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Book Review: Encyclopedic Directory of Ethnic Newspapers and Periodicals in the United States

himself in a particular sort of egotism peculiar to Gypsiologists. He passes himself off as Gypsy, deceiving even his best Gypsy friends, and delights in informing readers of telling fortunes and of being offered Gypsy brides. Liberally scattered through the text are Romany vocabulary, usually untranslated and for no apparent purpose except to demonstrate the author's competence in the language. Eventually he buys his own tent, and devotes the final chapter of the book to telling his readers about it: "All winter I had been dreaming of this: a tent in a Gypsy camp, a tent of my own, where I could be the host". These deceptions are not easily read without a wince in our present consciousness regarding accountability to informants. Not only was Brown a naive romantic and overly fond of a florid writing style but he was something of a racist to boot. While there is little indication of bigotry (he in fact evidences great empathy for his Gypsy informants), he describes the social world in terms of racial categories, to which he attributes all sorts of psychological and cultural characteristics. Thus, Gypsies are "a southern race, extremely passionate" (p. 32), all are "like children" (p. 96), "all Gypsies everywhere have prodigious memories" (p. 109), all are "born actors" (p. 159), and so on. There is a clear implication that the purer the Gypsy bloodline, the better the character of the individual. Other ethnic groups are treated similarly. (See, for example, his negative stereotype of a Jewish trader, (pp. 161-162). There are other errors of omission and interpretation. Brown, unfortunatley, gives us nothing at all regarding Gypsy social organization of the period. His ideas regarding psychoanalysis (pp. 96-10I) are naive in the extreme. His interpretation of bride service (p. 222) is unique, but otherwise unpraiseworthy. His prediction of the imminent end of brideprice (p. 56) has not yet proved accurate, despite the nearly fifty years which have passed. It is easy, and not quite fair, to criticize a book written so many years ago. Nearly all of its deficiencies can be attributed to the times and the genre in which it was written. And despite them, the book has a certain usefulness. Through his anecdotes, the author draws a valuable sketch of life during the earliest period of an American Gypsy community. Especially interesting is his data regarding relations between newly arrived Gypsies and other immigrants. The perseverance and reshaping of interethnic relations after migration is an intriguing topic, often ignored in the emphasis on assimilation. It would be nice to have had a social scientist of that day who was interested in these topics. In lieu of the analyses which he might have left, we must be thankful for the vividdescription left by Brown.