take a shine to Mike and become surrogate parental confidantes - and themselves grow closer in the bargain.
This is the most genial of fictions, where complications are resolved and wrongs are righted. Rubin is at his best when he gives us a flavor of the old city. In one chapter, he describes a hurricane; in others, he takes us on boat trips along the various rivers of Charleston (Rubin himself has had boats for years). And he gives us a taste of one aspect of Charleston society that has not received much attention in fiction, the lives of Jews.
Rosy and Dolf Strongheart, his biologist colleague, occasionally confront the matter of being culturally in the minority. In one case, the faculty goes out Christmas caroling. Dolf, a Bronx transplant, wants no part of songs with explicit Christian lyrics. Rosy, showing his accommodation and his longer lineage as a Charlestonian, tells him not to worry about it - ``you don't have to sing every line of every carol.'' For Rosy, association is better than isolation.
Because things are slow at the beginning, the novel may not prove engaging right away. Some of Rubin's stylistic peccadilloes, including calling characters by their full names long past the time it is necessary, may also deter in the early going.
On the other hand, the book is filled with little jokes. Readers familiar with Chapel Hill will recognize the names of restaurants and nightclubs from the 1960s and 1970s, transported to 1940 Charleston. And if Mike is the typical earnest young man, the dilemmas of Rosy carry the weight of experience and make him a character well worth getting to know.
- MEMO: Jeffrey H. Richards is chairman of the English department at Old
Dominion University in Norfolk. ILLUSTRATION: Photos
The rich history in Charleston, S.C., provides the perfect setting
for Louis D. Rubin Jr.'s novel ``The Heat of the Sun.''
NORTH CAROLINA AUTHOR LOUIS D. RUBIN JR. CAPTURES THE FLAVOR OF
UNIVERSITY LIFE IN CHARLESTON.
by CNB