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AN EDUCATION IN GEORGIA by Calvin Trillin

AN EDUCATION IN GEORGIA

By

Publisher: Viking

This sociological reportage appeared originally in the New Yorker and it concerns the integration of Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton Holmes into the University of Georgia. It has its points and pleasures, although the style, so determinedly relaxed, so suavely underplayed, offers only now and then the sound and fury belaboring the Deep South today. Of course the intent of Trillin's on-the-spot documentation, showing him shadowing the Negroes from admission to suspension to reinstatement to graduation, is to reveal through the Everyday Details the Larger Issues. Such a stance, however, is often as slight as it is successful. The atmosphere of alienation- the snack bar snobberies, the double-dealings of legislators and educators, the frat boy frolics- is well sustained. So too are the interviews (faculty and students, Hamilton's family, Charlayne's friends); the dialogue has a tape-recorded rightness, and Trillin's legwork is impressive. Spunky Charlayne comes off best. ""I get so involved"", she said, ""that sometimes I get to thinking I'm human"". Hamilton's scholarly horn-rimmed stoicism isn't quite as appealing. At its strongest, lucid living-history.