GRIST On-Line

Review of Fielding Dawson's The Orange in the Orange

by Robert Bové

"The Orange in the Orange" is the novella in Fielding Dawson's new book, The Orange in the Orange: A Novella & Two Stories. The "orange in" would be the other orange, the presence that needs no name, that just is, that inspires from outside the black-on-white pages, draws writer to it. (Does one think of a color or a piece of fruit or a shape or a sound or a smell when one sees the word orange?) It is also a presence unnameable, this "orange," and it could just as well be "onion." As in my favorite nickname for New York City--not as absurd Big Apple, but as Big Onion. Sensual to the point of pain. Plenty of tears. No core. Like life.

Dawson peels away at himself, in the hero-teacher character, with zeal and more deeply than he has before. Sure, it's the setting, in prison, where he teaches writing, kind of forces the issue. A prison building is a spectacle for all of us outside, but inside everything is detail. Detail requires alertness, and in prison there are penalties for lack of alertness. The teacher of prisoners is a spectacle until he or she proves otherwise. Pronto.

This book goes way against the grain of the entertainment culture, of industrial-strength spectacle; Dawson's always been interested in the mind at work. In The Orange in the Orange, the mind is working overtime, but the reader who works along with writer gets paid time-and-a-half. Reading Dawson, one is never ashamed of having idled away one's time on literary bon-bons. On the contrary, the pay-off is heightened alertness. With prison building being the fastest growing industry in the U.S... Fill in the blanks.


(c) copyright 1995 by Robert Bové. Original GRIST On-Line publication.
The Orange in the Orange: A Novella & Two Stories, (c) copyright 1995 by Fielding Dawson, Black Sparrow Press, 24 Tenth Street, Santa Rosa, CA 95401. $13.50 paper. $25.00 cloth trade.
GRIST On-Line. July 1995. HTTP://www.phantom.com/~grist
Contributing Editor: Robert Bové
E-Mail: rbove@duke.poly.edu