Givon Review Excerpts

[James E Copeland]

Folks,
I have been overwhelmed with requests for copies of reviews of  Tom Givon's
"Running Through the Tall Grass". In order to respond to all at once I'm
risking your disfavor by posting some excerpts on the Net. .. well, it's
applied linguistics -- just as Eco was applied semiotics.
Jim Copeland

Reviews (and Quotes from Reviews) of Thomas Givon's "Running Through the
Tall Grass"

THE PORTLAND OREGONIAN (August 3, 1997)

INTO THE HEART OF MADNESS
   by Helen E. Heltzel ,   Oregonian Book Editor

With "Running Through the Tall Grass", Givon has a winner.

Residence in Marseilles included front-row seat on Algeria.

...Thomas Givon, the redneck professor, doesn't fit anyone's idea of what
an academic should look like. His sailor's cap and the toothpick dangling
from his lips tell you right away he's no pipe-and-tweeds kind of fellow...
Givon, a lone wolf who has grabbed life by the lapels while simultaneously
earning [his academic degrees]...brings the strength of both worlds to his
new novel, "Running Through the Tall Grass". A book that combines adventure
story with character study and a vivid snapshot of a turbulent piece of
recent history, it is one of the best works of fiction to come out of the
Pacific Northwest in recent memory...Because Givon was on hand observing
much of the action, his novel has a ring of authenticity that could exist
only by being there. Yet it also displays a novelist's gift, including the
ability to tell a story and delineate characters, and a keen ear for the
written word...

...Central to Givon's story are the Pieds Noirs, literally black feet,
which was the condescending name the French gave their Algerian countrymen.
France looked down on this melange of foreigners who settled the Algerian
shores. But to the Pieds Noirs themselves, the French connection was their
obsession... Not unlike "The English Patient", Michael Ondaatje's
celebrated novel, "Running Through the Tall Grass" envelopes the reader
with its lyrical language, its limited cast of characters and a plot that
insistently moves forward... Givon started what became "Running Through the
Tall Grass" in the late 1960s. He saw great material in the Pieds Noirs,
but "...I knew I had to get to Katanga to end the story...". His method: to
enroll in another doctoral program back in the States, this time in
linguistics, and apply for a fellowship to study Bantu languages in the
Congo. So far so good. But when Givon completed his novel in the early
1970s, his agent couldn't sell it. Givon blames the influence of the French
writer Albert Camus, who had been, quite coincidentally, a pieds noirs.
"...I was in my existential stage. It is a deadly style of writing [though
it did work for Camus...]" Givon recalls...

Although publicity for the new novel refers to this as Givon's "literary
debut", "Running Through the Tall Grass" is actually his second novel. His
first came out in 1966. Givon says "...it sank without a trace, thank God.
It was terrible..."... He is currently working on his third novel, "Too
Late for the Revolution" [HarperCollins, slated for Winter 1998]...

He has created a novel that is both enjoyable and worthwhile.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

FROM KIRKUS REVIEW (June 1, 1997):

...A riveting first novel with current topical settings and
themes--Algeria, the Congo, ultra-right terrorism--impressively evokes the
closed and obsessive lives of men who operate beyond the law...The author's
origins and experience give his story--about the protagonist Robert
Aron--an authority that makes it as edgy as a conventional thriller and as
precisely reported as a news story. But Robert's tale, told by three main
characters, is essentially an ambitious study of men who become obsessed to
the point of madness with causes and killing. Two of them, Robert and Jojo,
both born in Algeria, join the Foreign Legion straight out of school and
begin fighting France's colonial wars--first in Indochina, then in Algeria
itself. As the story opens in 1962, Marie, Robert's girlfriend, relates how
Robert and Jojo desert from the Foreign Legion when France [proposed to
give] Algeria its independence and joined the OAS, an underground
right-wing organization that [fights] to keep Algeria French. An attack
organized by Jojo on a[n Arab] hospital so sickens Robert that he decides
to leave the OAS and be repatriated, like so many French Algerians [Pieds
Noirs] to France, where Marie will join him. But Jojo, the second narrator,
has other plans...[He] forces Robert at gun-point to go an fight with him
in the Belgian Congo in the midst of the [Katanga secession, as mercenaries
in support of Moisé Tchombé]... A despairing Robert relates the third
section: a haunting record of cruelty and mindless violence as the now
deranged Jojo keeps killing... A brief epilogue from Marie offers closure,
if not confort... Givon's debut is a stunning portrait of men of action who
can't, or won't, stop.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Quotes from    TheWall Street Journal, July 29, 1997.

Art of the Debut. By Merle Rubin

...Mr. Givon's novel, "Running Through the Tall Grass" (HarperCollins, 288
pages, $23), examines the plight of the Pieds Noirs, Algeria's French
colonials, many of whom felt bitterly betrayed by their mother-country when
Charles de Gaulle negotiated a settlement with the Arab-led National
Liberation Front in 1962.
        In a poignant posthumous novel , Albert Camus, himself a pied noir,
movingly evoked the vanished world of the displaced persons, most of them
poor immigrants from France, Alsace, Italy, Greece and Spain, who came to
be viewed as oppressors of the disenfranchised Arab populace. Mr. Givon's
book is more of a thriller, focusing on the activities of the outlawed
Secret Army Organization, which conducted a terrorist campaign against the
Arabs and French authorities, including a failed assassination attempt on
de Gaulle himself ( the subject of another thriller, "Day of the Jackal").

... Tautly written and vividly imagined, "Running Through the Tall Grass"
is a gripping tale of suspense and a heart-rending story of a lost soul.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


HOUSTON CHRONICLE

Strong novel conveys strife of country battling colonialism

     By STEVEN E. ALFORD

RUNNING THROUGH THE TALL GRASS
By Thomas Givon. HarperCollins ($23)

Thomas Givon's absorbing and accomplished novel is an instructive inquiry
into the disordered yet passionate conflicts --historical, ethnic and
national -- visited on Algeria as it sought to liberate itself from the
French. Without imbuing his narrative with an ideological agenda, Givon
manages to portray the complexity of a society striving to [deal with the
corrosive legacy of] colonialism...

...As Thomas Flanagan's "Year of the French" did for Ireland, "Running
Through the Tall Grass" uncovers the spines between the heterogeneous
layers of a diverse Algerian society. It vividly portrays the blood, the
passion, the brutality, and the panoramic messiness of a polyglot society
attempting to spawn a new identity from heterogeneous groups vying for
dominance.

This novel is an impressive achievement, and given the current activity of
religious extremists in Algeria, one worthy of our attention.
**************
Steven E. Alford teaches film and literature at Nova Southeastern
University in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

James E. Copeland
Chair
Department of Linguistics
Rice University
Houston, TX 77252-1892
Office: (713) 285-5150
Home: (713) 666-9582
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