THE LAND THAT TOUCHES MINE

     The Land That Touches Mine by John Sanford. Jonathan Cape (1953), 251 pp.
    During World War II a twenty-something soldier who calls himself Stan Clarke is hitchhiking his way down the California coast. He has a bandaged hand, a Purple Heart ribbon and no specific destination. He goes inland, finally ending up outside El Centro. There he gets a lift from Jean Bell, a carhop in her early thirties whose husband has been killed in the war. She invites him to spend the night. Their consequent relationship is marked by hard-edged banter in which Jean tries to get Stan to reveal what has made him a “piss-poor proud gent that can’t even get along with himself.” It takes a while, but eventually she learns the truth.
    This is one of California’s most self-consciously literary novels. The third-person narrator never calls the main characters by name, referring to them only as “the soldier” and “the woman.” The narrative is often interrupted by Stan’s thoughts, printed in italics and relayed in the second person. These are usually flashbacks to events in which he feels he behaved discreditably. Chapters begin with poems that focus on injustices in American history. Sanford is trying to equate Stan’s personal shortcomings, incessant thoughts of which are making him angry and depressed, and the wrongs and hypocrisies of the United States, with which (it turns out) he is very familiar. Whether the author pulls this off is open to question. Readers who are looking for something unusual (and are not overly annoyed by implausibly pugnacious dialog) might well enjoy the book.