RAW MATERIAL

Rather extraordinary detachment for an objective self analysis in an autobiography that reveals a life through topical influences rather than chronological development. Through this process, one sees the molding of an artist, his home environment of culture, traditions and aesthetic appreciation; his schooling, and the pall cast by Groton and its snobbery and self-satisfaction and assumption of the rightness of the Groton mold; Harvard, and the discovery of intellectual freedom and of physical expression through rowing; science -- archaeology and anthropology, the Mayan Guatemala and Mexico, and the life of New Orleans French Quarter, where sex found new meaning in his eyes; and then the period when the Indians became an obsession and a revelation. And throughout, the thread of his writing, of success(with Laughing Boy) and relative failure as he groped for new expression--and a marriage which fulfilled him, enriched him. There are briefly glimpsed scenes at h, from boyhood on. There are occasional meetings with other minds and spirits. But it is almost wholly an unfolding of the man himself. Now -- in the ATC -- he is finding new expression.