A Declaration of Independence
Exploring Early America
Books Received

A Declaration of Independence
A historical novelist paints a bloody picture of the Haitian Revolution

All Souls' Rising
Madison Smartt Bell '79
Pantheon, $25.95
By the late 1700s, French colonials had entrenched themselves on the island of Saint Domingue, ruling over vast sugar cane and coffee plantations through a brutal system of native enslavement. At the same time, interracial commingling had become so complex that the social-status scale recognized 64 degrees of color, though many people were denied even the most basic of freedoms. Before the blacks and mulattoes could successfully reclaim their island, now known as Haiti, a great deal of blood was shed on both sides, with a maximum of cruelty. The grand blancs who tortured the mulattoes and impaled native infants on spears were repaid in kind during a terrifying decade of shifting allegiances and guerrilla warfare.
Madison Smartt Bell's eighth novel, All Souls' Rising, is that most difficult of forms, the long historical novel, in this instance an attempt to make sense of the incidents surrounding the Haitian fight for independence. Such a multilayered narrative is too broad and various for any one outlook, and in fact we see the growing conflict through a variety of perspectives, from plantation owners to slaves. But the main viewpoint is that of Dr. Antoine Hébert, a newcomer to the island, as appalled and fascinated by the darkness as Conrad's Marlow.
As the embodiment of 18th-century science and rationality, Hébert is an apt foil for the characters he meets as he penetrates deeper and deeper into the dark mouth of Haiti. His antitype is Riau, a rebel native who feels his way by intuition, providing a voice that flickers in and out of the narration, yet is as abiding as the lush-island landscape with its gommier and acajou trees.
On his way to the interior, Hébert encounters Arnaud, an aristocratic planter who beats and also sleeps with his slaves, as well as his wife, Claudine, who is capable of both awesome cruelty and self-sacrifice. The panoply of characters includes the brutal insurgent leader Choufleur, who orders people flayed alive; the jovial priest Père Bonne- chance, who has seriously compromised his vow of chastity; and Toussaint, a mulatto who represents the main hope for balance in the midst of horror. The events commence around 1791 during the first major uprisings. By the time they are over in 1804, the cane fields have been razed, and the earth is groaning with mutilated corpses.
Though Bell happens to be one of the best prose stylists around today, scenes of destruction and creation bring out a lyricism that seems almost worshipful. All Souls' Rising is riddled with sex and death, the two poles to which Bell has always been drawn. The way in which the mulatto woman Nanon temporarily takes over Hébert's body in her bedroom-"Cell by cell he was being strained into her"-is sheer poetry. But there are equally poetic evocations of men dismembered, skinned, and broken on the wheel; and this is where some readers may wish Bell weren't quite so graphic. The opening of the novel, for example, lingers on a crude crucifixion of a woman who has murdered her illegitimate baby.
The palliative to such strokes is an enduringly beautiful accuracy. Bell's language has always shown uncanny mimetic precision, whether it's evoking the urban hoods in Waiting for the End of the World or the southern racists in Soldier's Joy (Bell himself is a native of Tennessee but clearly a global citizen). In All Souls' Rising, he shows a painter's flair in conveying how blood gushes on a bare chest, a political acumen to explain the intricacies of contemporary French government, and even a naturalist's eye that microscopically registers the termites at the plantation house: "They would gnaw until they had carried the whole grand'case back to the jungle in their jaws." Conrad's famous directive for the writer's task, "before all, to make you see," seems entirely apt here.
The main perils for this kind of historical novel are a confusion of characters and an overreliance on expository dialogue to explain who's fighting for what. The narration avoids these problems by concentrating on the details that matter, the way a human being's fate can be decided by a choice of dress or a postprandial walk. In short, Bell has found a perfect marriage between content and style in retelling the story of the Haitian revolution. The book also rests upon massive research, from descriptions of the native medicinal herbs to the finer points of cane agriculture, from renditions of the local patois to the stately clauses in a letter sent to the French government in Paris. The novel begins with both a preface and a prologue, ending with a chronology of events and a glossary of terms. And of course there's some voodoo, reflecting an interest that Bell has shown since his first novel, The Washington Square Ensemble. At over 500 pages, perhaps this volume could have been shorter, but it wouldn't have had the same breadth and weight.
The last section, "Illumination," stands simultaneously for the destructive glare of fire as well as the dawning comprehension about the futility of color wars-which are still going on today, as Bell acknowledges. All Souls' Rising is a stunning achievement in recreating an era that sheds light on our own.
-David Galef '81
David Galef is a novelist and critic who lives in Oxford, Mississippi. His novel, Flesh, was reviewed in the November 22 PAW.

Exploring Early America
Colonial America: A Traveler's Guide
Patricia and Robert Foulke '52
The Globe Pequot Press, $14.95 paper
Planning a trip to the site of a former colonial settlement is made easier with Patricia and Robert Foulke's Colonial America. The book, which is half historical narrative, half travel guide, explores forts, churches, inns, houses, museums, reenactments, and festivals from Machias, Maine, to St. Augustine, Florida. Each chapter is devoted to a state, and the authors describe places to visit, including New Hampshire's Canterbury Shaker Village, Ponce de Leon's Fountain of Youth in St. Augustine, Plymouth Plantation, and Salem's Witch House, once the home of a judge in the witch trials of the 1690s. (Included are addresses and phone numbers of sites.) Colonial America also examines the social and cultural history of everyday life-architecture, clothing, food, transportation, occupations, religious practices, customs, and folklore. Sprinkled throughout the text are sidebars that detail interesting facts, customs, and characteristics of the time. For instance, the reader learns about "courting mirrors," which were part of dating ritual. If a girl looked into the mirror, the male caller could continue courting. But if she turned the mirror face down, this meant she had turned him down, and he would have to leave.
-Kathryn F. Greenwood

Books Received
Bonnie Blair, Power on Ice
Wendy Daly '76
Random House, $3.99 paper

Navajo Multi-Household
Social Units: Archaeology on
Black Mesa, Arizona
Thomas R. Rocek '77
University of Arizona Press, $50

Equivocal Beings: Politics,
Gender, and Sentimentality in
the 1790s-Wollstonecraft, Radcliffe, Burney, Austen
Claudia L. Johnson *81
University of Chicago Press,
$34.95 cloth, $14.95 paper

Understanding China's Economy
Gregory C. Chow (professor of
political economy)
World Scientific, Suite 1B, 1060 Main Street, River Edge, NJ 07661.
$33 paper