LACK CLOUD, WHITE CLOUD

Two long and two short stories by the author of the Fellowship winning A Family's Affairs have similar settings, somnolent small towns in Mississippi, and a prevailing concern, the liaison between white and Negro-here reduced to the person-to-person attachment (and protective patronage). As one character says, she had tried to wipe out ""the universal guilt"" through this one small area of her life. Of the four, Jesse is the flimsiest, setting forth the facts of the early life of a now aging old Negro musician; I Just Love Carrie Lee is a sharper sketch; The House on the Bluff contrasts the conflicting influences of a woman and her faithful servant on the boy who grows up between them; and Hold On (a New Yorker appearance for this one) has real dramatic and emotional power. Mrs. Douglas is a fine writer, and her stories are gravid with a sense of place (where the seasons hang heavy and time is at a standstill). The Shirley Ann Grau audience is the closest to approximate.