A very sweet book, a set of personal recollections from childhood
to emerging manhood. Its style suggests William Maxwell and the New
Yorker School of Memory Lane, along with the Deep South sensibility
of Carson McCullers and Tennessee Williams. But the author has a
purity and appeal all his own; ??her is frank but not clamorously
confessional, he is self-involved but never irritatingly
introspective. There's a wonderful innocence running through these
pages; also a hard-won honesty with each event eliciting its little
insight or illumination. The scene is Georgia in the '20's and
'30's, the small town people his family and friends: there's the
father he hardly knew, a boozer and a wanderer; the mother to whom
he is over-attached but whom he leaves; the estrangement with his
brother; the schools and the jobs; the world of adolescence and the
self- awakening other world of rebellion, romance and the
relationship with Butch, his buddy. Lastly the pulling-up-stakes at
19 and the journey to New York. The author is Donald Windham, noted
for his novel The Dog Star. Windham has never written very much,
but here as elsewhere, what he writes contains a calm, candid
lyricism, a sensitive awareness of life's possibilities and
pitfalls. (Kirkus Reviews)
Emblems of Conduct is the simple, moving memoir of the
Depression-era youth in Atlanta of novelist Donald Windham. When
the author was six, his father left him, his brother, and his
mother. Windham's recollections contrast the emotional weather of
childhood with the memory of a devoted mother struggling alone to
maintain family harmony in the face of mounting financial turmoil.
Windham eloquently relates the often idyllic time his family lived
in the Victorian home of his grandparents on historic Peachtree
Street. Tempering these memories are Windham's recollections of
such trials as the loss of the family "homeplace" and a move to the
newly constructed Techwood Homes housing project. As Windham grows
aware of the restraints placed upon him by his life, he becomes no
longer willing to accept an expected career with the Coca-Cola
company, where he has started to work making barrels. Spurred on by
newfound friendships, weekend excursions, and his love of books,
Windham increasingly yearns for a world beyond Atlanta. Finally, at
nineteen, he leaves for New York, intending never to return.
Praised as "a masterpiece" by Georges Simenon, Windham's tale is at
once a portrait of a bygone era in Atlanta and a moving statement
about the physical and spiritual need of youth to take risks.
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