Booksby lobn Gardner NOVELS The Resurrection The Wreckageof Agarhon Grendel The Sunlight Dialopes Nickel Mounrain

October Light In the SuicideMountains Freddy'sBook Mickelsson's Ghosts Sdllness and Shadows NONFICTION The Life and Times of Chaucer The Poetry of Chaucer On Moral Ficrion On Becominga Novelist The An of Fiction STORIES The King's Indian The An of Living and Orher Stories POETRY Jasonand Medeia TRANSLATION Gilgamesh (witb Jobn Maier) FORCHILDREN Dragon, Dragon Gudgekin the Thistle Girl and Other Thles The King of the Hummingbirdsand Other Thles

onWiters &Witins
byJohn Gardner O

MJFBOOr(S NEWYORK

Publishedby MJF Books Fine Communications 322 Eighth Avenue New York, NY 10001 On Writers and Writing LC Control Number 2002112163

rsBN t-5673-600-X r
Copyright @ 1994 by the Estateof John Gardner Introduction @ 1994 by CharlesJohnson Publishing, This edition publishedby arrangement with Perseus a member of The PerseusBooks Group. or All rights reserved. part of this publication may be reproduced No transmitted in any form or by any means,electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storageand retrieval system,without the prior written permissionof the publisher. Manufactured in the United Statesof America on acid-freepaper m MJF Books and the MJF colophon are trademarksof Fine Creative Media, [nc. BG IO 9

8 7 6

Cor.rTENTs

I N r R o D U c r r o Ny C H A R L Eo H N s o N n JS "Bartleby":An and SocialCommitment An InvectiraAgainstMere Fiction It tt tt 60 More Smogfrom the Dark Satanic Mills Witchcraftn Bulla Park, by John Chee\cr Alice in Wonderland, kwis Carnrll by TbeBreast, Philip Roth by The W^y We Write Now Saint Walt 78 86 g0 gt 6t 70 I

TbeAdamturn, by Paul Zweig

Beyond BedrowtWall, by Larry Woiwode tbe IR, by William Gaddis

(Your)of (Plastic) Amber (Get) Waves Grain (Uncle Sam) l0l Tbe Aas of King Anbur and His NobleKnigbts, by John Steinbeck I 12 Larcelot, WalkerPercy by Falconn, John Cheerrer by I 19 | 24

vi /

coNrENrs I t0

Tbe Castle Crossed ol' Destinies, ltalo Calvino by Daniel Martin, by John Fowles Tbe Stories lobn Cbeeaer I4t of Dubin's Liaes, Bernard Malamud by Sopbie's Cboice, William Styron by Bellellrur, JoyceCarol Oates by Fiction in MSS What WritersDo Canoons 228 212 216 149 tt4 I t4 140

TbeSilmarillion, J.R. R. Tolkien by

A Writer's View of Contemporary Fiction American 199 20t

I6t

Italian Folktales, editedby ltalo Calvino

and the Werewolf 2 t 7 Julius Caesar General Plan for TbeSunligbtDialogues 2 t 8 Illonx 289

INTRODUCTIOI{

A O T .T H E D A Y O F H I S F A T A L M O T O R C Y C L E C C I I dent on September14, 1982,on a lonely though not panicularly County, Pennsyldangerous curving stretchof road in Susquehanna vania, embattledadvocate higher anistic and for John Gardner,the moral standards our fiction, was snatchedat age fony-nine from in the stage contemporaryAmerican literature beforewe could propof erly measure eitherhis contributionto literary culture or the man himself. In the wake of his staggeringly prolific, driven, and very public life as a popular novelist,critic, teacher,and classics scholar,he left behind a workroom loaded with intriguing projects,some recendy completed,like his widely usedhandbook on craft TlteArt of Fiction; some unfinished,like his proposedopus Sbadouss; some works, and such as the novel Stillness, written for the purpose of "self-therapy" during his stormy first marritge,that he might not havepublishedin the form given to us posthurnously. There were, of course,rurnors flying that his death was suicide,that he willingly rode the rnachine '79 that became one of his symbols,a Harley-Davidson bog,into oblivion. But asalways truth is otherwise,more banalthan rumor, and the far more illustrativeof the missionthat made him one of the most inventivenovelistsand outstandingwriting teachersof our time: he died en route to yet anothermeetingwith one of his students the at

v i i i/

oN wRrrERS AND wRrrrNG

StateUniversityof New York (SuNn0-Binghamton,with yet another stackof manuscripts strapped the backof his black,monstrous to bike. As one foot soldierin that coa$-to-coast of young artistshe army inspiredand influencedforever, his perhaps only blackformer apprentice (for reasons don't know, he alsoclaimed now publishing I Toni Morrison),my filing cabinet,indeedmy entire horne,groans wirh material by and aboutGardner,for it washis peculiartrait, like D. H. Larvrence, to externalize the pageeverything felt, thought,and experienced on he as a way of taking control of his life. One library wall in rny house holdsa still life he painted 1980,a present me and my wife when in to we bought our first home in Seattle(a city he disliked,though he nevertold me why); it is balanced either side by his lovely Lord on "On Books" (a paeanto their physicalbeauty) broadside John Press and his eulogistic friend, sculptorNicholasVergene, poem to his dearest who died of cancerin 197+.Thirty of his books,criticisffi, translations, poetry and adult and children's fiction stretching from TbeForms (1986) fill one bookshelfin of Fiaion (1962) rc Stillness Sbadows and my study,along with copiesof his literary journal MSS (in its earliest incarnationhe published earlyworks byJoyceCarol OatesandWilliam Gass),and no lessthan ten critical volumeson his work that range interof from studies his major novelsto his shon fiction to collected (he gavemore than 140).On the shelfbelow sitshis photograph' views his in he peersout from the fraffi,tired, shorthaired 1982, wearing from the Dunhill tobaccosmokestreaming sweater, black fisherman's is in pipe in his mouth. Somewhere one of my deskdrawers one of ago his big churchwarden pipeshe gaveme two decades in an effon to wean me off cigarettes. of I envelopes havestacks his letters(someof our In disorganized to is correspondence in a specidcolleaion devoted him at the University of Delaware,and has been edited by ^ black graduatestudent);the copy for producedradio and theaterplays("The TemptationGame," "Helen at Home") and unproduced ones("Death and the Maiden") of videompes the low-budget for opera librettosand musicalcomedies; Mountain andthe animated novel Nickel on film based his best-selling (which I know disappointed him, being the Walt versionof Grendel public-television Disney fan he was), plus a tape of his freewheeling Dickey and William Price "Wrirer's Workshop" interyiewwith James Universityof South of Fox before an audience baffledyet enchanred

TNTRODUCTION ix /

(to Carolinastudents whom he-relaxed, longhaired,and handsome jacketand maybea little drunk-said, "What htPin his blackleather when you havea really fine characteris that you get not only pens of a sense that kind of person in that kind of town but yourself and everybodyaroundyou. Finally you get a kind of control over the uni' from having understoodother people"); verse,a kind of fearlessness on handwritten essays the nature of moral an he gaveme when he guided me through the composition of my novel Faitb and tbe Good on Ttting; his lecture notes (faded dittos now) from classes the epic and black literaturehe taught at Southern lllinois University in the early 1970s;yellowedbook reviews(happily,most are now collected prefaces, addition to Gardner scholarship), in this extremelyrnaluable he introductions,lettersto the editor, and statemenm wrote for popular journds, now-defunctpublications,and to endorse obscure magazines, noralslong forgotten;and his early interviews,one of which he granted as a favor to me onJanuary 21, 1973, when I was a young repofter and philosophymaster's-degree studentat Southern Illinois University. There he confessed affection for the works of R. G. Collingwood his and Alfred Nonh Whitehead, his belief in the "connectedness"of all life, his disdainfor most famouswriters at the time, then, in a way both grim and optimistic, concluded' I think a cenain kind of America is doomed, though something greater may be coming. The noralist and only the norrelist thriveson breakdown,because that's the moment when he can analyze beauty of the valuesthat are falling and risthe ing. . . . The end of a great civilization is always e great moment for {iction. When the old Englandat the end of the nineteenth century fell, dong cameDickens;when Russia fell apan, alongcame Tolstoy. . . . One looks forward to the fall of great civilizations becauseit grvesus grear arr. Over two decades I've returned again and again to this profusion of archiraldocuments, rmembering minutiae about the man, his work, and alwaysI come to the sameconclusion,that no American fiction writer in our generationwill be able to match the incredible ambition, the unusualaesthetic project-two pans Dickensean and one pan Sanrean-that this farm boy from up$ate New York broughr to Yankee literature in the postwar years.

x /

oN wRTTERS AND WRTTTNG

I was rwenty-four yearsold when I drifted into his orbit, and perhaps he saw me as an oddity among his other Carbondalestudents,not bagage I brou$t I simply because wasblack but in termsof the creatirre dong behind m: two publishedbooks of comic srt; rDorethan a thousand individual political drawings,some of which he'd encountered on the editorial pages the town newspaper, Soztbmt lllinoisan; of the and an early how-to-draw PBS seriesI'd hosted,which most likely he'd seenwhen flipping channels(he wouldn't have missedthe first seasonof "Kung Fu"). I say oddity becaus, the only professional s canoonist among his Southern lllinois writers, my imagination and creativeskills at the time were directedtoward a stylized,broad-stroke forrn of expression-caricature, boiling things down to their essential visual traits-that Gardner himself favored in his favorite writers (for "Cartoonsl' in this volsuch influenceon his work seehis lively essay were six novelsI'd written in the two ume). Included in my baggage years before I met Gardner, all heavily influencedby the Black Ans mo\ement and authorsI then admired(RichardWright, JamesBaldwin, John A. Williams). Naturdly, I knew of him beforewe met in the fall in WritingJ' which convened of 1972 in his workshop "Professional the eveningat his farnhouse on Boskelell Road.Like R. Buckminster Fuller, he was a local celebrity, particularly after he published Grtndel, which cementedhis reputation among critics. Friends of mine took and spoke with excitementabout him; they also his English classes, for said he was the bitrerestman they'd ever known-this because fifreen yearshe wrote in vinud obscuriry as an underpublishedauthor whose closet spilled open with brilliant, original fiction. Enrolling in his course, I wasn't sure what to expect. What I did know after pounding out six norels,and readingaswidely as I could in literature and philosophy as well as every handbook on craft and theory I could find, was that after writing a million words of fiction I neededa good teacher,a genuinementor, a senior crafts' mythan mine whom I could aPPrentice man wirh grearerexperience That what I'd alreadydiscovered. self to, adding what he'd learnedto should havebroughr me, six book'length manuscripts circumstances under my arm, ro rhe Gardners' home on a rainy Septembernight is one of those formarive,fork-in-the-roaderantsin my life that I have neler fully been able to unkey. A few editorswho'd rejectedmy fiction remarked that I could stand improvementon such mattersas "voice"

INTRoDUcTIoN / xi

and "prose rhythml' Gardner'sreply wls, "Oh, I can help you with tbatl' And it was rru: he prided himself, as a trailblazerof the New on Fiction that arosein the early 1970s, his prodigiousunderstanding of technique,his gift for voice and narrativeventriloquislrt,his magisterial, musical prose,which, for example,in the opening Paragraph 'John Napper SailingThrough the Universe," achieved of his srory fused poetic lines that seamlessly nearly perfectpitch in fully cadenced, idea. He was, I learnedsoon enough, so immersedin modimageand that on any occasionin his philosophies ern, medieral,and classical campus,or at a pafty, he could office, in his car, aswe wdked across about the history of ideasand questions my graduate-student answer offer, dways ro my shock,his own thought-prorokingopinion on the of and weaknesses any Westernmetaphysicd system-as well srrengths of asopinions,alwaysfresh,about any aspect theater,painting, sculpture, music, or popular culture. Tiue enough, there were in the early 1970s a few good authors teachingcreativewriting (which, incidentally,Gardner once told me was "a joke" in terms of how it was then approached,a touchy-feely affar with little foundation in skill acquisition),and any one of them could haveaddedto my repeftoireof technique. John Banh, say,with our most likely because whom Gardner felt a certain competitiraness, herdded him u tbe high priest of literary invennationd magazines tion. Or his friend William Gass,whose symphonicdly orchestrated books he often praised.But for tbislllinois colored boy raisedhappily in the African Methodist Episcopalchurch in a Chicago suburb by hardworking father and a mother with the soul of an a conservative, it actress, was Gardner's personality,not just his knowledge of tecbne, that madehim both an artist and a human being I could deeply respect. experimentalUnlike his equally skillful postmoderncontemporaries, istsand polytechnicalinnovatorswho rolled their eyesor looked confounded when the touchy subjectof religion or spirituality came up, Gardner-the son of a sermonizer-was as frank and fonhcoming as Flannery O'Connor about'the significance morality and the life of of the spirit in literature. He praisedmy charactersin Faitb for their "dignityl' a characteristic complainedwas missingin so many stories, he despair, all by acclaimed authors,who (he felt) wdlowed in fashionable entropy,defeatism, cheapfireworks,and a cynical vision of humankind. (By the way, for the ancientGreeks,the word cynicmeant "doglike:')

xii/

oN wRrrERs AND wRrrrNG

Gardner, and perhap ml! Gardner, had the courage say,ashe does s to 'A in Writer's View of Contemporary American Fiction," rhat "at a conservative estimate,90 percentof the so-cdlednew fiction is soporificl' Read' boring, despiteits dazzling originality. Added to that, and mo$ imponant of all, I saw in Gardner's boundlessself-confidence passion writing in the early '70s exand for actly the same do-or-die love I had since my teensfor drawing. For Gardner, writing wils not a "career."It was not so pedestrian enteran prise as to be ranked among the various professions from which we might freely choose-doctor, lawler, soldier,or stockbroker.On the contrary it was more like a calling. ("Fiction is the only religion I have," he told a Nru York TimesSunday Magazine reviewer.)It was one way for men and wornen to make their smb at immonality, heal the conflicted human heart, transcendthe idiociesof daily life (yet help us at the sametime seehow heroism can residein ordinary living), and celebratethe Good. Sometimesit seemed if Gardner was as interestedin nothing shon of fiaion worthy of winning a writer lasting fame (glory) basedon-and here is the trick-hard-won achievement. When pushed to the wall about his preferences, seemed approaed it he he of nothirg less,and in our conferences and conversations pushed roughly, to imagineharderand with greater me gently, then sornetimes in for precisionof detail, write with fairness everycharacter my book, and hold in contempt any sentenceI composedthat fell below the I'd level of the best sentence everwritten. He wasa teacherwho could of fill you to orarflowing with confidence.He wasalsocapable woundoff ing you in rhe most painful way by pulling the covers your conceits (his image)-before you. and holding them up-like a puppy by its ears 'A Writer's View of ContemporaryAmericanFictionl' which In fictiond visionsin terms of their relationshipto relinicely caregorizes gion, Gardner identifies himself as a "troubled Christian onhodox writerl' Can anyonewho knew him doubt that he sawsomethingakin to sdvation in an? Late one spring afternoon I droveto his farmhouse to pick up one of my chapters.He sat done in the house that dry ar the long, mead hall-sizetable in his dining room, drinking whiskey from a Mason jar and editing a home movie, a western, his family and friends had written and performed. On the table nearbywere recenr reviews of lason and Medeia.Many of them were negative.One reviewerhad calledGardner a"clever studentl' l knew thesenotices

rNrRoDUCrloN

him. Timidly, I noddedtoward the reviews, and disappointed angered him what he thought, and he replied quietly, hardly looking asked up from his editing machine,"They just try to keep you from getting to heaven." All this was heady stuff for me; it was preciselythe kick-in-thewake-upcdl that I'd been hungering for a teacher fanny, challenging ro give me. Unbeknownst to him, I took notes on even his casual architectonicnovel Tbe remarksabout fiction. I readhis three-decker, flagging every linguistic with a pencil in my fist, SuntigbtDialoguss and device,srraregy, techniqueI did not know. I orderedall his earlier of works of criticism.And sincethe melodicsubstructure his bestProse the first chapterof Th Wrerkage rne, fascinated I copiedout in longhand with, but by transcribingeach of Agatbon a work he felt disappointed that, as I turned from onto a notepad I discovered of his senrences I couldfttl how his next sentencehad to flow, one pagero anorher, what metricd beatsit neededto have,even if I had no idea what its conrent might be. Slowly, I beganto see.Gradually, a picture of man of the By and method beganto emerge. degrees, musicallogos his fiction becamesomethingI was able to intuit and feel from within, &s well as the greateranistic gameplan behind his challenginghimself or from book to book, story to story, by selectingdifferent classical contemporary literary forms (or severalcombined) to serve as the shapeor mold for his stories-a mold he could ground, the general reconfigpreas he wrote, and at the sametime use to stay in touch with other writers, living and dead,who'd also used that form. At dinner one evening heardhis wife, Joan,joke about the archaic I language Gardnerdisplayed lasonand Medeia;she said it was there in because she'dchidedhim about not having any "big words" in his novels.So Gardnertook his m4gniryinggl*s and wdked thnrugh every word in Tbe CompaaEdition of tbe Oxford Englisb Diaionary before revisinghis updateof the classic story.We laughed,but her anecdote hauntedme for days.I thought if Gardner had gone to such trouble (a task I now believeevery writer needsto perform), then perhapsI should do the samewith a Christmaspresentmy parentshad given ffie, the 2 ,129-page Webster's TwmtietbcenturyDiaionar!.lt took New me five months to plough through it, night after night, during my first year in the philosophy Ph.D. program at SUNY-Stony Brook, and the exercise proved invaluable.

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o N w R T T E R SA N D w R r r r N G

So ys, I painstakingly studied Gardner, testing my regimen and secular,post-Christian"religious" faith in the disciplineof fiction against his own (and dways I fell shon). If he recommended book, I bought a then pored over it, regardless the century or culture that produced of it. I'm convinced no one else could have gorren me-a philosophy student then oriented toward Marxism and, in fiction, roward protest literature-interested in Morte dAnbur, Geoffrey Chaucer,longinus, the Wakefield pageantcycle,Fulgentius,Beoutulf,orCaedmonicpoerry. But he did, becausehe, like his fellow post-sixties "experimenral" writers, had found a way to make the practiceof fiction interesting again after decades naturalism.Not that they couldn't wrire in the of great tradition of American naturalism-they did, now and then, just to show they could, to show that naturdism was bur oneof the innumerable ways a story could be told and the universe imagined and interpreted. "I believethat the an of the thirties, fonies, and fifties wils fundamentdly a mistake," Gardner told Joe David Bellamy in a 1973 interview, "that it made assumptionsthat were untrue about aft, basicallywrong assumptions that went wrong in the Middle Ages, too. . It seems me that we are a play out of the seventeenth to century. Seventeenth-cenrurycivilization is us In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuriesall the genresbreak down. It becomesimpossible to write a straight romance, or a straight anphing. And everybody who is anybody suns form-jumping." He creditedhimself and other New Fictionistsrightly for developing fresh strategies solving the problem of viewpoint, openingour for fiction to excitingnew (and sometimesold) ontologies,and for unseding a door to "fabulation" closedsincethe mid-nineteenthcentury. Inside that room of fictiond possibilitieswas a tale- and yarn-tellingtradition still closeto the roo$ of ord storytelling,where one could find philosophicd insight in fairy tales, folktales, and myths' storiesabout fantastic creatures-golemsand grendels-we arenot likely to bump into at the corner supermarket,but in the New Fiction we could. For in were experimentalists the universeof the mind (and the college-based Frankeninterestedin nothing if not mind, perception,epistemology), Rip stein'smonsterandJ.F.K., quarks and Pegasus, Van Winkle and Chairman Mao all existedside by side as phenomenalobjects for connone more "red" than another in our dreamsor between sciousness, the coversof a book. In what Gardner cdled "the vivid and continuous

INTRoDUCTIoN / xv

dream" that is art, eachcould be a meaning dramatized,dlowed to live, and lead us ro laughter and tears and learning as powerfully as did the ghost and flesh in the Middle English poem "The Debate of Body and Soul." Here, in shon, ws a post-I960s"school" of writers who found L way of freeingthe imagination, but in Gardner's caseit involved a rerurn to ancestraluaditions and forms. Perhapsnow we take for from sod-busting"realisml' grantedthis "rum" in American storynelling what with televisionoffering us a seriesabout a family of dinosaurs, Holllvood dishing up films about coneheadsand charactersbased on video games,and literary writers like Valerie Manin retelling the in Jekyll and Hyde story from the viewpoint ofJekyll's housekeeper thriller Mary Reilly.But thiny years Lgo,at her superbpsychological the momenr Gardnerwas fusing redism and fantasyin his midwestern farmhouse, JoannaRussin the Eastwas just then looking at medieval literature in rerms of its lessonsfor the "New Wave" of speculative '70s, and replacingsci-fi'searlier relifiction that emergedin the early of anceon the "hard" sciences physicsand chemistrywith an interest latest researchfrom such fields as biol oW and anthropology in the (her friend SamuelR. Delany was looking at theoriesof languagegames and much, much more); and in the West, IshmaelReedwas studying Egyptian myrhs and taking Saturday-morningcanoons asa model for '60s, the mammt called editing his novels.As in the politics of the for innovation,throwing out nets in every direction-pop culture, high culture,Third World culture,science-in the hope that aswriters they could haul to the surfacesomething to propel fiction's evolution. from these However, Gardner differs in many imponant respects other innovators."Newness" for its own sakedid not appealto him. include a defense And in contrast,for example,to Russ(whose essays of man-hating) and Reed (who once called Western cultural forms "diseasd"),he was dissadsfied with pyrotechnicsand novelty if their purposeturned out to be nothing more than politicd or religiousPropaganda;if character-which is at the core of his aesthetics-suffered; for if canoon strategies, dl their fun, completely abandonedfidelity to mimesis,and lost the authorid generositythat comes only from demilsof setting and socialgesture;if, in the end, minutely rendered he felr rhe novelty of the New Fiction replacedconvincing models of mord behaviorwith eventsand emotions that slyly and subversively

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'A promoted something unhealthy for humankind. healthy life is a life of faithi' he told Bellamy, "an unhedthy, sick, and dangerous life is a life of unfaithl' Nevenheless, writer could not preachhis faith I in a $ory. It had to be concretized,the idea incarnated-made flesh-in (tbisness'). specific people, places,and things deliveredwith baeceinias Real an was not, he said,in the sermonwe hear in church on Sun dry morning, but instead in "rhe archesand the lightl' looking back over the collected piecesin On Writen and Writing, we seethat during his spectacular careermuch of Gardner'senergy was inrrested defining, erraluating, in and trying to correct-in his criticism and stories-the products of the New Fiction school, of which he was a leading figure. At times he was guilty (as he admits) of its self-conscious excesses distractus from the "fictional dream,"but that he was alwaysstrugglingto usethe positivecontributions of this period to createa lastingwork wonhy of the best in Dickens, Melville, and with his brothers and sisters Tolstoy. It is dso true that as he scrapped in the movement for the New, he was revisingand refining his theory that the process fiction itself is moral and life-affirmative.But just of a moment. Is this really a "theo ry"? And is it really "morality" that Gardner means? clear from his criticism that he was firmly opposed It's to "rnoralizingJ' Apparently, he was not intractably Christian,insofar as he said a finely done work could make him believein the value of a Buddhist vision. I think, just maybe,we are better off seeinghis in interconnecting essays this book as presentinga credible description of what happenswhen writers write well. And rather than usingthe inflamrn atory word "moral," we might be more accurateif we say fiction, one that did not that what Gardner wanted was a responsible as insult the intelligenceof readers thoughtful and educatedashimself. '.All my life," he wrote his fianc6eSusanThornton, whom he was ro marry on September 18, four days after his fatal accident,"l've I was never lived flat-out. As a motorcycle racer,chemist,writer cautiousl' This was hardly somethingGardner neededto tell us. We could seeit in everything he did. While he helped those of us fonunare enough to study with him believewe could distinguishourselves as arrisrs,provided we were willing to sweat enough, be unsatisfied we enough, rewrire enough, none of us believed could match bis breakI neck schedule. cannot speakfor his New Fiction contemporaries, but I know for a fact that Gardner could write for seventy-two-hour

INTRoDUcTtoN / xvii

an compose introduction to one of his collecwithout sleep; stretches and ponions of TlteArt of Fiaion whrle recuperating tions of poetry in a hospital bed from an operation for colon cancer.Some critics believeGardner'sincredibledrive,his "fire in the bellyi'dated back deathof his younger brother, a tragedy and the accidental to his reens in he blamedhimselffor and dramatized his story "Redemptionl' As to the rrurh of this childhood "woundl' I cannot say.But I do know ancient he was a writer who boastedhe could read in twenty-seven by and medierallanguages the time he earnedhis Ph.D. at agetwentyand that in his late fonies he polished up his Greek in order to five, with his own Writers Conference at providehis srudents the Breadloaf '70s to lectureand to of translations Homer. He traveled Japanin the rerurned with sixteenstoriesby Kikuo ltaya-an eighty-five-year-old with writer hardly known in his homeland,which Gardner translated called "MeditaNobuko Tsukui, introducedwith a memorableessay tional Fictionl' and publishedunderthe title Tmgu CbiA with Southern Illinois University Press. of Week afrer week on the pages the Sunday New YorkTimesBook he Rniru, and in other nationd forums for literary discourse, attempted novelisticwheat from the chaff, genuine fiction from fakery. ro separate reviewsI would However,Gardnerwasnot Svn to writing puff pieces, of call no better than extensions the blurbs and promotional copy in releases. Always his intention wasto understand,to imaginethe press variousalternatives author had at his or her disposalfor solving an or problemson the levelof the sentence for a book's orerdl structural design, to analyzewhat constructionsin the stories of writers he admired-Saul Bellow, Vladimir Nabokov, Marguerite Young,John Woiwode-worked, and which onesdid not. Only in Cheever,Larry his reviewsdo we find a consummate teacherand technicianexamining the works of his peersas he would an assignmentturned in by one of his students a collegewriting class.Often the effect is shockin ing-he saidtbat aboutJohn UpdikeP-but it is a testament Gardnerls to that publicity and public acclaim never blinded him professionalism to the basicquestioneveryreviewerand critic must ask' What exactly do we have here?(As an analogue,consider the equally courageous reviewsof black fiaion by lvtacArthur fellow StanleyCrouch.) In prinvery little contemporaryfiction worked perfectly for ciple, it seems, Gardner;like an eldercraftsman disappointed his finestachievements, by

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he regardedeven the rnost lauded literature by othersas being in need of some repair. He lectured, read,and taught across America and abroadfor twenty years. His studentsincluded the famous (Raymond Carver took his first classat Chico State)and scoresof aspiringwriters who mailed him manuscripts-perfectstrangers whose work he correced with the same meticulous, line-by-lineediting he brought to his own fiction. What could prompt a busy man to behavethis way?An incident he enjoyed relating reveals somefiing abour the demonsthat drove him. After one of his readings, woman approachedhim and said, "You a know, I think I like your stories,but I'm not sureI like lnul' He did not hesitatebefore he replied, "That's all right, I'm a better person when I write," meaningthat no matter how pigheaded, stupid,or imperfect a writer might be in his persond life (and cenainly the stories of how badly many outstandingwriters have lived are legion), what he did on the pageoffered an opportunity-perhaps the only chance for some-to speakwith clarity and precision,work in a spirit of love and compassion,and revisehis thoughts and feelings the point where to they could be most helpful and do no harm. In an unpublished197 6 prefaceto the writing exercises that now appearin TbeArt of Fiaion, he wrote that a sane,moral writer never forgemthat his audienceis, at leastidedly, asnoble and generous and tolerant as himself, so that to turn characters into cartoons, to treat his charactersas innately inferior to himself, to forget their reasonsfor being as they are, to treat them as brutes, is disgraceful. . If you write, eventhrough something the mouth of a sympatheticallyobserrcdcharacter, orJesuswould not write-think twice. You Tolstoy,Socrates, live in a world in which it's possibleto buy flavored,edible panties(strawberry,lemon-lime-), a world where the word "asshole" passes elevateddiction. Think about it. for Seventeen years later we are demanding that record companiesplace of the rating labelson "gansta'lrap music filled with obscenities, abuse televisionand motion womeh, and callsfor killing police officrs; and pictures must now contend with ^ groundswell of public backlash violence that some feel is related againstthe graruitous,make-believe

INTRoDUcTIoN / xix

to the $reersof urban America turning into combat zones.If Gardner had lived, the currenr hand-wringingo\rerdepictionsof violence and that moral demandsapply evento make-believe, cruelty, and the sense mighr haveprompted him to say,"I told you so," and rePeathis oftstatedbelief that "even bad aft is powerfull' schedules, tW,his self-punishing To put this simply,Gardner'sene his devotion to all good fiction whereverhe found n, sbamcdthose of us who watchedhim work, and still had the audacityto call ourselrres In writers.Just the same,he laboredwith self-doubts. a 1977 Atlantic interview,he said,"I'm one of the really greatwriters; I haven't proved that yet, but I feel that ir's comingJ' Did it come?More specifictlly, did any of the New Fiction novelistscreateworks that have become the parr of the language, culture?As I grow older and find myself less of .nrot .lled by py.technics and more appreciative spirited storynelling and I page-rurners, wonder how variouscharacters and old-fashioned down through the centuriesbecomecommon coin in our tales have culture. Melville, of course,languishedfor yearsbefore being rediscovered,as did Tnra Neale Hurston; and surely there is often more than a little media hyp., literary and academicfashioo, politics, and the impafi of Hollyvood involvedwhen an author's effons become a householdword. Be thar as it may, the rare eventdoesoccur when a seriouswriter createssomerhingthat becomesemblematic for some sector of our In experience. "More Smog from the Dark SatanicMillsi' Gardner the s Par praises Lagerkvisr' TbeHoly l^andfor compressing complexity and difficulty of modern life "into a few stark and massivesymbols and in which all our experience all human history arelockedl' To my literary when a writer-traditiond or experimental, Ie, rhis ernr arises by or or pulp-stumbles consciously unconsciously, geniusor dumb (Raskolnikov, lolita, Candide,Huck character luck, upon an archetypal (asin Fowles'sTbeCollcaoaDickey's Finn) or an imaginativesituation a or Delioerance) a flexible concept that organizes welter of complex Man, Heller's Catcb2z,Haley's feelingsand ideas(Ellison'sInaisible an this somecases naming, this dramatizing,crystallizes exPeRoots').In we all know but until the creation occurs have not found a rience way to utrer. Or it may be a fictiond situation or premise so fenile Crusu) and (Malory's Morte dArtlnr, Goethe's Faust, Defoe's Robinson that other writers feel compelledto keepretellingit, updating intriguing ir for their sge,going it one better, as Gardner himself did with the

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Beowulf legend,Did the New Fiction of the early '70s body fonh its "King lrar," its Oliaer Twist, its great white whale? Elevenyears after Gardner's death the jury is still our, asperhapsit mu$ be, though I think it safe to say that the intenseinterestin Gardner's work in the decadeafter his death, the effon findly to take measureof the man, suggests happily that his devotion to good writing will result in longevity for his books on writing craft, for Grmdel asan example of the New Fiction's principles at their besr,and, one hopes,for his shon and long fiction as well. Gardner would havebeen sixty this year.Readers born roo late to remember the post-I960s debatesand battlesover fiction's purpose might find it difficult to feel the passionor the reasonfor fiercepositiontaking that crackles dong the surface Gardner'sbook reviews. of These are mnre than reviews. They are brief position papers,extensions of his ongoing thoughts about art's meaning; but a few readersmight ask, *hy all the fuss? After all, by the mid-l980s-when the concept of "moral" fiction was no longer tied so tightly to Gardner himself: few, if any, major American novelismquestioned in their interviews and public statementsthe significanceof a moral vision for fiction, evenif they had distancedthemselves from Gardner when he was alive, which many did after he published On Moral Fiaion. For mo$ authors today moral responsibilityin their productsis a giam, though asdways the definition of what defines "moral" variesfrom writer to writer, as it should. But it was Gardner who servedas our point man, our "trip wire" in the task of clearin awayland mines planted by less g faithful novelistsand critics dong the path where traditional ethical concerns and anistic creation meet. ago during the heyday of the New Funhermore, if three decades Fiction, writers were arguing about technique,today the battlefield debatehas shifted to "multiculturalism," to denunciations of aesthetic of English departmentsfor marginalizingwomen and writers of color, and to a dismissalof the very canon of "dead white male writers" Gardner's scholarshipwas basedupon. Oh /s, he died too soon by ten years,long before we had finishedwith him. We neededhis intimare knowledg. of the classics,his great love of fine storytelling of regardless the culture or racethat produced it, and his compelling argumenrsagainsteasy an and proselytizingin these yearsthat have seen English depanments politicized and torn apart from within at so many major American universities.

INTRoDUCTIoN / xxi 'Amber (Get) Waves(Your) Moreover, we neededthe author of Grain Oncle Sam),"who wasone ofJimmy Caner'sfarorite of (Plastic) writers, when rhe Grand Old Pany of his parentscavedin to the relig camPaign, ious right and Pat Buchananduring the 1992 presidential retreatingfrom politics proper to cultural warfare in the form of appeds to "family ralues"and the priority of "characterl'Aren't thesemattersvalues and culturd vision-that resideat the hean of what one might positioned call "Gardner country"PWe wonder: Where might he harre to himself in respect Allan Bloom, Roger Kimball, Dinesh D'Souzl, and RushLimbaugh(who could easilybe a Gardner concoction,one g of his "eamestbabblin . . . shon-leged, orrweight, rwitching cartoon to How might he haveresponded our presentcontroversy creadons")? homosexuality (thene one ans\Mer Mickebson's Glnsts), n is o\cr abonion (he tries ro understand how one man can lora another in Frily's Buik), (our First t dy mlght or Hillary Clinton's "politics of meaning" speech Gardner was that speciesof do well to read Oaober Ligbt)?Because on poet-philosopher whom nothing in the social world was lost, we for can find hints in his huge ncuare thesequestionsand usethem to with that guesses are consistent to constructresponses presentdangers, his position at the time of his death-but, sadly,that is the very best we will be able to do. As his former student and friend, I thankfully add On Writersand Writingro my burgeoningshelfof books by and aboutJohn Gardner. I haveno idea what words appearon his headstonein upstateNew York, no ideaif the rnan'sfiercespirit liveson, but for yearsI've entertained the thought that theselines by Itdian poet Jacoponeda lbdi might be fitting for how most of us would like to rememberhis furious among us. and illuminating passage La guerra e terminata: de la airtu battaglia, de la mente traaaglia cosanulla contmde. Tbe'uar is oaer. In tbe banle of airan, tbe straggleof spirit, all is Peace,

cHnnlES JOHNSON 199 Seattle, t

"Bxttleby": Art andSocial Commitment

l u " B A R T L E B y ' M n N L o o K SA T M A N , A R T I S T I looks at anist, and God looks at C'od. To understandthat the narrator is at least as right as Banleby, both on the surfaceand on symbolic levels,is to understandthe remarkableinterpenetration of form and content in the story. Most Melville readershave noticed that on the one level,Banleby can represent honest anistt he is a "scrivener" who refusesto "copyJ' as Melville himself refusedto copy-that is, as he refusedto knock out more sdeableSouth Seasromances.But if Banleby is the anist, he is the anist manqui' his is a vision not nothing.A better he of life but of death;"the man of silence," creates kind of anist is the lawyer,who, havingseenredity through Banleby's eyes,hasturned to literature.Nor is he the slick writer: "If I pleased," he says,"[Il could relatedivershistories,at which good-naturedgentlemen might smile,and sentimentalsoulsmight weepl' That is, popular fiction. The phrase"If I pleased"is significrrlt: "please" is the narrator's substitution,later,for Banleby'sinfectious"preferl' Like Banleby, the narrator doeswhat he prefersto do-but within certain reasonable limits. The readermay weep or smile at Banleby's story but the narrator's chief reasonfor choosing it is that he is seiiously concerned with "literaturel' Closereadingreveals that the story he tells is indeed a highly organized literary work, a story that is asmuch the narrator's

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as it is Banleby's,ending with the narrator'sachierremenr rhat depth of of understandingnecessary the telling of the srory. to An important pan of what the narrator at last understands the is conflict between the individual and society.The individual feelscertain preferences which, taken together,establish personalidentity; his society makes simulmneously necessary and unreasonable demands which modif individual identity. Thus the individual'sview of himself and the view others haveof him can becomerwo quite different things seParated a substantial by wall (communicationis difficult); thus, roo, the socidizedman'sidentity and his view of his identity can be walled aPart (self-knowledge difficult). And man's dilemma cannot be reis solved,for if one insistson one's o\rynpreferences therebyafltrms and one's identity, one finds oneself,like Banleby,wdled off from society and communion with other ffin; and on the other hand, if one gives in to the necessary laws of socialacdon,one finds oneself,like Banleby's employer, wdled off from activeobedienceto the higher laws of self and, in a sense, reality. Wall Streetis the prison in which all men live. The conflict between the rule of individud preference and the necessary laws of social action takesvariousforms in "BanlebyJ' Conflicts arise between individud and social impulseswithin each of the first three scriveners, Tirrkey, Nippers, and Ginger Nut, and also between individual traits in the scrivenersand the necessary requirementsof their employer,whose commitment is perforcesocial,for he must do his job well to survive.But for the action of the story the most important conflicts are those rooted in the relationshipof the lawyer and Banleby, that is, the conflicts betweenemployerand employee,between the lawyer's kindly nature and his recognitionof the reasonableness of society'sharsh demands, and between Banleby and the world. In many ways the lawyer and Banleby differ. The lawyer is a successful,essentially practical man with highly developedfeelingsfor socialposition (he mentions coyly that he was "not unemployed" by John Jacob Astor), the value of his money (the of{ice of Master in and common Chanceryis "pleasantly remunerative"),"common usage sense,"and above all, as he tells us John Jacob Astor has obseryed, "prudence" and "method." Banleby, on the other hand, is merely a clerk with an obscurepast, a man little concernedwith practic.lity in and apparentlyquite uninterested socialposi' in the ordinary sense, He tion, money, or usageand sense. is totdly lacking in prudence-

"BARTLEBY",

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he couns dismissdat everyturn-and for method he relieson "prefer"at The narratorat first cannotunderencel'often preference present." and Banleby prefersnot to understand standBanleby,for good reason, At the narratoror the societythe narrator represents. the sametime, similar. Early in the story the are the two characters in some respects narratortells us, "I am a man who, from his youth upwards,hasbeen filled with a profound conviction that the easiestway of life is the the narrator'sprofound conviction: what best"; and Bartleby shares way must he cannot shareis the narrator's opinion that the easiest The narrator is dso like be socially acceptable, even "reasonable." or Banleby in that he doesnot seek"public applause";but Banleby goes funher, he doesnot aroid public censure. Finally, the narrator is decorous and "eminently safe";so is Banlebyt the narrator is positivethat Banleby would not copy in shinsleeves on Sunday,and the narrator or "singular confidencein his honestyJ' has Perhaps the panly because narratorand Banleby areboth different and similar, the conflict betweenthem triggers a conflia within the narrator'smind. He knows that as employer he has the authority to make demands a scrivener, whateverthe scrivener's of for preference, if employerscannot function as employers,society cannot work; but despite his knowledg., the narrator cannot bring himself to force Banleby to obey or get out. When Banleby first refuses comply to with a request,the narrator merely thinks, "This is very strange What had one bestdo?" and, being pressed business, by goeson with his work. When Banleby refuses comply with another request,the to narrator is shakenand for a moment doubts the assumptionbehind employer-employeerelations. When Banleby usesit as a modusnperandi, the narrator'sopinion that "the easiestway of life is the be$" conflicts with his equ"lly firm opinion that the laws of socid action are of necessity right; and in his momentary uncertainty the narraror turns to his office, a miniature society,for a ruling. Even their ruling is not much help, howerrer, to act on it would be to becomeinrolrred for in unpleasantness, this the narratorwould prefer to avoid in farror and of some easierway-if any is to be found. Once again he avoidsthe issue,in the socially approvedway, by turning his mind to his work. Banelby'sunconventionalinsistence his preferences, his inon and differenceto the demandsof his social sefting, the office, leads the narrator to wonder about him, that is, to want to understandhim.

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He watches Banleby narrowly and finds him more enigmatic than before. Banleby never seemsto leave, he existson ginger nuts, and in the miniature socioy of the office his corner remainsa "hermitage!' Judg*ent cannot account for the man, and though imagination provides "delicious self-approvd," it too fails to provide understanding. of The conflict in the narrator's mind between acceptance Banleby on as enigmatic eccentric,on one hand, and insistence Banleby's position as employee, on the other, leadsto no action while the narrator is in a charitable mood; but when he is not, he feelsa need to force Bartleby into revealinghimself actively, not just passively-that is, to make himself vulnerable by showing "some Lngry spark answerable but to my ownl' The narrator's goading excitesthe other scriveners, it cannot reach Banleby. At last, for the sakeof keepingpeacein the coincide with office, and dso because some of Banleby's preferences his the preferences society("his steadiness, freedomfrom dl dissipaof industry"), the narrator comesto acceptBanleby, tion, his incessant and the narrator's internd conflict is temporarily resolved. When the narraror learns that Banleby liras at the office, the inAs ternal conflict reawakens. he looks through Banleby's things, the narrator's judgment hurls him onto the truth' Banleby is "the victim of innate and incurabledisorder,"in a word, he is mad. Common sense demands that he be gotten rid ol for, as the narrator sees,the practicd fact is that "pity is not seldom painJ' and one cannot work well (as one must in rhis world) when one is suffering.The narrator girres his scrineverone last chance' he asksBanleby to tell him about his pasr;if Banleby will answerlike a sensibleman, the narrator will keep him on. As he asksit, the narrator insists,sincerelyenough, "I feel friendly to\Mards you." And the effect is interesting,Banleby hesitates a "considerabletime" before answeri.g, and for the first time his composure breaks-his lips tremble. "At presmt" he says(and he is using the phrase"at present" for the first time), "l preferto Su. no answer." It seemsthat the narrator has cracked the wall beween them; but if so, he does not know it at the time. The narrator's common sense secnet goesdeep and now, when he is on the thresholdof his scritrener's can' the self, self-delusionsaves narrator from what, ashe rightly sees, Misinterpreting what has nor help Banleby and can only hun himself. happened, he feels "neftled" and says,"Not only did there seernto lurk in [Banleby's mannerl a cenain calm disdain,but his perverseness

..BARTLEBY".

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'

and indulthe considering undeniablegood usage ungrareful, seemed is sense not quite from mel' Evenso, common gencehe had received knocking at my felt triumphant, "I srrangely somethingsuperstitious and forbiddingme to carry out my purpose[of {iring Banl.byl, hean, and denouncingme for a villain if I daredto breatheone bitter word the againstthis forlornestof mankindl' Insteadof sensiblydismissing mercy,not justice,and humbly b.S the mad scriraner, narratorchooses "in Banleby ro promiseto be a litde reasonable aday or twol' Bartleby's 'At answer,of course,is as delightfully mad as the request' Present And Banleby, or the will I would prefernor ro be a little reasonablei' of the individual,wins. Indeed,individudism is doingvery well: Everyone in the office is saying "prefer" these days. Socid dicta become waiting upon the individud's mste ("If [Banlebyl polite suggestions would but preferto mke a quan of good ale every day.. i'); legd etiquetre becomesa matter of individud choice (the narrator is asked for what color paperhe prefers a cenaindocument).Banleby'ssuccess is completewhen, preferringto do no more copying, and preferringto remain in the office, he getsthe narrator to prefer to put up with him. purIn voluntarily choosingto acceptBanleby as "the predestined poseof my life;' the narrator makesa choicewhich, unfortunately,he is not free to make.From the point of view of society,the choice is (ike odd, unacceptable Colt's choiceto murder Adams-a choiceColt would not havemade,the narrator says,if the two of them had not been alone). Banleby is such an oddity in the office that at last the reputanarrator must choosebetweenBanleby and his own professional man must, the narrator choosessociety and denies tion. As the sane out of the office.When moving out provesinsuffiBanleby' he moves cient-for sociay holds him accountable-the narrator reluaandy goes the whole route, he would not have acted with the cruel common sense the landlord, but preferringto choosethe inevitable,he gives of the testimonyrequested the landlord'snote. The betrayedBanleby in judgment: "I know youl' Evennow the narrator feels the pronounces friendly toward Banleby, and cenainly he cannot be blamed for his action; Dveftheless, betrayalis betrayal,and both of them know it. The sequel providesus with an insight into the background of and the narrator with belatedunderBanleby'sderangement provides the As standin of his scrivener. the narrator understands matter, and g we have no reasonto doubt his interpretation, Banleby's former

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occuPation asdead-letterclerk heightenedthe natural pallid hopelessnessof Banleby's characterby giving him a queer and terrible vision of life. The narrator thinks, asBanleby must hara thou$t before him, "Dead letters! does it not sound like dead men?" ktters senr on missionsof pardon, hope, good tidings-errands of life-end in pointless flames;and the dead-letter clerk sees other kind of mail (if, in fact, no there is any other kind). What he knows about letters he comesro know of man. The busdeof activity, scrirrening, clerking, bar-tending, bill-collecting,traveling-all rumble at last against solid wall, death. the Banleby prefersnot to share the delusionsof society.For him, the easiest way of life is the best because whether one spends one's rime "not unemPloyed" by John Jacob Astor or spendsit "sitting upon a banisteri'one dies.He is not "luny," asGinger Nut thinks, but mad. Estrangedfrom the ordinary view of life (he does nor even read the papers),Banleby perceives reality; thus whereasthe narraror, when he looks out his windows, seesar one end a wall "deficient in what landscape painterscall'life"' and at the other end "a huge, square cistern," Banleby sees,respectively,death and the grara. Except at that moment when he is rempred to feel affection for the man who feels friendly toward him, there is within Banleby no conflict at dl. He is dead already,as the narrator's recurring adjective, "cedaverousi'suggests. Whatever the exigencies the moment, he of cannot be made to forget the wdls enclosinglife. He has wdked for some time in the yard "not accessible common prisoners,"for the to yard in the Tombs is life itselfi "The surroundingwalls, of amazing thickness,kept off dl sounds behind them. The Egyptian characrer of the masonrywerghedupon me with its gloom. But a soft imprisoned turf grew under foot. The hean of the eternd pyramids,it seemed, wherein, by some strangernagic,through the clefts,grass-seed, dropped by birds, had sprung." But though Banleby suffersno conflict within, he is engagedin a conflict more basicthan that in which the narrator is inrolrred.The narnatorwishesto aroid unpleasantness-and possible, if to do so without lossof self-respect. Banleby wishesto shapehis own destiny,at leastwithin the little spacebetweenthe walls of binh and death. The narrator, when he has "looked a little into 'Edwardson the 'Priestley Will; and that his on Necessityi" slidesinto the persuasion troubles havebeen predestinedfrom eternity, and he chooses accept to them, voluntarily relinquishing his will to "an dl-wise Providence."

"BARTLEBY",

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But Banleby insists freedom.When the narratorsuggests that he on "There is too much take a clerkship a dry-goods in store,he answers, confinementabout thatl' The narrator'sraction'"*hy, you keepyourself confinedall the time!" misses point, for confinement,if one the chooses confinement,is freeagency, circlingthe world, if required and of one, is not. Melville makesthe point dramatically. When Banleby will neithertour Europewith someyoung man nor live in the narrator's home,the namator fleesfrom Banleby,the landlordand the tenan$ who may againbesiege law office. He runs from the building, up the Wall Street toward Broadway,catches bus, surrenders business a his to Nippers,and turns to still wilder flrgh,, driving about in his rockaway for days.In his restless flight he is less freethan the man on the banister. But in the end, no individud, not evenBanleby, can be free. The freedomof eachindividual cunailsthe freedomof someother, aspoor Colt's freedom cunails the freedomof Adams (murdered men have no preferences), asBanleby's freedomcunails that of the narraror. and Thus the limits imposedupon freedomby the laws of Nature are narrowed by the lawsof society:Banleby must be jailed. Insidethe prison, "individuals"; outside,"functionaries."Betrayedby the narrator and the societyhe represents, confinedin a smallerprison and, ashe says, knowing where he is, Banleby hasonly one freedomleft, he may prefer not to live. And he does. Melville suggests rarious waysthat the conflict betweenBanleby in and the world (and the conflict within the narrator'smind) is one berweenimqgnation and judgment,or reason. society, Judpent supporrs ethicallaw is the law of reason; imaginatiotr, the other hand, supon Ports higher values,those central to poetry and religion: mortl law is the law of imagination. Ethical law, always prohibitive, guarantees equal rights to all membersof the group, but moral law, alwaysaffirmative, points to the absolute,without respecrto the needsof the grouP.Thus ethical law demandsthat scriveners proofread their copy; but the narmtor says, cannot creditthat the metdesomepoet, Byron, "I would havecontentedlysat down with Banleby to omine a law document of, sayfive hundred pages.. ." And when the narrator sees that Banleby is mad and mu$ be dismissed, that is, when common sense bids the narrator'ssoul be rid of the man, the narraror cannot bring himself to go to Trinity Church. Reasonand imaginarion also divide the narrator'smind: each time Banleby's srubborn preferences force

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the narrator into thought, the narrator thinks in two ways, by imagiin nation (when he sees poetic or religiousterms)and by reason(when he works out logicd deductions after studying facts);and the results of the rwo ways of thinking differ sharply. Reasontells the narrator that Banleby existson ginger nuts but somehow does not become to hot and spicy; "imagrnationJ'explaining"what proves be impossi' ble to be solvedby his judgmentj' tells the narrator that Banleby is a "poor fellow" who "meansno mischief" and "intendsno insolencel' Banleby's belongngs,imaginationleads When the narrator examines of him closeto an understanding Banleby the individual:ashe detects, that he and Banleby of through empathy,the loneliness Banleby, he sees "both sonsof Adam," and he beginsto suffer "sad fancyings-the are chimeras,doubtless,of a sick and silly brainl' He adds,"Presentiments of strange discoverieshovered round me. The scrivener'sPale form in appearedro me laid out, among uncaring strangers, its shivering winding sheetl' Rearcn,howe\r, leadsthe narratorin a different direc' tion. He seesthat the man is mad (a socid judgment)and that, after giving Banleby afain chanceto prorc himself sane,he must fire him. as impulses, well ashis Throughout the story the narrator'sgenerous fails to drive out the artempt at self-justificationwhen common sense of sense guilt, take religiousform' by leapsof faith, or imagination, Banleby, and when he is consideringdoing harm to he understands himself with Banleby for the sakeof his own reputadon, he consoles that what "charity" *d "love," dlowing himself to belierre words like (The narrator he plans is after all for Bartleby's good, not his own. nor hypocriticd, for ashe tells the story now he underis self-deluded, the standsand, usually, acknowledges mistakeshe made at the time of his Banleby rroubles. Mistakes he does not acknowledgeopenly of he treatsin comic terms, ashe treatshis ethicd perversion the moral injunction "that ye love one anotherl') If the narraror's interpretation of Banleby's madnessis correct, deadlettersand rnen, imagination, presenringr metaphor which relates In other words, he is a man who has is the basisof Banleby's plight. seen a vision and, holding true to his vision, can no longer oPerate he in the ordinary world. In a sense, is a queerson of fanatic,operating on the basisof a religion of his own. Obviously the conflicts in "BartlebyJ' togetherwith the gerrnsof symbolic extension of meaning, are rooted in character; and the

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legitim^cy of the conflicts,whether they are seenasconflictsbetween is the individud and societyor betweenwill and necessity, equally (between,say, the stupid clear. Thus the story is not a melodrama reviewerof Pierreand the pure, heroic author) but an honest fictional representation a dilemmawhich, in ordin.ry life, cannot be resolrad. of learning that Banleby was a deadIn the end the narratorunderstands. by Banleby'svision,he sees ^ leapof imaglnation lemerclerk,he achie\res exactlywhat Banleby must haveseen-dead letters,deadmen, limited human freedom. This vision is the terrible outcome foreshadowed 'And I trembledto think that my contact with the scrivener earlier' had alreadyand seriouslyaffectedme in a mentd wuy.And what furmight it not yet produce?"From the beginther and deeperaberration ning the narrator hasbeenimaginative-in fact, like Banleby, hasbeen grven to "fancyings" and "chimeras"; but unlike Banleby, he also judgment.When he needs he can control his fancies.Unto, possesses like Banleby,he creates: originally created praaice, he hascreated he his "recondite documents,"and he is now creatinga work of art. Reason must impose order upon the chaosof imagination. Symbolismin "Banleby" supponsthis view of scriraneras visionary and narrator ascreator.The religion of ordi nary scriveners the rouis tine of the law office or the will of the lawyer: the narrator speaks of Tirrkey as the "most reverential men," valueshis "morning serof vicesl'end cannotget him to give up his afternoon"derotions"; and the narrator tells us that Tirrkey eatsginger nuts as though they were "wafers." Banleby is another maner' his arrival is an "advent," there is nothing "ordinarily human about himi' he is full of "quiet mysteries," and when the narrator leavesBanleby alone in the office Banleby stands"like the last pillar of a ruined templel' He dies at last among "murderersand thievesl'And whereas Banleby is Christ-like,the narrator isJehovah-like: voice behind the story like the voice behind the Tbe Confidntce-Man, mythical, for the speakerhere is God, the is story of his reluctant changefrom the legalistic,tribal deity of the Old Testament the Crodof Love andJusticein the New Testament. to As Melville treats the material, Christ is not a son of C'od but (as the Old GstamentJehovah sees him) an "incubus," thus not a revelation sent by God to man but rather a nightmarecreature who drives (as, God into self-knowledge on the literal level,Banleby drivesthe lawyer to self-knowledge).

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The narrator andJehovahare linked in numerousways.The narrator is officially "Master" in Chancery.Like Jehorah, he keeps out of the public eye and works "in the cool tranquillity of a snug retreat." The narrator'sfirst scrivener, Turk y, is the miliant archangel Michael. His nickname is possibly meant to suggest not only the red-necked, irasciblefowl emblematic of thanksgivingbut also the terrible Tirrk. He has a face which "beams," "blazes," and "flames" like the sun, and he considers himself, rather insolently,the narraror's"right-hand manl'He useshis ruler as a sword and is in chargeof rhe narraror's forces,marshallingand deploying "columns" (the narrarorspeaks later of his "column of clerks"), and charging"the foel' His "inflamed" ways are always "worse on Saturdays" (the Sabbath).The second scrivener,Nippers (pincers)i is syrnbolicdly linked with Lucifer. He is a "whiskered, sallow,and, upon the whole, piratical-looking young man" who suffersfrom "ambition" aswell as indigestion.He is impatient with the duties of a mere copyist, and his ambition is evinced by "an unwarrantable usurpation of strictly profession affairs,such al (The Devil is famous as the original drawing up of legd documentsl' for making pacts: consider poor Faust.) His indigestion (spleen)is "betokened in an occasionalnenroustestiness and grinning irritability, . . , unnecessary malediccausingthe teeth to audibly grind together. . tions, hissed, rather than spoken,in the heat [infernofof business. ]' 'Among the manifestaHe hashis own kingdom, for the narrator says, visits tions of his diseased ambition was a fondnesshe had for receiving finm cenain ambiguous-lookingfellows in seedycoats,whom he called his clients."He is "considerable a ward-politiciani' occasiondlydoes of "a licle business the Justices' couns," and is "not unknown on the at stepsof the Tombs." As gods and would-be godscontrol willful rnen, rtoluntaryagent so Nippers jerks his desk about asif it were "a perverse Nut (Raphael, perhapsGinger and vexinghiml' The third scrivener, and for Milron rhe messenger sociableangel),is officid cake(or "wafer") and apple (forbidden fruitP) purveyor for the establishment. perupon the reader's Much of the humor in "Banleby" depends ceiving the symbolic level, for comic effect arisesout the tendency of surfaceand symbolic levelsto infect one another: the narrator,an like God, and C'od is comic ordinary man, is comic when he behaves when he behaves like ffion; and other tensionsbetweensurfaceand syrnbol (Turkey-Michael, Nippers-Lucifer) work in the sameway.

"BARTLEBY",

ART

AND

SOCIAL

COMMITMENT

ll

we folding doors(throu$ which, presumably, seedarkly) Grnund-glass 'According to my humor;' into rwo parts. dividethe narrator'spremises with himself, "I threw open these the narraror says,rather pleased doors, or closedthem." He also takespleasurein his cleverdisposition of Banleby' Bartlebysits insidethe doors (all others are outside) but sits behind a screen"which might entirely isolateBanleby from my sight, though not removehim from my voice." Puns frequently contribute to this humor. The words "original" and "genius" work And when the narrator becomes as they do in Tbe Confidmce-Man. he says,"One prirne thing was this-bs uasalways resigned Banleby to When the scrivener's being "alwaysthere" tbere.. :' (Melville'sitalics). provesa not unmixed blessing,the narrator so/s: And as the idea came upon me of his possiblyturning out a long.lired ffian, and k*p occupying my chambers,and denying my authority; and perplexingmy visitors; and scanddizing my professionalrepuntion; and castinga generalgloom keepingsoul and body togetherto the last over the premises; upon his savins (for doubtlesshe spent but half a dime a day),and in the end perhapsoutlive me, and claim possession of my office by right of his perpetual occupancy.. . I resolvedto gather all my faculties together, and forever rid me of this intolerableincubus. Ere revolving any complicated project, however, adapted to this end, I first simply suggested Banleby the propriety to of his permanentdeparture.. . But, having taken three days to meditateupon it, he apprisedme, that his original determination remainedthe same;in short, that he still preferred to abide with me. (The funniest barrageof puns in the story is keeping soul and bodytogetherto tbe lastupon bis sauings.) the effect of the symbolic level But is not always-and is neverentirely-comic. When the narrator abandons his office to Nippers at the time of Banleby's arrest,one is more distressed than amused.One is moved, too, by the rich final line of 'Ah, the story: Banleby! Ah, humanity!" A man who behaves like God may be queerly admirable.The narrator puffs up his chest like God, but he is also capableof infinite compassion,he is dedicated

12/

oN wRrrERS AND wRrrrNG

to the spirit of the law (he will not get rid of Banleby by laying an essentiallyfalse chargeon him), and he can survive. The lawyer-turned-anist creative, he is like C'od, because hasjudgment. He has imagination like "the mettlesomepoet, Byronl' but unlike Byron (Melville seems suggest) lawyer hasthe fudgment to the to seethat the commitment of an is to man. One reason the socid for commitment of an, as we have seen,is that society cannot operate without voluntary or inroluntary diminution of the individual will. But Melville offers, in "Banleby," another reasonas well. The final 'Ah, line of the story is both an equadonand an opposition' Banleby! Ah, humanity!" Man lives on a walled-up streetwhere the practice of law flourishesand jusdce is operativeonly in the mind. If justice is to be introduced into the ordinary world, if man is to receive recompensefor being stoppedin mid-action by dry lightning (like the narrator's man from Virginia), justice must come either as a Christian afterlife or as a transmutationof purely conceptualexperience-that is, as ert. The first seemsno longer cenain: the office of Master in Chancery is now defunct, "a [damnedl prematureact]' We mu$ find some other pleasantremuneration.The betrayedBanleby getsjustice and mercy at last, though; for Banleby, whose freedom was limited to in life by the inescapability death, is now transmogri{ied eternal of life in an. Before Banleby, the office was governedby law; but the reconditedocument at hand is a Nerr Ttstament of sorts,at once ahical and moral. It insistsupon law in this world, but it alsoprovidesjustice. by Though life must of necessitybe characterized limited freedom, voluntary self-diminution,there will be, after life, an. The anist rolls the stone away-that is the narrator's creativeact-and man escapes from the lbmbs.

NOTE 1. For sugestions concerningthe names"Nippers" and "Ginger Nut" I am indebted to E. M. Glenn of Chico State College.

An Invective Against Fiction Mere

K l. \s EVERYONE Nows, THE wHoLE TENdency of modern life and thought is againstthe absolute.Metaphysics is out, "alternatiraconceptud systems"are in. Kings are out, pluralism is in. Relativity is all. But howeveruseful relativism may be as a wuy out of running daily life-keeping fascists of power, keepingtea panies civilized-it hasnothing to do with an. Relativismdeniesthose finalities toward which man's spirit hasdways groped. To admit that there to are no findities is to put the spirit out of business; saythat finalities are a matter of personal assenionis to make the spirit's business insignificant. conDespitethe vogueof relativism,good paintersand composers tinue to make absoluteaffirmations,but they do so in spite of their critics, their hrppy, horn-swoggl.d audiences, and the richly rewarded hacks who call themselves paintersor composers.As for literature, the two most imponant of the established novelistsin America are that greatgosip SaulBellow, with his "persond visioni' and that master of illusion, prank$er,puzzler,Madimir Nabokov. Both are solid writers, but neither is so rnrlgaror obsoleteasto admit his fiction (asChekhov said) "tells the truthl' The fact is that, despite their protesurions,Bellow and Nabokov do tell the truth, insofarasthey are significantwritersBellow clumsily, Nabokov with careful craftsmanship.

l3

1 4/

oN wRrrERs AND wRrrrNG

To put it anotherway, writers work out in wordstheir intuitionstheir private cenainties-of how things are. Good writers have right and significant intuitions, and they presenttheir intuitions intact by meansof masterfultechnique.To deny the possibilityof absoluteintuition is either to scrapthe an of fiction or to look patronizinglyon the fool who works at it. Ultimately, the critic or publisher'sabnegation of the absoluteturns weak but seriouswriters into hacksand promotes the publication of books by natural-born bus drivers. I am not really sayingthat only one book should havebeen published this season-Ommsetter's Ltuk. I approveof books on chess, stories about boys and dogs, and one or two other things. Whar I mean I must say by examples. Before I do that, though, I musr add one truism more. In the absoluteworld of fictiond truth, rhe novelist speaksof what might be, In Cold Blood notwithstanding-speaks of people and eventsabout whom the reader is not likely to feel any violent urge to disagree, though sometimeshe ought to. The critic, on the other hand, declaims truth about an actu.lity, a book, waving the the old flrg of Absolute Taste in the face of dl common sense. To the relativist'srhetoricalquestion "Who is to judge?"the critic leaps "Me!" laughter. up, red beard flying, b*grg his crutches,screarning, Gntative applause.If the man has any brains, any dignity, he soon learnsto speakof demonstrables Form, asif constructionin a novel like were far more important than what the norrelis constmcted to do. Or he learns to speakof PersonalVision, becomingsideshowbarker for freaks.Sincenovelists people too, the critic learnsto make careare ful distinctions betweenthe work and the man who worked it out, as if a man who thinls and feels like Capote couldhavewritten like Graham Greene this time, unfonunately, he didn't. What is important to notice here is that the capitulating critic is right. Art is not all that imponant, or an) Maymost art. Nevenheless, may be observed it of clowns, especidly red-bearded, clowns who bangtheir bespectacled crutches-they persist. Now to the examples and what I mean about Fiction and Information and Escapeand Thuth. My object, I should explain at once, is to comment on ercr)nhing in this enomous hodgepodgesack of books I've been sent by the editors of Tlte Swtbern Rruiewand make of the {ictiond truth hodge-podgea cleandernonstrationof what distinguishes from mere fiction.

AN

INVECTIVE

AGAINST

MERE FICTION

I'

in published TbeFirehugs his native GermanyWhen PeterFaecke he wasthen rwenty-three-he was "hailed by leadinglite rary critics," to according rhe jacket,"rs a writer of stanling originality and Proven and inside-out,concerns The tde, told backwards anistic achierrementl' (l) town guilt, (2) a man in searchof lineage,(3) racial conflict and (4) guilr (Jewsand Germans,not whites and Negroes), an idiot, (5) an (6) all-knowing detective-lawyer-uncle, sawmills,(7) arson. Faulkner reheated,a thick and bitter brew. From an absolutist'spoint of view, Faeckeis a hack. doesnot come to Usudly the panderingof writers and publishers young writers who ourright fraud, however.One finds, for instance, and like Marilyn Hoff (Dink's Blues) Gene Horoare devoudysincere, witz (HomeIs WbereYouStartFrom). Miss Hoff haswritten a college novel that soundslike a collegegrrl's letter home, full of ellipsesand girlish opinions about civil rights and free will and imagination, in the style' "The next d^y wasFriday,November obscene populu magazine 22. When rr happened[-y itdicsl I was grabbinglunch in the snack Book dso hassymbols.Horowitz's bookbarl' Shockof recognition? how the youngercan't much betterwritten-is about the generations, learn from the older, how no two people can communicate,and so from New YorkJewish life, on. Horowitz is good at renderingscenes The trouble is that and asa sociologlcdstudy his novel is interesting. sociology is not, itself, interesting. It deals with the moment, as It Kierkegatrdwould say. providesmereinformation. Horowitzwdlows in trivid detail, havingneither the barbaricwisdom of Melville, who scornedsuch stuff, nor the philosophicalinsight of Tolstoy (or, in a smaller waf, PeterThylor), who can make gossipsignificant.Perhaps is he because experience limited, perhapsbecause has been taken his come in by fashionable nonsense, Horowitz's aftemptsat unirrersdizing to nothing' howeverpopular it may be to assert that eachgeneration mu$ learn on its own, the assenionis fdse. If a secondgeneration can't learn from a first, the reasonis that the secondgenerationhas fault' it lacksthe ability to empathizeor think a basicand uninteresting and thus understand. Great writers deal with problemswhich conftrrnt a hedthy, intelligent man, however grotesquethe fictiond representative; smdl writers deal with social or physiologicaltraps. (Captain AhrU rnay be mad, but he's a pieceof Melville, by no meansa fool, a weakling, or merely ^ victim of social conditions.) Marilyn Hoff

16/

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got publishedbecause racial questionsells.Mr. Horowitz got pubthe lished because dienation is in. Neither writer hasclarified rhe human situation, though both make a youthful, feebleattempt. Both harc been encouraged market simplemindedopinions and undisciplinedtalent. to The panderingof gno\ryn-up writers is more troublesome.Take,for instance,Margaret [,ane (A Nigbt at Sea). love rriangle-husband, A wife, mistress. Husband and wife go to the old symbolic seaand ruminate arnong the usual poetic-soundingnauticd fittings for two hundred pages.Wife decides she should kill hersell the Christian thing ro do. Takespills while piloting the boat, despitethe argumen$ of common senseand a ghostly voice. Boat is wrecked, husband dies, and wife finds that life is, for mysterious reasons,wonh living after all. The writing is professiond,and the andysisof characters subtle,so that is the immonality of the argumenthaseffect.Infidelity is justified because we ought to be "free," ought to "fulfill outselves,"accordingto Miss ["ane.And aseveryoneknows, nothing in this world is really satisfying but sex. Or take Willard Modey (bt Noon Be Fair): a sad storyannoyingly well told, in its slick way-of American exploitation. It used to be that in beautiful, natural Mexico girls fornicated for free on the beach,but then carnethe gringos,payingthe girls, on one hand, preachingto them, otr the other. Now Mexico is diny and ronen and guilt-ridden and capitalist,like America. Motley, like Miss Lane,makes money on fashionable lies, in this case lie that Americansarebasithe cdly hypocritesand fools and e\rery other country in the world is nicer. Motley is wrong, s wrong as any Bircher,and his publisher(Pumam) should be rounced. One might say the same of the Tlident Press, publishersof Don Ti'acy'smaudlin and would-be sensationdBazzaris, except that a book so s(tremely clumsy can haveno effect whatever. The probably unwitting social and moral thesisis absurd, the technique embarrassing. I am of coursenot sayingthat every book mu$ be significant,but only that a man who thinks he is significant-thinl$ himself an ani$had better be right. Helen Maclnnes's Tbe Double Image,'a tale of intrigue and espionage, good entenainment,though not an and never is is Fullenon's Lionbear? now and then moderately meant to be. Ale,xander the enrerraining,though hardly as excitingas Fullenon thinks, unless style is pure desperation.Even the writers of entenainmentshaveto be trivially honest, that is to say, convincing. Maclnnes usually is,

AN INVECTIvE AGAINsT MEREFIcTIoN /

17

Fullenon isn'r, but the imperfectionof his craft is not bothersome. one usesin One doesnot judge a lemon drop by the samestandards judging a lifeboat. On the other hand, the mereintent to be amusingand insignificant Stafford's ConsiderJean for of is no guarantee success the entertainer. A Motber in History(not a work of fiction but a handy example).It ro is tasteless write unimponantly of imponant matters-the assassinaMiss Stafford'sorigthe tion of a President, backgroundof an assassin. to inal object was seriousenough,howeverunpretentious: seekan in' mother. But Miss Stafford of tuitive, feminine understanding Osvald's chatteringladies'magazines. complacent, hassold out to the snobbish, 'Accustomedasshewasto Mrs. Oswald public speaking, For instance: me did not seemto be addressing specificrllybut, rather,a largeconof gregation. . . Taking advantage my anonymity in this quiet crowd and of the fact that her back wasturned, I looked around the room in the snoopyway women do when they arein other women'shouses.. ." of A mornent later Miss Stafford speaks "a writing deskwhere orderly were laid out to which ry Paul Pry eyewould be bound pilesof papers cdls to stray'' Throughout her narratire,Miss Stafford superciliously attentionto Mrs. Osvald's grammar,her pronunciation,her rmlgarity. Mrs. Oswdd is straightout of FlanneryO'Connor, but at leasther demonicstupidity is honest.Miss Stafford,who usedto write serious fiction, has taught herselfto be what longinus calls "frigid"-emotionally trivid. I have an ulterior motive for draggingin Jean Stafford. I want to make a distinctionbetweenart and entertainment,one in which "fiction" in the old sense no place.I havesaidthat greatwriters avoid has meresocialor physiological trapsand that entenainers-that is, writers of spy stories,animal stories,amusinginterviews,and other books to with-are successful they amuse escepe without offendirg our sense if of what is fitting. Thesewere convenientsimplifications.C'ood writers do dealwith trivid problemsand trivial people.When they do, howercr, they recognize the triviality of their materid and force the readerit perhapsfor the first time-to recognize too. Mere enteftainment, then, providesescape from the way things4r; entertainingart clarifies. Entenainment fails when considerations inside or outside the work forcethe reader musesoberlyon tuth-not to the truth of fact, but the truth of human values.Entenainingaft, on the other hand, fails

18/

oN wRrrERs AND wRtrrNG

whenever it turns into pure entertainment (shooting in the wrong direction) or wheneverit falls into error (a shot in the right direcdon, but a miss). From a technical point of view, both entertainment and art require craftsmanship, but since style is one of the chief devices for liberadng truth, it should be obvious that the richer the language, the worse the entertainment.Or to put the thing neutrally,entenainment requirescleverness, richness.Needless say,neither art nor an to entertainment very often get what they require. It is also hardly necessaryto mention that most books are neither an nor entertainment but a mixture of the two-Bellow's Herzog,for instance: part vision, Nevenheless, distinaion is right and useful,and books the pan praffle. which violate the distinction are unsatisfing, like musicfrom a French horn that leaks air on cenain notes. even in his Entenaining an does get its due in Anthony Burgess, relatively slight first novel, A Visionof Banlments, belatedlypublished later books, last winter. The comedy is lighter than that in Burgess's are not trivial, or who but the anistic focus is the same.Characters enwouldn't be if the world were put together right, find themselves the tangledin the trividity of the world-in this case, world of milimry whose noble but system.The central characteris a seriouscornposer inept attempts to managewhere a Tiuth-man doesnot fit throw comic light on both the impossibleided (which we all the more earnestly affirm) and the social redities which keep the ided out of reach.Not that the tde is a melodrarna.The army is all too eagerto be a friend out direcof art, education, and all that: it joyfully makeslists, sends tives, studies the appropriateand inappropriateregulations;but it is as hard for military systemto adapt to art asfor an to adapt to milinry system. The hero's name is Ennis, his story L burlesqueof Virgil's epic. No empire hasbeenfounded yet when the book ends,but Ennis splendidfinal Parais still at it, laboring like the insectsin Burgess's is graph. The languagetn A Visionof Banlcmcnts not as ingenious as in the later Burgessnovels,but it is sufficient,often very funny, rich in images which are at once clerrerand grimly aPProPriate. And pure entenainment,of a sort lessformulaic than the usualsPy srory or animal story getsits due and then some inSofiSoap,the first Nweb, superblyranslatedby A. Brothenon. Tbree of William Elsschot's SofrS*p is the srory of a wise swindler named Boorman, managing Industry, director of Tbe World Pwieat of Financl, Tiadeand Cammerca

A N I N v E c T I V E A G A I N s T M E R EF I c T I O N /

19

Most of the story a An and Science,publicationwith no subscribers. talk half:Dickensean about of consists Boorman'shallDostoyevskean, is the world. His Reaieut ^ device for extoning money from other swindlers(the whole world), and the novelisticexcusefor the talk is that Boorman is breakingin a new managingdirector. What rnakes the book delightful is that, though Boorman believesall the world to be crooked,Boorman is no whining cynic. He has enormousadmiration for crooks' "Look, you do it like thisi'and he flicked open a thick directory and read out: s lcaritity- batbroqm- lifi s Wabington H oul- I I 0O rmms- e Telepbone 16t0t, 16t06, 16307, 16308, 16t09, 16310, ''You can seeat once that the WashingtonHotel is someThey word the adranisements thing for rhe WorldFcuial so that the innocent readerhasvisionsof some immenselabyrinth where he'd get lost without a guide.Then those phone numbers.They could just aswell ashaveput one-six-three-ofive, a hyphen,and ten, but with eachnumber printed separately you can hear a chorus of phonesjangling as you read the advenisement. They know a trick or two!" Sofr Soop "exposes"everything under the sun-from politicians to funerd directorsto unions to fat, sick ladies,and the inventiveness of the thing is amazing.Tbe Leg, the secondof the Tltree Noaels, is shoner and almostasfunny. Boorman growsremorsefuland struggles to atone for his earlierswindling of a fat lady who now has a wooden l.g. To no avail,of course.The swindled shdl inherit the eanh. The third novel is sadlydisappointing-a moral tale, full of heavy-handed symbolismand dl the virtuous emotion Elsschot poked fun at so cleverly in his earlier pieces.What has gone wrong here is interesting, or at any rate suppoftsmy thesison art vs. entenainment.The longing and disillusionment which characterize of Elsschot'swork can all make excellententenainment,for there Elsschotmock-soberly takes patent illusion ashis clown-hero's premiseof reality and doesnot claim to sayhow things really are. But when, in an attempt at aft, Elsschot describes human situation asa sadcaseof longing and disillusionthe ment, he mistakes half-truth for truth, and the result is one more a whimpering modernnoral. At the sametime, the rary clerarness which

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oN wRtrERs AND wRtrtNG

makesthe earlier short novels delightful is hollow and out of place introducedby symbols(mainly the here,while the attempt at richness sea)fails becausethe symbols are easy and awkwardly introduced. I object on thesesamestylistic groundsto Heather RossMiller's Tenants tbeHouseand, more $renuously,John Nathan'stranslation of which of Yukio Mishima s TlreSailor Wlw Fellfram Grarewitb tbe Sea, style Miss Miller's widely acclaimed is probably no better in Japanese. consistsof "poetic" diction (housesare "dwellinp"), high-falutin' sento tencesdesigned intensify everydaysituations,and trite bits of irony. By high-falutin'I mean, "But it didn't turn out that way. The vision that burned under the carbidelampsof the CarolinafarmersasJohn Murdoch stood in their kitchensand tdked of his church,his Mission, burned in the lamp of Destiny with a different blazestruck by another to matchI' As for trite irony, take the chapter-opener, be found in a hundred ladies'novels,"summer cameto Johnsboroin spiteof the of warl' One might point to numerous instances such sentimental writing in Miss Miller's novel, and I am temptedto do it if only from distressat the high praise her style has generdly been grven. But I won'r. Three things should be said in her favor. Though she writes with a gilded shovel,she does not trade in patently moronic ideasor gossipfor its own sake.Second,her symbolsare more or lessoriginal And third, the novelis infinitely benerthan inreresting. and somerimes its dust jacker-a picture of Poe'sMiss Usher, with a greenfaceand stormy blue hair. As for Mishima's novel, the dust jacket is excellent.The prose,if like one can isolateit from what it carries,is lean and spare,classical, all Mishima's writing. The trouble is, there arebrutally obviousstock of symbols, intended ironicdly, in pan, but nevenheless Pun/eyors un' truth. The novelis about the seaand the land, youthful ambitionand and The plot is assPare and compromise. disillusionment middle-aged plot which as the prose:and the dangerin a strictly classical classical ends unhappily is that the doom must be inevitableas the plot and must be, ar the sametime, significantenough to justify the tonure the readermust endure.Mishima tellsof a sailorwho once believedyer-that he is set apan from the restof mankind and secretlybelieves and will somedayachievesome son of glory. He becomesthe idol of a group of schoolboyswho havethe samevagueyearningfor the extra,ardinaryand the same conviction of persond superiority.The in boys for unconvincing reasonstrain themselves the heanlessness

AN INVEcTIVE AGAINST MEREFtcTIoN / 2l

in For instance, one powerfully upsetting superman. of a Nietzschean discover they murder and cur up a kitten. When the schoolboys scene, befuddled,gende, hero is an ordinary man, compassionate, that their like any common landsman,they resolveto destroy him exactly as they destroyedthe kitten. The novel ends with the sailor drinking druggedrea,mumbling of his dream of glory about to be liquidated' "Still imrnersed his drerffi, he drank down the tepid tea. It tasted in bitter. Glory asenyone knows, is bitter stuffl' We haveheard before that glory is bitter-heard it so often we need to questionthe opincomion. Mishima'sdivisionof humanity into landsmenand seamen, and the pious is melodramatic, or promisers wrongheaded dory seekers, melodramais completely unrelieved.Every characterwho figures in on the story srands one side or the other of the neat dichotomlt an the who pitifully misses Oscarsyear after fear; a lady unwillactress ingly compromisingin her double role as land-rooted mother and ro mistress a sailor; and on the other side,the sentimentalsailor, the some boys.But therearr rn this world somewho succeed, murderous thriller "know how to bel' As a psychological who, asW. H. Gasssays, (though psycholory for its own Mishima's rde might be successful than sociology);but when accidentd psysakeis no more interesting to chologicallimitations are elevated cosmic veritiesby an awesome the of syrnbolism, resultis fdsehood and thus unsatisfying rumbling drama.In Mishima too, one may aswell add, sexhasmuch to answer sor, Noboru, getshis greatvision of the mysterious for. The murderous Destiny from peepingwhile his mother glory which is his supposed and the sailor make love. And as for the sailor' To a man locked up in a steel ship all the time, the sea is too much like a woman. Thingr like her lulls and storms,or her caprice,or the beauty of her breastre{lectingthe setting sun, are all obvious. More than that, you're in a ship that mountsthe seaand ridesher and yet is constantlydeniedher. It's the old saw about miles and miles of lovely water and a you can't quenchyour thirst. Nature surrounds sailorwith all theseelementsso like a woman and yet he is kept as far as a man can be from her warm, living body. That's where the problem begins,right there-I'm sure of it. Captain Ahab, I think, would spit.

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If entertainmentprovidesa moral holiday,whereasan tellsthe truth about human values,one must make up a third categoryfor works which, fictional or not, deal frankly with mere fact. Both Frans Coenen'sTheHouseon tbc Canal,translatedbyJamesBrockway,and J. Van Oudshoorn'sAlimation, translatedby N.C. Cleg, published together in the Classics Dutch and Flemish Literature series,one of essenti.lly non-fictiond, the other a work of fiction, are successful accountsof non-universalfact, TbeHouseon tbeCanal is the chronicle of a real house and the family which actudly lived there. The book is a sociological-historical it piece,interestingbecause is Dutch, wellresearched, and gossipy;it is legitimare,as Gene Horowirz's book is not, becauseCoenen abstainsfrom mord comment where there is none to be made. Alicnation is a grueling psychologicd analysis,a painstakingclinical record of mental breakdown as seenfrom inside. The book has an effect much like one comrnon effect of what I have called xrt: the readeris torn to bits. But the murder of the readerhas no broad philosophicd implications.If the madness the centralcharof acter has its basisin puritanism, the caseis not presented anphing as more than a specid case.One readsin the way one readsabout the emotiond problemsof Siamese twins. An excellentbook, for its kind; neither art nor entertainmentbut an illustration of what the Saezttrtc Amnican could be if scientists loose. A book of information. let Findly, as I said at the $an, great literary anists give right answers Such to the right questionsand do so with masterful craftsrnanship. writers are rare, and a glanceLt the writers who have come closest shows *hy. Take M"y Sanon frrst-Mrs, Stnms Hears tbe Mermaids Singing. but intelligence, Miss Sanon is a careful craftsmanwith considerable passionately she is shallow. Her novel concernsan old lady poetess and so fonh. dedicatedto "getting down" the truth, to understanding, Unfonunarely, the lady we are supposedto adrnireis a posturing,selfpitying phony. She talks to herselfin the stagymanner of an elderly lesbian(which she is), "Old thing, it's high time you pulled yourself 'Thapped by lifei Hilary mutteredl' And Miss together!" Or again, " can't seethrough her. Tivo interreasons, Sarton, for understandable viewers (lovers, ro make a plo$ are on their way to ask Mrs. Stevens about her life and work, and half the time while she waits for them worries about the Meaning of Life, half the time ddlies Mrs. Stevens

AN INVEcTIVE AGAINsT MEREFIcTIoN / 2t "This feminine distress, to in (we are supposed believe)characteristic togethera huge complexof living and harmonized room, roo, gathered it, all focusedon the small intimate glimpseof the seacut through scrub and brush, framed in French windows at the end. But would Would they disdainthe floweredchintz on the sofaasold-fashioned? paintingsas not quite first class?" the two Impressionist they register Besides room which is redly a poem she has the fond memory of a a dead husbandnamed Adrian, his mother, named Margaret (who and a preciousyoung homo' usedto bring one perfectrosein a glass), (fussynamesall). To Mar Mrs. Stevens shows sexud friend namedMar her poems,with the following tiresomeresult' It wassalutaryto pit the new poemsagainstsomeoneso young and intransigent-so ignoranttoo-who would havenone of her hardwonvinuosity, who forced her back and back to the who brought out the crude, origind person.They essence over a singleword. Often shewas fought bitterly, sometimes in a ragewhen he left but the rage shot adrenalin through her, gaveher the strengthto begin a poem again,tear it apan, make it harder and $ronger so she could hurl it at Mar the next d^y in triumph, She had not imaginedthat she would be so fenilized by a human being again. And there areothers,a brilliant castof fops, mostly guy.Mrs. Stevens teaches peoplethat "We haveto dareto be ourselvesl'Onewonders if such people ougbtto be themselves. Great writing requiresa great us personto do the writing. Miss Sanon leaves with {ine craftsmanship and a trivial view of man and-the real subjectof the novel-poetry. John Updike't Of tbeFarm is not much better.Again, the craftsmanship is impressive, but the people, like Updike in his present$age, arehypersensitive whiners. Every expen line tremulously whispersthat the world is very sad' "Now in cool air I kissedher anciher face felt feverish.Fall, which cornesearlier inland, was presentnot so much as the scent of fallen fruit in the orchard as a lavendertinge in the dusk, a sense expiration. The meadow wore a strip of mist where of trickled a little rivulet, hardly a creek,chokedby weedsand watercress, and breathed.A bat like a speckof pain jerked this way and that in violet betweenthe treetopsJ'The characters-an ad the membranous

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man, his mother, his wife and stepson-spend three daystelling grim stories,quarrelling,feebly patchingup, and, aboveall, watching each other, scrutinizing emotions. Everybody is jealousof everybody,and listening to their conversationis like listening to cross young lovers who'd be better off home in bed. The book is not mere sociology or psychology,however.It has a clear and driving mord, a kind of affirmation by default: vicious and self-centered to peopleharre be moral to keep from killing each other. In shon, the limitation of the novel is that its mordity is grounded-as the Sanreanepigraphwarns uson a squinting and cynical vision, that is, a mistake.This streakin Updike has not dways been quite so obvious, and one hopeshe will get pa$ it, whatever the cause. Stylistically, ElizabethJane Howard's Aftn lulius rings truer than M"y Sanon's book, and the andysis of characters for the mo$ pan is nearly as convincing asUpdike's. Miss Howard's adrrantage that she is is wiser, emotionally hedthier than the other two writers. She too enjoys scrutinizingmotives,nuancesof meaningin common speech, psychologicalinterplay; but Miss Howard and her charactersare not all inconveniencedat having been born. Take the characterDaniel, for instance,at this point a $ranger listeningto a lady's suddenoutpouring of grief and indignation' He listened,and nodded-more to show that he was listening than to indicate agreementor even understanding.He understood that she was not h"ppy, all right, and of course, if peoplefelt like that, they spentnearly all their time trying to find the reasonsfor it, and he knew that he wasn't there to find the reasons her, just to provide comfort-a little for ignoranr warmth in this awful life of hers,jam-crammedwith ideasand disasterand with no man to account for it or take h.l mind off herself. When she had no more to say she asked him what he thought. He thought. The story is a kind of dlegory in which three dissimilarwomen achieve their moral identity by meansof what for thern amoun$ to a private m)'rh-:lulius, killed at Dunkirk. The proseis smooth and serviceable, and more cleverthan rich, not painfully self-conscious; the controlling

AN tNvEcTIvE AGAINsT MEREFICTION / 2t

idea is worth the writer's trouble. What limits this pleasingnovel is that, dlegory or no, the book is merely a ladies'book, Miss Howard the merely a ladies'norelist. If we readfor escape, serioustheme distracts the chatter,the pretty scenes, touching sentimerts; us from the pleasant once we are caught by the emergingidea, the gossipydetail stirs a tingle of impatienceand we wish to get on to what counts. The distinctionI havemade betweenart and entertainmentis borrowed from Graham Greene,and it would be ungrateful to useit against is g, him. Put it this way, then. Relativelyspeakin Tbe Comediaas a fine especidlyfor readingon a train. Greenehimself hasprovidedthe norrel, standard.Near the start of the book the narrator saysin passing,"I pro$ss of its characters tried to reada norrel,but the heavyforeseeable corridors of power mademe drowsy,and when down the uninteresting the book fell upon the deck, I did not bother to retrieveitl' The novel but Brown is readinghassomethings in common with TbeCamediaas, no Greene'sbook hasnothing heavily foreseeable, uninterestingcorridors. TbeComedians panly informational (Totalitarianismin Haiti), rs panly entenainment(a well-plottedthriller). It also makesa casualpass at aft, that is, Tiuth-telling, but here asdmost dways in Greene,Tiuth rideseasyand manages to be distracting-for two reasons. First, for not all that hasbeenmadeof it, Greene'sThuth is-and hasalwaysbeencomfonableand familiar, a pieceof the plot. It hasfar lessto do with the Catholic'sproblem (asGreenehimselfhasinsisted) than with the ordinary human problem,that of mainoining faith in and commitment to those absolutevalues-justice, freedom,loyalty-which for Greene seemincreasingly remote from actudity. Greene'sthesisis one that warms the heart, like sad,pretty girls and well-described exotic landscapes amusingminor characters-a pair of derroutvegetarians, and for (as instance in this book). Second,Greene'sform and manner are insistentlypopular.When seriousan borrows a popular formula, the very mannerforcesone to recognize that the formula is for once being taken seriously. ConsiderFaulkner.An odd or striking technique,one which forcesthe readeragain and again awayfrom the formula to its inner meaning,is wonhless if that rneaningis trifling or thoroughly familiar, and Greene is right to adopt the form he does. But if the anist'svision is significantand exceptiondit demandsunique CI(pression. On the other hand, Crawford Power's TbeEncounter,which after fifteen yearshasnow appearedas an Avon paperback,is a seriousand

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original work of an held back from the first rank by Power's choice of conventional technique.Even so trifling a thing as the writer's way of beginning and seperatingchapterscan limit the effea of a novel. The book opensin mediasres, with a pieceof conversation-a beginning which requiresincredibleskill to bring off. It is one of the two stock openinp of spy stories,ladies'norcls, and who-doneits, the other being in medias description.Power'shandlingof chapterand episode, ra sometimesthe individud sentence well, cdl up the sameunlucky as associations. The whole effect of the conventiond and popular technique-broken only in FatherCawder'smeditations-runs counterto the main force of the novel, rrtr impressirre exploration of the idea of goodness.Power'scentrd character,Father Cawder, is a Christian in the old-fashionedsense, humiliator of the flesh,an uncompromising a serviant C'od. He is an embodiment of goodness acenain kind-as of of is almo$ every characterin the novel. And his goodness, like that of the people around hirn, is both admirableand deadly.The centrd encounter is between Fafier Cawder and an acrobat named Diamond, who at first seems wa/: a sensualist, apparCawder'sopposite in errery ently uncommitted, frndly a murderer.But in fact Diamond is Cawder and Cawder Diamond. No one in the norrelis normative. The norm emerges as an impossible ideal at the imaginary center of the circle of charactem-an ided of human love aswise asC'od's.FatherCawder is no more capableof such love than is any other man. His tragedy confession.He is that he will not be satisfiedwith mere forgrveness, ends brooding on the im Lgegven him by his alter go, the plunge into death and the divine radiance;but that death he cannot choose. Breaking off from his prayer of forgveness,he becomes,in Power's brilliant close, a grim parody of the saintly manyrs of his faith, still throu$monifring the fleshbut dso turning-as imageryhassuggested stone. Before I can turn to what seemto me the rwo most imponant norcls published in the last few months-the last two novelsin my stack-I mu$ add to what I hara said dready one funher observation about what makes art. Excellent craftsmanshipis the limit of an intelligent Anthony Burges and wise man-Graham Greeneamong entertainers, among what I am calling anists. The great anist, the "genius," to use more connecions between an old-fashionedword, is the man who sees things than an ordinary man can see and has, moreover, a peculiar out-to

\ N r N V E c r t v E A G A I N s TM E R EF t c r t o N / 2 7 "Style" is asinadequate for uncningfeeling hismedium. andabsolunly this to describe feelingfor the writer'smediumas "church" would a between church a be to describe cathedrd.(Panof the difference is anda cathedrdis that the manwho livesin a cathedral a bishop.) in men,beyond doubt,harawordsbubbling the holy wells dl Some one wherethe re$ of us havemereblood. In desperation snatches writerslike languagel' Fraudulent like at ludicrous phrases "magical good.Badwriters,only steal Herr Faecke their mqsc from somebody to of dimly aware the mysterytrump up a style.(Strange say,all bad may be difstyle,thoughits elements writerscomeup with the same writerslike Buryess from wrircrto writer.)Intelligpnt distributed ferendy a construct style too) painstakingly in his laterworks(andNabokov, and pump into it anificialflaroringin the form of puns,anagrarts, (Joyce said. related thethingbeing to andothermateridnot organicdly mis: up to Finrugans his engaged this,but with a propriety imitators in Wake booksaretdesof theanisttold by the anist;the linguistic Joyce's comparable tricla arethe traces signs thespeaker, or of to-and directly suggested by-the linguisticmennerof the Holy Ghost as patristic understood exegetes him.) for of Only rwo noralsin thisgnoup extraordinary breadth mind ane and verbalgenius.One is MargueriteYoungs Miss Madntosb,My Darling; the other is William Gass's first norcl, Ommsmer's Lrck. Miss Youngestablishes once(p. 4) the centralquestionof her at epicof mind' enormous
What was the organizationof illusion, of memoryl Who knew even his own divided hean? Who knew dl heans as his own? Among beingsstrangeto each other, those divided by the long roaringsof time, of space,those who harrenerr met or, when they meet, have not recognizedas their ovyn the other hean and that heart'sweaknesses, turned stonily harc away,would there not be, in the vision of some omniscient eye, a web of spidery logic establishingthe mo$ secret relationships, deep cdling to deep, illuminations of the eternd darkness,recognitionsin the night world of voyagerdreams, all barriersdissolving,dl soulsasone and united?E*ry hean is the other heart. Every soul is the other soul. Every face is the other face. The individual is the one illusion.

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The book is too big and too leisurely to read or judge in the usud way-a vastcity of associations, classical and modern, in which floating spirits interpenetrateand external realitiesof time and placebreak down to become a stanling m)'th of the archetypalhuman life. One recalls,for many reasons, theJoyceanarchetyps, Father,Mother, Son, Daughter, Poet. It is directly to Joyce,I think, that Miss Youngis speaking, and she is saying No. No to the Aristotelean view of life as ^ conflict of generation, corruption, and re-creadon;no to the Joycean theory of history and, abora all, no to the theory of love asconstraint. Like Joyce, Miss Young knows what tales are wonh telling-she has carloadsof them, as doesJoyce-and likeJoyceshetellsher taleswith ht$ly conscious,highly anificid style.The greatdifference, from which all funher differencessprout, is that Miss Young is a thoroughgoing Platonist-a stanling thing to encounterin our time. Thus while both boldly seizeastheir theme "EverlnhingJ' the word meansmore (quantitatively) to Joyce than to Miss Young. Joyceoffers a metaphysicd explanationof the alphabet;Miss Young is not interested the dphain bet as such but only in the fact that spellings,right or wrong, reflect some rernovefrom the ldea. Joyce is interestedin panicular responsibilities of specific kinp and statesmen well asthe genericidea Kingas ship (the crown and scepter,hat and cane),and he relates theseto the responsibilitiesof the father, son, and poet. Miss Youngleapsat once to Kingship as love, with hats and cane-likeobjects(alsocloals, capes, robes)funcdoning as Freudiansymbols.Her allusiw style alludesdways her to the same eternd forms in their infinite disguises; symbols dl Wake center in the sameidea. And so,whereasthe length of Finnegans justified by the density of the book, its analysesof panicularsis places,occupadons,institutions, rituds-the bloated length of Mks of Maclntosb is an effect, simply, of system.The manifestations recurbe sense, broken off at rent embodiments of the ldea might, in one any point, they dramatize a vision which is just as clear and possibly even as convincing in the abstract.The book lacks the emotive power of compression,in shon; but I am not sure the idea admits of compression.If so, Platonism pushedto its limit is not anistic"lly viable. And if this is true, I must nervously report, Platonism is false. The trouble with Platonism as a basisfor an is that the realm of forrns is a museum, and the world where forrns find their expression is a junk shop. It is impossiblefor a thoroughgoing Platonist to love

AN INvEcTIVE AGAINsT MEREFIcTIoN / 29

or respe$ the gew-gawsof actualityt he seesthe actual as curious garmentsfrom an old rrunk, and since people and placesare all dim signs-and signs,moreo\r, which he underemblems, representations, rt*dr beforehand-he very naturdly slidesinto finding greatestinterest in the signswhich are most grotesque. on We had passed, this journey, many curious piecesof an enormous coffee urn with its lid opened rural architecture, againstthe sky, a wigwam nightclub where, under a denuded oak, a melancholy buffdo was tethered, incongruous as the a fadedwashingon the line. We had passed windmill, a leanwoman who lived in a shoe, ing tower, Noah's Ark, the old but thesewere miles back, and there were now no buildings litde, low-roofed houses, but thoseof the amorphousdistance, birds' nests,a child's face at some near winsmdl as ruined of dow, the individuality blotted out by the watery greyness the Middle Wesr, the train as small as a toy train crossing a toy bridge. not At the sametime, Platonismhasits advantages, the leastof which fancy: is the freedom it givesto Poetic of There had beentheseseas silk spun by manyred cocoons, silks so delicarethat they might be drawn for miles through a wedding ring like cloudsthrough the gold hoop of the abwhich might havebeen enclosedinside senrmoon, gossamers that casketwhich was a nut's shell, laceswhich seemedto melt, to disolra at a touch, ribbons crumbling into fog and bands of silk disintegratinginto dust and silks flowing into water as if warer were their counterpaft and moon-stained satinswith torn skins and white rosetteswhich might have been lying for years under the dust or in the waters of a grave-many bridal govvnsand no bride's slippers-for this bride had lost her slipperslong ago-m any flounces, ruffles, skins, underskins-bridd gowns of dl vintagesand perhaps of that vintagewhich neverwas on eafth, porous silks so thin that the leasttouch might causethem to fall into nothingness as snow might fall into a crucible of burning gold where a long-hairedangel walked with folded wings and eyeswhich staredat Mr. Spitzer.

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Miss Maclntosb,My Darling presenrs world as a glittering moonthe lit ruin, a dresm; as death ("for were we not already dead, w who breathed and wdked about, our breath like frozen plumes upon the winter air, our eyeballscracking in the cold?"). Miss Young has put the best yearsof her creative lifetime into this book, and her craftsmanship, even genius, is impressive. But the book is fiction. on the other hand, is tnre. It is an imperfea book, Ommsetur's ltuk, finally unsatisfying,but the work of an extraordinary mind. Whereas Miss Young s poetry is necessarily incantatory all roices becomingone voice, and whereasher imagery is necessarily antique-shopimagery Gass'slanguageand imagery come from panicular, red people and placesclosely observed-observedwith intenselove but dso with that comic detachmentwhich comesfiom the knowledgethat all men Lre, like oneself,slightly ridiculous. It is a poetry madeup of real people's turns of speech, Now folks today we're going to auction off Missus Pimber's things. I think you dl knew Missus Pimber and you know she had some preffy nice things. This is going to be a real fine sale and we have a real fine d^y for it. It may get hot, though, later on, so we want to keepthings moving right dong. And no$' I'm going to begin the salewith the things back here by the barn. You've dl had a chanceto look at everything so let's bid right out for thesefine thingsand keepthings moving right along. .

And poetry made up of the red world's images, The fire and the lamp made pairs of crossingshadows,one steadyand firm, one leaping and vague.Her shadowspoued drawn magicdly back beneathher the wdl and disappeared, chair assherocked,then daning fonh to climb the wdl rapidly again He found himself marking the height.Incrediblyswift, the picture, the long it bent itself up from the floor, passing g head reachin a mar in the paper and coveringa clusterof while the lengtheningfinid that followed behind struck leaves a rose..

AN INVEcTIVE AGAINsT MEREFIcTIoN /

3l

is handling of language unerring. And as a fictional strategist Gass's he is one of the best sinceFaulkner.Stripped to its thematic bones, Luck Omensetter's is a book about mind. The apparenthero, Brackett that bane of our Omensetter,is a men who seemsto have escaped He consciousness. knows river currents,can whistle human existence, with joy and no sign of "desirein the ordilike the birds, makeslove Furber, a grotesque, narysensel'The apparentvillain, ReirerendJethro and tiny, spiderlikeman, is pure consciousness both hatesand envies The battle betweenthem is the ancientbattle of intellecOmenserrer. vs. tual vs. "natural man," reason faith, intellectualcontrol vs. "luck," but in Gass'snovel the battle has a wide field, within the individual hean, within a rown, within a nation, within all civilization. The truth is that man must be conscious,at those times when it when it mattfs; must sometimes maners;ffiust make moral choices, nature into mind, Jethro Furber is right and rise our of his material But self-deluded. it is dso true that to know "how BrackettOmenseffer of some measure faith (in Gass's to be" one must love and must harre to a willingness tru$ one'sluck); and in this arena of universe Chance, the intellectualis alwaysa ridiculous creature.He is a "liar" in the can that reeson support nearly anphing, if it lacls what the natural sense the cenainty of the hean; and the intellectual is, as man possesses, Jethro Furber rightly callshimself, "a diny old man," for his very distancefrom his materid nature makeshim lust after it. On the other natural man is wrong about himself, fot he does hand, the appealing to and consciousness, his pretense himself and others that he possess does not makeshim dangerous. of For dramaticdevelopment this idea, Gasstakestwo greatAmerican archetypes-the heany frontiersman(Omensetter)and the hell-fire (Furber). the lirst secion of his norrel,"The Thiumph In puritanpreacher Tottl' he shrewdlyloads the dice-as they have always of Israbestis Tott is a thoroughly likeable beenloaded-for Omensetter:Israbestis hatesFurber (asthe sectionends, old man who admiresOmensetter, As spiders). local historian, Tott is the consciousness Tott is squashing of the rown of Gilean ('.And how would [the boyl learn his history and now?Imaginegrowing up in a world where only generals geniuses, had histories,not your own town or grandempiresand companies, father, house of Samantha-none of the things you'd loved"). But town consciousness-hisown town's history though he understands

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and geography-he doesnot understandeither individual human conor sciousness the history (or geographyeither) of the World. "Cats know how to live . . . Cats beat us at it bad. Now BrackettOmensetter, though-" In his role asindividual, Tott is himselfa natural man. The norrel's secondsection,"The love and Sorrow of Henry Pimber]' on the surfacesupponsbut on a deeperlevel undermines initidly the favorableview of Omensemer. Henry Pimber, who hasaffinitiesboth with narureand with mind-lockjaw once made him outwardly a stone, inwardly ,jangle of consciousness-loves Omensetterand looks upon him "almost asa personalsaviorl' (Omensefteris a realnamebut also "the one who setsthe omens," a god. Omensener ironically suggests with the Old is a New Testamentfigure of faith and love; he contrasts Testamentfigure of reasonand justice,Jethro.) In the end, because Pimber cannot qualify as a naturd man (he lacks taith in Pimber's luck and Omensefter'slove)-and because loving but panly unconthe scious Omenseffer fails to realizePimber needshim-Pimber sinks toward despair and suicide. Still we view Omenseffer favorably; the fault seems Pimber's.The third section,the bulk of the novel,concerns Gass'scomitragic hero-and-villain,Furber: a lying, schemingpreacher but also who lusts after women and writes outlandish diny verses fully developed, preaches-and thinks-brilliandy. He is consciousness of fully educated, but uncommitted: I rlocker and despiser the world of and of himself, an at once comic and dead seriousrepresentative fully explicit the morntheme becomes the archayp. poet-priest.Gass's on ing Furber preaches the Creation story making it a parablefor our human desirefor simplicity, a return to an animal-likeSBt: everlasting God created always by division, taking the lesserpart, transformingit into its opposite,and raisingit abovethe rest. So should we changeour wor$ into our best. Furber snappedhis fingers.There was a good one. That But was the kind of thing they liked. Should he sayit again? he was losing the thread. There is everywherein nature a paniality for the earlier condition, and an instinctiveurge to return to it. To succumb to this urge is to succumbto the wish of the Prince of Darkwhose aim is to defeat,if posible, the purposeof God's ness, creation.

A N I N V E C T I V EA G A T N S TM E R E F I C T I O N /

t,

But Furber himself cannot belierait, the words arc mere words, a clerrcr descanton his text. "Like a waterstrider,Furber rode a thin film of at sensel'Yet Furber is right, ashe understands last. Omensetter allows his own child to die of pneumonia-trusting to nature, Omensefter through says; Orcutt, the M.D. who should havebeencdled, sees but him: "You and your damn fool theories." Recognizinghis mistake, Omensetterbecomesremorseful;and Furber becomesmore like what is best in Omensetter.In his find gesture,Furber shows himself the "the secret-how to bel' one man in the novelwho fully understands to Gassis dways dead right in his choice of which characters use, which sceneto put first; he's dead right how ro treat each character, roo in his handling of minor structural devicesfor the larger poetic Omensetter'svisit to Furber, late rhphm of the novel. For instance, in the novel, is verbdly (and convincingly)pardlel to Furber's earlier visit to Omensetter's bestfriend-to whom Furber hissedmonstrous and ridiculous lies about Omensefter.The recognition inherent in the devicegivespoetic force to a more imponant recognition, for it is in Omensetter'svisit to Furber that we come to seewhat could only be suspected before,that Omensettertoo is doomed to consciousness and lying. He readsbooks sometimes, tells Furber, but not in the he winter, "bad for the eyes." Or praisethe novel this way. Omensmer's Ltuk aroids every mistake I'rc had a chanceto mention while discusing other norels in this review. Gass'snovel is "informational"; life in rural Ohio a while sgo, the of the progress madness, hatred of the world inherent in puritanism (from Plotinus forwar$; but here everyline functions,and the meaning found in the materialis there.The noral is funny in places,mouing in places,but nowhere merely entenaining. And Gassstealsfrom no one. The suggestion one reviewer that Gassis a "jejune Joyce" is of mere impudence.When Gas uses comic nonsense languap it is strictly that; it has nothing to do with FinnegansWake,And when Furber alludesto Empedocles makeshis allusionby fundamentallydifferent he principles from those in, say, Ulysscs. One might point to Samuel Beckett, for equally striking and origind comitragic vision as well as for similar delight in the absurdity of reixon uncheckedby commitffiItt; but in Omensettcr's one finds only a few heelprin$ to signd Luk Beckett'shaving passed through. Beckettmay harre gven Gasshis ideas of the world ascircusor musichall, but Gasshashis own experiences of circuses musichallsand his own ideas,differentfrom Beckett's, and

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on what makesthose placesreal. Sooner say Gassis "influenced" by the comic strip and animatedcanoon. Furber, Omenserter, Totr, and the rest are straight out of Al Crpp exceprthat they are convincingly human and not involved in paltry satire.And Gass's settings-a chair rocking in a firelit noorn,two men pacingbeforea forge,a snolv-correred mountain in a shadow of birds-are the settingsof a Disney movie come to ltfe, as Disney settingsnever do. Gass'ssymbols (weather,a man skipping stones, a hanging man pecked by birds) are dso strikingly origind and are at the sametime so firmly imbeddedin the action that their force comes in the reader'sblood, not merely inro his head. Needlessto say, glven Gass'scontrol of style and structure, nothing in the plotting and nothing in the treatment inadvenendy cdl up associationwith e kind of writing the book is not. The novel'sfaults are not failuresof truth but failuresof discipline. Gassdwells too long on Furber's thought. The firsr rwo sections, absolutely flawless,set up a dramatic action which jerks ro a srop with the introduction of Furber in meditation; and when the action gets moving againit lacks its old power because Furber'sthought hasmade the theme and symbols too explicit. In a great novel, action reveds its inner meaning like a $ray, maybe dangerousmongrel raken in off the $reet , ln Omtnsetter's Luck the action becomestoo obviously the vehicleof ideas.Gassis right when he establishes connecions poetically, without comment-for instance,the dissimilarreacions of Omenseffer and Furber to weather-but wrong when, for instance,he againand againcommentsauthorially on Furber'sidea-spinning "lyingJ' forcing as into the reader'shead the relationship betweenthe intellectualand the viciousgossip. Not that Furber should not think. The readermust seeFurber's mind at work-panly for the sheerpleasure it, panly of so that he can draw conclusions about the action-but the conclusions must be the reader'sif drama is not to be reducedto syllogism.The mistake in the Furber section is merely technicd, however.It limits the power of the book, not the intelligenceor truth. Gasshaswritten perfect shon storiesand one of the best shon novelseverproducedby an American. He has everything it takes to produce a great novel. Findly this. All of the popular lies I have shook my finger at throughout this essay-about Americans,about inevitabledienation, about sexand fulfillment, about longing and disillusionment,eventhe lie about an asopinion, Tiuth asthat which soundsgood-are reveded n Ommscttsr\hck (asIsrabestis Toa says)"as plain as a cow in a fieldl'

ilIoreSmog from the Mills DarkSatanic

NE OF THE INCONVENIENCES OF LIVING

in one'sown time is that the filtering hasnot yet been done: /ou have to hunt down the occasional first-rate contemporary book through great grayheapsof trash. Not that trash is a bad thing. The money the a publishermakeson fashionablebad writers makespossible publication of seriouswriters who eventuallyprovegreat. What is troublesome is not so much the trash as the imitation seriousfiction which rhe obscures realthing, the sickly stuff editorsbloat to lifesize in their who frequently echo (perhapsin good faith) helpful i.tt n to reviewers, of the grandiosephrases the hint-shee$. I assumeit's not redly a, capitalistplot. Evento a city man I wouldn't sell a dead hog and pretend it was only asleepfor a minute, but perhapseditors don't read the novels they print. It's an affractive theory. They buy the novel from an agent who has never read it either, he just "represents" it, the way a number cen representtwo sick fish or two chickenhouses, and to get them to buy it the agentthrows in someother norrel,cheaper than it would hara beenotherwise,by som@nelikeJohn Hersey,who s safe.The editor grvesthe manuscript to a grrl from Radcliffe, who fxes the spelling and changesthe parts that aren't clear to her, and writes the jacka blurb then somebodyelsewho s readtwenty-firc pages

3'

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which vaguely alludes to "outrageous humor" or "delicate insight" and the "deeper symbolic intent." How pleasantit would be to be able to believesuch theories! But the world, aswe know, is no romance.Editors, evenagentsand jacket blurb writers, are ashonest asthey know how to be. The reasontrivial contemporary fiction so frequently gets mixed up with better work is that nearly everyoneinvolved with it, from the writer to the lady who forgot to send back the rejection slip from her reading club, is serious-minded and righteouslycommitted to what are cdled the exciting new ideasof our time-in other words,to nonsense. C'ood writing may not be deadbut merely in hiding, asusual,blockedout by smog from the dark satanicmills. People harre alwaysknown about themesand symbolsand tensions, and people have always recognizedthat fiction has something to do and with truth; but once, having strcng churches where intransigeance systemwere the main pan of the entenainment,most people let ficNow fiction rnust be studied;it must suption go about its business. both ingenioustheoriesof how fiction works and popular theories port of reality. Sincewhat fiction doesis absurdlyobvious and regular,not it fit to suppon more than five full professors, is madeto do something else. Or, at best, what it does incidentally,with the side of its foot, is turned into a marvel and broken down to its constituent pans and analyzedand yodeled over asthough it were somethingof unspeakable imponance, like taxes.(How elsecan one explain the rage for empty Faaor?) pyrotechnics, for instance Tbe Sot-Weed Wha- true fiction does is celebrate,not preach.Which is why it tells the truth. For example,it takestwo sensibleideas-the idea that and a man should be responsible the ideathat a man should be himself, free, nor, as we say,uptight-and it embodiesthese awkwardly con(or flicdng ideasin, say,two people whom it fully respects elsefinds in a place and equally absurd,like us) and it puts thesetwo people watchesthem acr. Not for the purposeof proving one of the people it a fool or a devil our of hell but because is the nature and moreover the joy ofthe novelistsimply to watch irnponffit, familiar things from everything inside. An clearsthe head of small opinions, not because some things are beautiful and relative, in view of an, but because is its suspending compassionatell' need to be affirmed. An celebrates, mord outrage for the moment.

MoRE SMoc FRoM THE DARK SATANIc MILLS /

t7

This is a fairly simplemindedthing for an to do, and one can hardly who are seriouspeoplewith promotions and blame collegeprofessors, familiesro think about, for objecting.No wonder Chaucer'sWife of and Othello a lesson Bath becomesa lessonagainstconcupiscence, like againstromantic pride. Righteousness, obscenity,is fun. The fact remains,fiction is moral as the universeis rnoral' in books as in life, killing peopleindiscriminatelywill probably bring you to a bad end; but unlike the universeas fondly * we conceiveit, fiction is mord by accident. the Nevenheless, only Writers havebeendenyingthis for centuries. The only stick in boring characters Dickensare the pillars of decency. figure in Anna Karmina rs lrvin, whom Tolstoy admiresfor his noble writers, suchasFaulknerat his worst-because wooden head.In lesser pantingafter unrealityis better than scorningthe clowns who can't see are it-the peoplewho ca$ no shado\Ms the stark embodimentsof evil. What the greatest writers haveunderstood,and not just fitfully, is that what they are, better or worse, imperfect peopleare understandably when measurcd against ided and thereforecomic or ffaglc or both. the They leavethe righteousmoralizingto critics.fb put this another way, what the best fiction does is make powerful affirmations of familiar truths. The trivial fiction which time filters out is that which either makeswrong affirmationsor elsemakesaffirmationsin a squeakylittle roice. Powerful aftirmation comesfrom strong intellect and strong emotion supportedby adequate technique.Affirmation and righteousness are as far aptrt aslove and hate or aft and criticism. Now to criticism. Of the three greatuniversity doctrinesat work in modern fiction, the leastoffensiveis that a book is good or bad insofar as it is "well made"; the next in order is that fiction ought properly to teach right behavior,chastising sin; and the rnost offensiveis that human beings are all mere clowns and tramps. tivid books may sometimesbe overratedbecause they "worki' that is, because syrnbolsall click together the neatly (assymbolsin Melville and Shakespeare not); but the truth do is, greatart doeswork, up to a point. It has to do with the structure of the human mind. What makesmost modern fiction a howling bore is the vasthean-warminggoodness discovered vipers and toads, and in the mechanicalwhine of self-pity. For an excellent case mechanicalneatness righteousness, of conand sider John Knowles's little sermon Indian Summer. Like errcrynhing

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Knowles haswritten, despitehis protestations, book is a carefully the constructedlittle machine.It concernsa pan-Indian young American hero by the name of, symbolicallyenough,Kin-solving(hyphenation mine), first name "Cleet," representing what he clings by. Where he lives, a town in Connecticut,there usedto be grearsailingships-men of war and brigantines-but now the town has become puritanicd, well-off, and dreary and Kinsolving longs for freedom. The escape he wants is the modern equiralent of seventeenth-cenrury New World sailing: tlt Alaskan freight airline. Every detail in the book is as near as this equation. There is a theater symbol, elaboratelytinkered (one of a hundred entrapmentsymbols),and the title of the novel works, like Anacin, three ways. The last section of the book, called "The Heiri' treats how Kinsolving, true heir of the American spirit, in Knowles's opinion, rapes wife of his anugonist,aboning her child the (fhe medicaldetails and thus killing the falsepretenderto our heritage. '.And area,trifle obscure. they finishedtogether,"Knowles says the of rape-a pieceof sexualsentimentalitywonhy of Norman Mailer himself-but somehow,much as the lady enjoyed it, she is shockedinto abonion by the rape.) One need not $renuously object to this syrnbolicpatness, though it's obvious and therefore dull. What is objectionableis the simpleminded mordity of the thing. It is the "new moralityl' of course,but just as foolish as the old one. The concernof the book is man'sconflicting urps toward freedom, on one hand, and security, on the other. All Knowles's detailsfall around thesetwo values.The town is made up qf purianicd Protesants and puritanical Irish Catholics (security by superstition);Kinsolving belierres living by his feelingsand expects go to a Hrppy Hunting in to all Ground where throughout eternity you experience the livesof all the peoplewho harre erer lirad. FreeKinsolving lorcs Nature, dangerous or riot; secure Wetherfiord,Connecticut,fearsit, evenwhen it's harmless.Free Kinsolving is like a lion; the peopleof Wetherfiordare like mice. The people of Wetherford take careof each other; Kinsolving does not bother to write to his adoring younger brother, who somehow hides from Mr. Knowles his grief. Kinsolving (we are told) believes in love; the Wetherfiord people incline to believein rivalry and hate. Free people have deep and resonantvoices(somehow this includes Kansaspeople and Eskimos);the prerailing tone of Wefierfiord voices

MoRE sMoc FRoM THE DARK sATANlc MILLS /

t9

is flat. One more oppositionof this sort and I will quit. One night Mr. Kinsolving goesout naked to roll in the grassand, becausehe freely feels like it, does something in the grasswhich I think I will not spell our. A window opens and he hides in some bushes.The that poor ii*i .d Wetherfordsoul looking out belierres what she caught a glimpseof was-a nun. concernwith securitycan be debilitating' It's true that an excessive can even, as Knowles says,turn into insanity. And it is true that the ourmoded American dreamof securitythrough wedth and power is ro wrongheaded: securitycomes.But in the passionof his preaching Knowles has nor bothered to look closely at his people or even at his hoked-upsymbols.It may be true that there are rich men whose but solemotivation is hatredof others and of their naturd selrtes, one needssome kind of fictiond proof, not mere irsenion. And it may naturd stareof a one-quafter Indian boy be true that the green-eyed "brain-truster"-but if so,Knowles of can shatterthe nerves a Rooserrelt Peoplewho sure, whoeverthey are,are unnerving, the misses reason. they're uncivil. Naturd creatuts,asdl Indians know, nor just because look awa! when they meanto be friendly. \Vhen a bobcat looks stnaight ar you, leave.Take another case.Once in Wetherfiordthey burned a witch. Kinsolving thinks much on this, but Knowles forgetsit when on the rape scenecomes.Kinsolving'svengeance the scaPegoat-not the husbandhe hatesbut the wife-is an obvious pardlel to witchburnit, irg * Knowles himself describes and burning, accordingto the newsof papers,is a common abdominal sensationin cases rape.Knowles it or either misses avoidsthe parallel,either because would undercut the melodramaticopposition of good and evil asKnowles understands in that symbolic systems good he them or because doesnot understand fiction are nor dlegoricd plantinp to instruct the readerbut doublewhich help the writer to be sureof what he thinks. Only wice checks rn Indian Summer does Knowles fdl into writing like a novelist. He in has a splendidscenein Kansas, which Kinsolving takesup a croPdusterbiplane and behavrsgloriously like himself-doing stupid things, all nearly killing himself,and smashing the countryside;clumsily realizbut ing it's stupid and dangerous delighting in it anpvay, making comto icdly soberbut ridiculousobsen'ations himself which Knowles, in the ecstasyof honest inspiration, dlows to stand. The other fine moment in the novel is one in which Kinsolving first meetshis brother

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Charley after four years. The little brother has grown huge, both brothers feel shy and awkward; then the little brother smiles,and to Kinsolving it is like findingJonah safeinside the whale, "He was still dive inside after dl, and Cleet immediately caught Charley around the shoulders in relief. . I' But again Knowles has missedthe force of his symbolism (it slippedin by accident,no doubt). It mey be that, trapped inside their Wetherfiordhousesand religionsand conventions, the other charactersare still dirc too, if Knowles would stop ranting and look. The recent season am discussitrg I p-duced the usualquota of brainlesssermonslike Knowles's. There is a thing by William M. Hardy, Tbelubjub Bird, which is supposedto be devastatingly funny but dso profound, a book on the raceproblem which, asthe jacketsays,"le$ no one off the hook." It is not funny, and the things on the hook are cardboard. There is another book by Ronald L. Fair, Tlte Hog Butcber,which is, like his overratedearlier novel, &o interestingcontribution to sociology but a bad novel. It draws heavily on the tradition of pulpit rhetoric and makesthe same easydistinction between the righteous and the ungodly. For example' Before long, moving v'ans coming into the neighborhood arc every week [moving out the whitesf . They didn't dl want to mo\, but this thing they call Americanism takesguts to praaice and they are gudes. This thing they cdl Americanism was only applicablewhen they were in line to receive packages of food. This thing they cdl Americanismonly worked when it was applied to someoneelse.This lie they call democracy, this insidious myth they cdl fair play,this vicious thing cdled the-American-way-of-lifewas not meant for the black man. And rather than live with the black man, rather than live . wirh their fellow Americans,they ran, ffid, without knowing it, without caring, they turned over anotherusedsectionof and at the sametime increased the city to the black masses their own burden with a heavier mongage. with Fair's anger,and his sermon is not irresponsible, One sympathizes and like Knowles's; bur the book lacksthe total cornpassion clearheadof edness an.

MoRE SMoc FRoM THE DARK sATANIC MILLs / 4l

The only really disgustingbook in the stack I have for review is Meanwbih Backat tbeHenbwse.A celebrationof sex Thomas Bledsoe's which goesout of its way for gratuitousslime, hooked to a thoroughly slick plot, a great roar of symbols,and what looks like it must have burlesqueof the catastrophe beenintended(but wasn't)asan obscene in Greek tragic theater.The only thing interestingabout the book is especially genitourithat ir is pan of our intellectud climate.Sensation, has replacedGod, and with God dead the universe nary sensation, absurd,so that holy lorars end up murderedin their already becomes all bloody bed. Not that Bledsoeunderstands this. When an idea becomesfaddishenough Lfryfool can muddle through a demonstration. , The idea in questionis the one I describedearlier as the worst of the three gratuniversirydoctrinesat work in modern fiction-the idea creathat all men are clownsand tramps,that is, witlessand valueless turesof sensation who imitate the gestures human beingsand pick of the molderingdumpsof history.(This is not really SamuelBeckett's of position;it comesfrom an oversimplification Beckett.)It is the idea, I am glad to say,which Nadine C'ordimer attacks in ercry clean-cut line she writes. Perfected style like Miss Gordimer's is the objective refutationof the whiner's thesis'it is an aftirmation that absolute values are still there, if only as conceptsin the stylist's mind, and can be reached Tbel-ateBourgeois .ln WorldMiss Gordimer tells of the break(The values down of idealismto the hammerings brute experience. of Miss Gordimer finds breaking down are in fact distonions of traditional values, valuesmisunderstood. or The best comment is another novel on African problems,David Caut e's Tbe Declineof tbe West-to which we will return.)Mur Van Den Sandt,the realhero of the novel, dead from before the opening page,was an idedist who, by the accident of his beingborn with only ordinary intelligenceand forcefulness, could not succeed the thingshe nevenheless in bravelyattempted.His wife lies awakeat the closeof the novel trying to decidewhether or not shewill do, in a relativelytrivial way, exactly what her late husband did. If shechooses to, we understand not the reasons and sympathize; nevenheless, affirmation of what one ought to do, even if it is the absurd,is clear.The one greattrouble with the noral is that it is slighter than a buttercup-simplified Jane Austen with occasionalbedroom scenes introduced,scenes which are neither funny nor thrilling, merely there, like self-conscious little proofs that Miss Gordimer knows.

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Another moderatelygood book, beefierthan Miss Gordimer'sbut equally imperfect, is Paul West's Alley laggffi. West's novel mocks the whining absurdistclichi by pushing it to its last logical extremity and there exploding it. West's epigraphssum up the argument.The secondof them readsin pan, "but a man with a dungfork in his hand, a woman with a slop-pail,give him glory tool' If human beingsare limited, none is more limited than Alley Jaggers, squashed plasterer, by routine and poveny, saddledwith an irritable mother and a fat, brainless wife (whom we acceptin the end as lovable).If brute sensation has replacedGod, Alley Jaggers high priest (he makesa huge, is fat idol, in fact). The novel is a tour de force of wallowing obscenitycopulation with an unwilling partner in a bathtub, later with a dead woman-and of frustratedspiritual affirmation: I tortuously and lovindy con$nrcted glider smashed an instant, a painstakinglyfashioned in wE religioussign which can get no funher than PRAISE o, o vast,inarticulate love which turns to black-comic murder. In Alley Jaggers's but world it is impossibleto rise out of substance, the peoplestruggle to nerrenheless deff and escape their limitations (for instanceby baking a mean old woman's teeth in an oven), and when they are pushed they "give him back once and for all into the slirneof their existence, dory" from there. West's language,like the world he creates,is inugly sistentlyobscene poetic. Like Alley himself, West transmutes yet redity into defiant, evenjoyful, aft.There area few brilliant scenes, for instancethe one in which Alley makes love to the girl he's just killed-the girl he could not quite make it with while she lived. But much as I like Alley Jaggerl I do not think it is of more than passinginterest. In the first place,insofar as West's answerto the faddish whine that we're limited is legitimate, there is no good reason or that the noralist should shacklehimself to the brute sensations brutish world. West has done the best that can be valuesof Alley Jaggers's done with his material; the trouble is that, holy or not, obscenityand ' are brutishness tiresome.The claim that human life is a $ream of dogis sickj' to born)w one of West'sexpressions, a claim not wonh ans\Mernovel, which shows that he ing. West has answeredit in novel after ng isn'r really concerned with answeri anything, I've merely imputed that to him for the sakeof my argument. The truth is simply that West is more artracredto the beauty in slime than to beauty anyrvhere else.Thar's fair enough; every writer has his favorite milieu, and to

MoRE sMoG FRoM THE DARK SATANIc MILLS / 43

fake an interesrone doesn'tfeel is death. But to grant the legitimacy of West'sconcernis not to sayit will be of permanentinterestto other in people. Dickens roo was interested the obsceneand brutish, but in Moreover, West's intenseconcern with substance not exclusively. feces,plaster,the noisespeople anyform-stained waterpip.r, sawdust, (includinglanguage indifferent to sense)make,polite and otherwise ae$hedclimitation on his ficion: profluencege$ one serious imposes lost in the clutter of unvarieddetail.Compare the work of any spare writer-Pir Lagerkvist, to take an extreme example-or any writer of as much concernedwith the process reality as with the richness, or, finally, ^truly poeticwriter like William Gass,who makesa rich variety of detailsdanceand sing-and you will seeat once what I mean. and getting through every In West there's no tension, Do suspense, word-for-word requiresa certain triviality of mind. single puragraph What is basicallywrong with all the novels I have talked about they are badly so far is exactly rhis-they are trivial. Some because they are thoughr our (Knowles and Bledsoe,notably), some because but don't go very thoughr out more or lesscarefully * far as they go far. Janet Frame'sA State Siege, ladies' book, in other words not a of of seriousfiction in the first place,turns out to be representative the horror whole lot. An entertainment; mor specific"lly,a psychological in story which at least to some extent succeeds what it setsout to do, which is scareyou. Curiously enough, the materid Miss Frame usesfor building her effect is the samemodern set of concernswhich informs the novelsof Knowles, Bledsoe,Gordimer, and West-the replacement tradidond vdues with sensualism the ideaof freeand of dom. Miss Frame writes as if the whole modern question were easy and obvious-which it is. Drop out of all human commitments, 8ccording to Miss Frame, and all reality, outside and inside, will rise up and kill you. (Miss Gordimer's view is close,but shehaslessgood to say of traditiond vdues.) Miss Frame works out her thriller with ladies'book facility.The novel is awful, but I should like to talk about it for the sakeof my point. The central character,a spinsternamed Mdfred, is at last freed by the death of her mother to do what she pleases with what is left of her life. Up to now she'staught an and has painted picturesof the sort peoplelike, repressing o\Mnwish in order to satisfythe needs her and demandsof her friends and family. The man she once more or

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lessloved was killed long ago in the war, and the emotion she felt for him she has rnanagedto transfer to a feeling for Nature-trees, flowers,weather. Freeof dl commitmentsnow, belatedlygranredthe total independenceshe has long desired,Mdfred joyfully movesto a tropical island. He r joy is dampenedwhen shelearnshow isolated her cottageis, and it is shattered when a storm comesup and a $range, insistent knocking begins,now at her front door, now in back, and between knocks a paddingof my$erious footsteps, occasional an bit of laughter. She lies in the dark terrified, clinging to sense all the by age-olddevicesof man-self-consciousand tortuous analysis what of the situation may mean,laboredrecollections, snatches poetry phone of cdls (on an unconnected through phone)to the police.A rock smashes her window, possiblya rock with a note wrappedaroundit (her perceptions arefar from trusrwonhy), and Mdfred diesof, apparently, hean a attack. She is found clinging to the rock. Obviously, the novel "works" in that every detail has its neat thematic function. Mdfred's conventionallandscape painting (what she really wants to do is symbolic painting) reflectsthat excessively self-abnegating regardfor traditional values,her "duty" to friends and relatives, which stirs Malfred toward rebellion and the longng for freedom. But if through distonion traditional valuescan haveharmful effect, they can also saveone's sanity, even one's life. Immersion in grief sensation-the beauty of Nature-saves Malfred frorn excessive trade when her beloved dies, but pushedto an extremein Mdfred's of friends and relations for a coftage in the tropics, it de*roys. It is of the cult of sensationin modern life which producesthe savagery happensto Malfred is in the unknown knockers at the door. What by a,way not worse than what happensto those who, unconstrained social checksand urged on by the violence of Nature (a windstorm), lay siegeto Malfred's houseand mind. The rock in the deadwoman's hand is red, and she is not the first to be murderedby terror in this childrenhouse.The people who threw the rock-the cluessuggest sensationto willful killers. have been reduced by freedom and of and sound doctrine were the guarantee If mechanicalneatness It great fiction, Miss Frame'snovel would be a major achievement. with. The just another book for ladies to scarethemselves is in facr and situationsare stock, the action long-windedand predictcharacters An ideal book for serial publication in some magazinewhich able.

M o R E S M O GF R O M T H E D A R K S A T A N I C M I L L S / 4 '

THE on tips from Dr. Spock and essays SUICIDE' carries,say,babycare be outwARNINGSIGNAIJ.My point is not that ladies' books should lawedby the Rderal C'orernment-though why peoplereadthem when they could be watching Bullwinkle Moose or Star Thek is not clear to me. My point is that the brilliant style of Nadine C'ordimer and the wildman's eye and ear of Paul West have not yet hooked onto ny greatand significantintuitions but only to the stuff which makes who complots for ladies'books.That's no crime, of course.Readers pulsiraly readercrythqg in srght-the jokes on the back of cerealboxes, the patentnumberson wdlpaper seams-will be gratefulto them for providing somethingbetter than the usual run. But anyone looking for really good fiction will be disappointedas usual. Really good fiction has a stayingpower that comesfrom its ability to jar, turn on, move the whole intellectual and emotiond history of the reader.If the readeris a house,the really good book is a jubilant party that spreads through every room of it, or else a fire, not just a routine visit from the mailman. This is not simply a matter of controlled complexity,and it is cenainly not solely a product of perfeaed craft. MobyDick is one of the power touchstones,a book nobody has as yet been able to work out as a logical systern Bleak Houseis . -a seriousdefect, surely one of the worst-written books in English God knows-but once you haveread it you are stuck with it for life. To havethis totel effect on the reader,a book must be as wise as the readeris in his bestmoments,strippedof pettines, prejudice, and obsession; it must urgently suppon the highest affirmations the reader is capableof making, penetrating-at least by implication-every nook and crannyof his mord experieoc; finally it must hare the weight and of a reality which the reader,at least while he is reading,does not notice to be anylesssubsmntial than the world of fire engines, tables, and yellow house cats where he lives. At leastin theory all this can be done in a relativelysimple parable or in a book thousands pages of long. Consider Plr Lagerkvist'sTbe Holy Land, pan of aseries allegoricaltalesbut one which can stand of alone. lagerkvist is one of the better novelistsnow alive,a man whose supremelydisciplined is impossible imitate or eventranslatean to though Naomi Wdford has done an excellentjob of translation. In the Lagerkvistworld all the complexity and difficulty of modern life is charged,as if by some crushingforce from outer space-or i$ if by

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abandonment by outer space-into a few stark and massive symbols in which all our experienceand all human history are locked. His image of the world is like Beckett's except lagerkvist's ruined and blasted planer is dignified and somber. All that could be discerned that barrenlandscape were the in ruins of some mighty pillars which, ancientand half-eroded, stood out againstthe tempestuoussky. Thesecould offer but linle shelterfrom the night chill and the freshwind, but since there was no other place to make for, they set off towards them. With the blind man's hand in his, lbbias the pilgrim apprcachedthe ruined building which nose, raragedand abandoned, on that limitlessshorewhere nothing gre\il but thisdes and tall, parchedgrass.. It is a world in which the traditional logic of eventsis dead;ooe goes on with the old gestures the because they are dl one hasand because mind clingsto what it is, and righdy. Blind old Giovanni hasa locket. Some shepherdsask about it and Tobias tries to explain, "Well, nothing very remarkablein itself, perhaps.But it can hold somethingvery precious-something the wearercannot bear to lose. Therefore one wears it at bne's breast,close

,T"Tt*,

fromit." to andcan'tendure be'paned

"What doesit hold, then?" lbbias delayed answering.

::$ffi:::""beasecre'[
that he's "fr's his only possession, I've oftennoticed and he afraidof losingit. I don't believe couldlive without itl'

it's emPtY?" l'tlll:ush . . How can it be so preciouswhen it's 'How $range.

empry-when it doesn't contain what it ought to contain?"

MORE

SMOG

FROM

THE

DARK

SATANIC

MILLS

47

"We don't understand. Can't you explain it to usP" "Not everything can be explained.It just is so."

m1't chest, but they askedno more questions. "Yes,yes;' one of them whisperedsoftly. "That's true. but There aremany thingsthat can'tbe explained, just aresol'

lTf:ruffifi#: :"T.'Ifi ,".il; ffi:iilH

When the locket is removed,Gioranni doesindeed die, with a sense of peaceand comfon. This is not somethingwhich can be explained (as a suggestion, instance,that our characteristic human clinging for is delusion,we would be happier if we let everything go); the idea . and the imageare indivisible lf a man has a locket he ought to keep it; that "just is so"; and when he losesit he is relieved,that is also so. In Lagerkvist,in other words, archetypalrealitiesof feeling wdk and nlk and lie strewn and broken in the grass,demanding notice betweenvalueshasgrown obscure,perhaps The cnnnectioa and assent. because God, who usedto be the controller of connections,has died but the ralues of the and heavenhas burnt out and cooled to ashes; .ln TbeHoly hean, which meaninglessly on, arenot to be denied live however; l^andl-agerkvist doesmore than simply reheatthe old values, he finds a new way of seeing. Panly by criminal intent, panly by chance, every man has a share in the indifferent cruelty of a universegone adrift. Meaningful death is an atonementand sacrifice,repaymentand gift, a return of energy to its source.Christ's death was a voluntary sacrifice, deathof the two thievesa repayment;the three together the are the figure of every meaningfuldeath. ('And yet-and yet. There the three crosses stood, all together:there was no denying it. Not just a solitaryone-not just his. And not just the crimind's crcsses. No. . :') If God is dead-no one in Lagerkvist's world knows for sure-there is not enoughenergyleft in the world to overwhelm the meaningless plaguesthat strike the herds. (The sacrificeof an evil vulture and a cooperative lamb turns out to be in vain.) But each man can give up with his life what feebleenergyhe has.All this is of coursepure event in Tbe Holy l-and; pure vision. Tobias,wearing the dead Giovanni's locket, talks with the girl whose death long ago he did nothing to prevent, knowing his effon would be futile'

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"There's nothing it it [the locked. It looks asif there ought to be, but there'snothingl' "No, there'snothing. . ." She closedit again. And gently, gently, she took it from him, lifting the worn chain from his neck and putting it about her owr; she hung the locket at her own breast. At that moment it began to shine like the most beautiful jewel. And Tobiasdies.Allegory which we so often hear dismissed trifling as and insubstantid, is one of the ways in which significant intuitions can be seized.To the extent that allegory is poetic logic rather than some bottle of sugarcoated truths, it has staying power. But I mu$ add, at the risk of seemingimpossibleto please,that Tbe Holy l-and is not a perfectly satisfying example.It is excessively is spare, and shon. I-,agerkvist indifferent to what psychologistscall "Thresholdl'Powerful ashis imagesare,he doesnot sit on them long enough to allow their effect to come through. Lagerkvist is like a stand-up comic who movestoo quickly from joke to joke to give his of audiencefull experience the humor. One of the most difficult problems a first-rate novelist has to solve is that of balancingmovement and static detail. of Black comedy,too, can haveat leastsomemeasure stayingpower if it's worked right. The term may be rague, but I use it in a specific sense. Black comedy occurswhen what ought to be sadturns out to be grimly funny, affirming through irony what could not otherwise be affirmed. I will Su. an example from SamuelBeckett. [n Watt rhe of title characterlongs to believein the existence Mr. Not but knows he betrer. Without redly expectingsuccess, trudgesto the houseof, he hopes, Mr. Not, getscloser and closerto the man, but, knowing his Wiftgensrein, does not presumeto think he has found Mr. Not. Wart's disappointmentand frustration ought to be pathetic, but we laugh. Wan has been turned into a robot by system,as all men are in Becketr'sview. The humor is exactly where it would be for Bergson el(ceprthat the contrastingfluidity or flexibility which makesmechanical ideals. behavior funny is remo\d, in Beckett,to the redm of impossible When we fail to rry for the ideal we are ridiculous; trying, we rise is to the absurd. Atley Jaggers black cornedy with a new twist' West goes beyond affirmation of Alley's aftempt at flight to affirmation of

MoRE sMoc FRoM THE DARK SATANIc MILLS / 49

where he was in the first place.(If we tell the truth, the new twist on In complacency.) Anthony Burgess, the other is a degeneration: quotesEliot's remarksthat hand, the blackcomedyis straight.Burgess from sntesmen "The worst that can be saidof most of our malefactors, is to thieves, that they arenot man enoughto be damned:' If we knew then a novel full for surethat somegod existswho damnsand saves, of peoplecomicdly unableto make up their minds or get off their lor hind ends and assertthemselves heavenor hell would be satire. The same novel without the absolutebaseis black comedy. Sp s's Burges Tiemorof Intent: An Escbatological Noaelis that kind knows well enough centrd character, of book. Poor Hillier, Burgess's issue Commenting on his friend Roper,an English is. what the absolute scientistwho has defectedto Russia,Hillier sa/s: Here, in brief, is the peril of being a scientistbrought uP on a fierceand brain-filling religion. He starts,in his late teens, by thinking that his new scepticalrationalism(blissit was in of thar dawn to be alive)makesnonsense Adam and Eve and and the Day ofJudgment. And then, too transubstantiation that the doctrinesdon't redly count; what late, he discovers countsis the willingnessand ability to take evil seriouslyand to explain it. Hillier thinks of his missionto trick and bring back Roper, violating but Roper'smisguided noble idedism, ashis last morrein the thoroughly diny game of spy and counterspy.After this he will break out and rurn honest.But Hillier is only a man; he cannot resistthe force of the to truth drugsadrninistered him, and, once having assisted enemy, Limited in a thousand ways by howeverunwilling, he cannot escape. can characters get no fanher than their tragicomichumanity, Burgess's the tremor of their noble intent. What ought to be becomesincreasingly urgent as it becomesincreasinglyremote. a What makesBurgess good novelist is that the absoluteethic he and is proposes clear,inclusirre, convincing, and that the people inrolrad setsup are more or lessconvincing in the complexproblemsBurgess whose excuses failing to measure for human beings,howerar grotesgue, up are as vdid as our own and must therefore be overwhelmed by laughter, by a shockof blind assenion the reader,a kind of despairing

t0 /

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a revolt. Infernd complicationsobstrucr the ends the spirit reaches for-such complications as Freudian ambiralence of emotion and motive, the distractions physicd human need,the doubtful mordity of of availablemeans.A typical dilemma, "Knowirg C-d meansalsoknowing His opposite.You can'r get away from the great oppositionl' "That's Manicheestufl isn'r it? I'm quite looking fonvard to doing Mediaeval!" The first statement,which is true, is immediately cur down by a flip statementwhich cannot be answered exceptby r torruous scholastic argumenton onhodox and hereticsidesof a body of doarine which is itself museum stuff. Laugh and grind your teeth and let it go. Anthony Burgessis a good writer, as everyoneknows, but not a greatone. One reasonfor this is that Burgess's characrers not fighr do toward the impossiblewith the samedernonic intensity as those of, say, Lagerkvist, and they are not ils cruelly broken when they fall. This is why among writers of black comedy (in which classLagerkvist has not recently made a bid), there is still only Becketr ar the firsr rank. Burges's basiclimitation, however,is one he shares with dl blackcomic writers-which is *hy I have granted black comedy only a measure of staying power. Black comedy is narrowly pessimistic. Burgess, like Beckett,would say "Faw!" to this. An argumentwhich is unanswerable. Still, the Faw is wrong; some things just are so. kt me explain. The implicit argumentof black comedians that if men do at times is achievesomethinglike the ideal, it's by luck. (Hillier might not have had the bad luck to be given truth serum and thus might by chr.nce haveescaped.) Sinceluck cannotbe countedon, a redistic and unsenwhen the meantimental depictionof life must focuson what happens inglessvariableis ruled out. We assentunder duress.No one wants to be thought sentimentalor, in his pleasureat his own good luck, indifferentto the patentbad luck of others.All the same,in the universe luck hu nol been ruled out. As a ma$er of fact, the odds in favor of luck are mysteriouslyhigh, and there are those who maintain that as centuriespassand social injustice is diminished they rise by leaps and bounds.All men who havenot been totally crushedby bad luck

MoRE sMoc FRoM THE DARK sATANIc MILLS /

tl

know in their blood and bonesthat having children is worth the risk. When they are told that life is ultimately nonsensethey assentbut . close off a corner of the mind, which whispers,Neaertbeless and beatensocietyBlack comedy is the reflectionof a degraded lreland (BrendanBehan),cynical old France,or any cruelly oppressed crowdedand brutalizedbig city-consider thoseNew York and london of writers who find the glowing essence life in their toilet bowls. Black comedy does not reflect deep suffering(considerthe concentration camp writers) but only spiritud poverty and despair,that is, neurosis. too Black comedy is a passage narrow and too thickly hedgedto allow flow-that water of, C'od the flow of what must somehowshamelessly or no God, grace. for I am not expressirg touching, Derely persond preference spiri" one which has proved tually uplifting books but a fact of experience, to an embarrassment modern fiction. Given proper soil and watering, Sometimes, grventhe worst soil possible, thri"res. human consciousness no water wharever,it endures.A thoroughly dark view of life is the view of a blighted spirit nor to be trusted.This is merely to say that a man whose family has died in a house$ruck by lightning may not be a perfect judge of storms. We blush at Victorian optimism and open sentiment,and we avoid such things by undercutting dl we say,by enclosing each statement with qudificationslike briar hedges and with apologes for having sunk in to the awful indignity of speaking the first place.Mind chokeshean. It's no worse than the heart's choking of brain-the kind of thing farored by the tumedon of Cdifomia, with all their ulk of "hypocrisy" and "love"-but it isn't enough. The most powerful fiction is that which finds away of expressing openly and without distonion or limpnessof mind the highest human affirmations. Elie Wiesel's The Gates tbe Forest, of though not a great book, has power. It has the power of honest, hard-won thought and emotion which oversimplifies nothing of ny imponance. It is a novel impossible to criticize just iN a truly just and kind man, whaterrerhis faults, is impossible criticize,because do so would be shamefuland crass. to to I know the argumentsof psychologists who prove no man just and kind exceptfor miserablereasons. answer-knowing I am hardly the I first-that here is where anists and sciends$part. The neason exists an at all is that some things cannot be demonstrated,can only be felt

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and celebrated.The test of such things is not scientificbut emotional. Read Wiesel and all Beckett's brilliance turns to a tasteless joke, a child purposely faning at a wedding or funeral. Black comedy is overwhelmingly convincing in isolation; at the {irst breath from a writer who believesin the holiness of life, it withers away to dust. To say that Wiesel's power is inherent in the subject matter-Nazi atrocity, the madness theJewish survivors-is true but nor to the point. Finding of an adequate subjectand understandirgit is the norclist'sonly business. Better technique would make Wiesel's novel a good ded rnore forceful than it is, since bad writing robs the story of the reader'sfull attention; but the clariry and force of a very good writer's ideasand emotions can surmount some limitations of technique.To say this is of course to deny categorically the doctrine that ideasand emotions cannot be discoveredor releaseda(cept through technique. It is to insist again,with no proof exceptan apped to the experience reading of cenain books, that great fiction beginsin the characterof the writer, the poet as poem. No amount of factud information, or technicd ability, or skill at introducing people and places,or ear for rhetoric, or eye for the absurd, or headfor wide philosophy can substitutefor a truly good rnan's saneand profound affirmation. But the aftirmation gainsimmeasurably when dl the re$ is present.The best book I haveread lately, and the only one besides lagerkvist's, which hasa chanceof surviving the cenCaute rury on its orffn merits, is David Caute's Thc Dedineof tbe West. too has faults (it is not true that all norals hara faults' some "faults" work), notably a tendency to bank on the symbols in an essentially of a redistic norrel, bad habit of splitting elements didogue ("You ou$tl' she said, staring at the pond, "to go back to the states"),a tendency But Caute'svinues basis. ro explain roo much on an easypsychological are impressive.Like such writers as Tolstoy, he makeshistory LPPear He to make sense. can deal convincingly with an amazingvariety of and events.He knows more than most Peotimes and places, psyches ple, nor only about history (his profesiond concern)but about philosophy, &tt, and practicd politics as well. If his technique is mediocre senrenceby senrence-full of mannerism, never poetic-his control of larger srrucures-the manipulation of multiple plots, the significant who juxtaposition of scenes-is enviable.He is one of those novelists all can make one believethat the novelisthas person"lly experienced

MoRE sMoc FRoM THE DARK SATANICMtLLs /

t3

Englishhas that everyone of his characters experienced-Frenchmen, Americans,and more. It all soundslike passionmen, Nazis,Africans, rhough one knows it can't be. One recallsPlato's ate aurobiography, of omniscience Homer, or Tolstoy'sremarks remarkson the mysterious to Dostoyevsky'"You think you know what that horse is thinking, betweenus is, I know!' (I may havemade that Fyodor. The difference in up.) Above all, I think, what Caute achieves TlteDeclineof tbe West a vision meticulouslyfigured out. is a vision of the ideal made actud, Caute knows about absurditybut alsoabout determinationand luck. 'lb He movesthe readercloserto the way it is, to the terrible and holy. pur all this another way, he has studiedwith a scholar'scare and an anisr'sintuition the doctrinesof our ege,and he hasseenthrough them and beyondthem. What he hasto sayabout masterand subjectraces is applicableanywhereat any time-he makesthat very clear-and the valueswhich control the war againstthe West and within it, that is, will persond faith and self-sacrifice, governthe spiritual history of the of world when all racial wars are over. They are the essence history. The Achilles' heel of Tlte Decliruof tbe Westis-alas-its openness of sentiment.Pan of the time one thinks of Hemingway'ssendmenof tality through understatement-flat descriptions gruelling torrure, but more often one almostscientificdescriptions passion; of objective, thinks, unfairly,of soapopera.A singleexamplemay at least suggest the weakness the whole book' of "l have servedmy country loyally for twenty-six years, through peace and war. I took pan in the Ethiopian campaign againstthe ltalians, sir, and I was mentioned in dispatches, twice, by Colonel Grangr,who-" 'What is the relevance dl this?" of A tremor passed down his spine;suddenlythe world whose rules and codeshe had served and respected throughout a lifetime had turned its back on him, had becomedeaf.Everyone was the same,yet strangelynot the same,impercepdblytransformed as if by some invisible ray or gas. Despitethe half-heanedironic detachment,Caute'ssob of sympathy for wretchedDeedes cornes through and pu$ one off. The white man's inability to obtain justice here exactlybdances-and echoesthrough

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verbd repedtion-the situation of a central Negro figure earlier.Style openly and frankly reinforcesthis pathetic reversd-the piling up of ("had appositiond extensionsof feeling expressed opening clauses in turned its back on him, had becomedeaf"), and loaded suggestions of psychological state("suddenlyJ'"strangelyJ'"imperceptibly").The dramatic situation justifies the emotion; nevertheless, does sound it like something from Dr. Kildare. What is one to do?Deny true emotion becauseit soundssilly? Yet errenapparentsillinessis distracting. No wonder we retreetto mask,to irony, to constipated soul. Knowing Nietzsche and Freud, knowing what ludicrous figuresthey cut who speakwith more sincerity than self-consciousness, are turned into we mutes. Caute has the courageto speakout anyway,but we sense the strain. This is one great technical problem which modern {iction has iN yet found no way to break through. Melville for the most part leers and insinuatesand brays,Joyce subtly assesses icy Jesuiticeyes, with and Faulkner howls or rapidly whispers,defiantly paradinghis huge emotion; and feeling, the hean of the novelist'sbusiness, waiting sits for the right incanution, newous and bored.

$lritchcruft in Bullet Park

\Y/

V Y H E N I N 1 9 6 9 J o H N C H E E V E RT U R N E D who inhabit Bullet from the lovableWapshotsto the weird creatures Park, most reviewers him. They were, it seems attackedor dismissed to me, dead wrong. The Wapshot books, though well made, were minor. Bullet Park, illusive,mysteriouslybuilt, was major-in fact, a magnificentwork of fiction. One reason book hasbeenmisunderstood that it lacks a sirnthe is No ple message. man who thinks seriouslyabout the enormous old questionscan reducehis thought to a warning sign like BRIDGE OUT. Another reasonis that Cheeveris right about evil' it comes quietly, unannouncedby thunder or screeching bats-comes like the novel's well-dressed man getting casuallyoff a train ten minutes before dark. Talking of the oldest and darkestevil, Cheever speakssoftly, gently, as if casually.Suspense not something he fails to achievein Bulla is Park, but somahing he hasaroided.The norrelmo\res if purposelessly, as like its bland-minded,not very likable protagonist,and from time to time gives a nervous start at the blow of a distant at(e. Cheerrer's subjectis chance-but more than that. Chanceis a rahicle that carriesthe book into darker country. The opening lines present a setting-a train station-designedto suggest whole human conthe dition in this mysterious,chance-filled universe.A temporary planet

t6 /

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whosearchitecture, that of the station,is "oddly informd, gloomy like but unserious";a placeof isolationwhere chance to seems rule even an. "Paint me a small railroad smtion then," the novel begins-as if anyother settingwould do aswell. (But' "The settingseems some in way to be at the hean of the matter," saysCheever, An, like life, sly. may stan with chance,but chanceshroudssomethingdarker.) The harmless-looking man who stepsfrom the train meetsa real esmteagent named Hazzard-"for who elsewill know the exa$ age, usefulness, vdue and well-beingof the housesin townl' By chance, dayslater, the harmless-looking man will be standing the platform on with Eliot Nailles, the novel'shero, when anotherman is suckedto his death by an expresstrain. The strangerhas nothing to do with the accident;he's buried, at the time, in his newspaper. the skin But crawls. We learn later that by ^ seriesof accidents the strangerhas become,unbeknownst to himself, a center of demonic malevolence. We've beentold repeatedly that the universeis gloomy and frightening, random. Brute existence essence also sometimes and precedes follows it, as it does in Nailles's good Christian mother, reducedby senility to a human doll in a nursinghome. Ah, ys,ah, woe, we are tugged by cosmic strings, dolls all! Or are we? Cheeverreconsiders the ideaof chance,remembering phenomena, psychicand psychologicd is the claims of good and bad witches.What emerges a world where hope does exist (magic is real and can cure or kill), a world in a way are herelove and sacrifice redities, e\ren grimmer than Beckett'sbecause like hope, but realities in flux, perpetu"lly threatened,perishing. who can account for The novel saysyes-and-no existentialists, to all but the paragnost.Cheever,in other words, seesthe mind in its but existentialdarkness the light totdity-sees not only the fashionable definition. Panly which givesnothingness older than consciousness, for the sakeof this wholenessof vision, Cheeverin BulletPark aban' which is by nature imdoned the fact-boundnovel of verisimilitude, and potent to dramatizethe mind's old secrets, turned to dependence of on aoice, secretof the willing suspension disbeliefthat normally carriesthe fantasy or tale. troubled, humorous-controls the voice-compassionate, Cheever's like calling attention to itself in phrases "at the time acrion, repearedly of which I'm writingJ' Where his voice fadesout, charactervoices come in. Without explanationor apoloW, he shifts,early in the novel,

w I T c H C R A F T I N B t I L L E T P A R K/ t 7

adolescent, to the cry of an unnamedand never-again-to-be-heard-of ^ cry againstsuburbanhypocrisy.("Oh damn them dl, thought the telling how Eliot Nailles nearly murderedhis son, L,ater, adolescentl') Nailles'sown voice asNailles goesover the incident Cheevershiftsto he in his mind. With similar abruptness introduces the voices-or, sometimes,centersof consciousness-ofNailles's wife, neighbors,L French teacher, a Negro swami and the harmlesszodiac-trapped looking strangr,mad Paul Hammer. Hammer decidesto murder Nailles-at first Eliot, later his son, Tony. The decisionis without explicit motivation, basedmainly on "rhe mysrerious binding power of nomenclature."Cheevercould harte explainedthe whole thing, black masc as psychosis(the magrc of names), and would havedone so in a Wapshot book. But how do you Insteadof explaining,he insens Hammer's rmder a rhing so strange? journal. With a madman's the objectivity,Hammer sketches story of his life. when the sceneis comic), the flat descripof The coldness tone (errcn tion of his enfeebledquest for relationship,his survival by flight into symbolism (yellow rooms, a dream-casde, piecesof string) explains magicdly what the fact-boundnovel would turn to the dry unreality of a case study.The motive for the projectedmurder is coincidence-a correspondence names,two piecesof string. We learn that Paul of Hammer has murderedbefore,without knowing it himself, to get a yellow room. But the rendered proof of his demonic nature is his roice, a quiet stovelidon terror and rage. As in dl first-ratenovels,the form of Bulla Park grows out of its subject.More here than in his earlier writings, Cheeverdependson poetic (which is to say,magical)devices-rhphm, imagisticrepetition, echo.Insteadof conrrentional plot, an accretionof accidents. below Far consciousness, bestpeoplein Bullet Park are mirror imagesof the the worst: they live by magrc, correspondence. On the levelof consciousness, Nailles livesby sugary,foolish opinions and declares life "wonderful"-but he cannot ride his comhis muter train exceptdruged. Out of touch with his son, go\crned panly by ethicd clichis and panly by the normal frustration of the blindruled in other words by chance-he throws out his son'sbelovedTV and startsthe child on the way to rnentalillness.By the chancecombination of his middle-class values, son'sslight willfulness,an arguhis

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ment with his wife, and an accidenal meeringwirh black-jacketed boys whose faceshe cannot see,Nailles tries-in what could passfor inexplicable rage-to murder his son on a miniature golf course.(The mechanisticunirarsewrit small.The symbolismof placeis dways grrm n Bulbt Park ) Though N"illes's putter misses son s skull, the blackhis magic selfsh ragein his aaacklearasthe son psychologically crippled-in fact, dying of murdered will-savable only by swami. " An accidentd meetingwith a man in a bar and a chanceecho when Nailles returns home makesNailles distrust his faithful wife-faithful because, accident,her would-be seducers by were confoundedby, respectively,a fire, a cold, an attack of indigestion. In shon, Nailles, a tragicomicfool, is simply lucky,By accidents his childhood,he of is in touch with Nature, he cuts down diseased elms with a comicdly typical suburbanchainsawand shoots, in his undershons,a cenruryold snappingtunle (naked man againsrthe dinosaur).Hammer, by accidentsof childhood and bastardy,is cut off from Nature and himself. Nailles's blessingis that he is married to a good woman and has a son, whereasHammer is married to a bitch and is childless. Nailles's luck means that he's faintly in touch with the higher magic of the universe-the magic of love, creative force-whereas Hammer is in touch only with lower magic, correspondence. Magicd coincidence,echo, repetition. When imagesrecur or correspondences appear,they are causes, benevolentor harmful. From his psychic,wholly self-centered mother, Hammer getshis witchy ideaof drugging and immolating some innocent victim to "wake up" drugged America. When Rutuola, the gentle swami, makesmagic, the result is ritual. Both are attemptsto draw in the power of the universe. Both work, sometimes.Both ereuuzy. ("I know it's crazl' Tony says, raised from despair by the swami's chant of l-oae,I-ooe, I-oue,"but I do feel much better.") Benerolent witchcraft, ritud, assurnes the unirrsecontainssome that good and that men in groups can reach harmony with it. (Rain or shine, Nailles driras with his windshield wipers on, because that's his silly congregation's signof faith in the resurrection.) Malerolent witchcraft, on the other hand, assumes cosmic forcesaftendantto the will (Selfless of the witch. Neither sidewins decisively. men contain selfishness,and erren Hammer has impulsestoward love.)The mainly benerolent have their marginal advantage becausein times of crisisthey tend

rvrrcHcRAFT tN BULLET PARK/ t9

Hammer spills his plan ro work together.Out of lonely arrogance, warns Nailles. to the swami, and from love the swami But though Tony is rescued-Nailles rising to that strangetrance' pieceof writing)statein which nothing can go wrong (a dazzhne Naillesat the start not is Nailles'sexisrence merelysalvaged, redeemed. calledhis drab life "wonderful." When Rutuola brought Tony from despair,"everythingwas as wonderful as it had beenl' Now, when the murder hasbeenblocked,with the help of that ridiculouschainsaw, Cheevercloses,"Tony went back to school on Monday and Nailles-drugged-wenr off to work and everlnhingwasaswonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful as it had been." were anThere, it may be, is the underlying reasonthat reviewers Bullet Park The novel is bleak, full of danger and offense, noyed by like a poisonedapple in the playpen.Good and evil are red, but are effectsof mindlesschance-or heanlessgrace.The demonology of Calvin, or Cotton Mather. Disturbing or not, the book towers high abovethe many recentnorls that wail and feed on Sanre. A religious book, affirmation out of ashes.Bullet Park is a novel to pore over, the movearoundin, live with. The imagerepetitions, starkand subtle the that correspondences create book's ambiguousmeaning,its uneasy sink in and in, like a curativespell. courageand compassion,

Alice in Vonderland

O Y C r C A R o r O n T E s - w H o s E N o V E LW o w derland reveds how deeply lewis Carroll has influenced her-has a in passage her shon story "In the Region of lce" where a nun who teaches literature,Sisterlrene, speaks with her friend of a brilliant mad student. Since the exchangesaysthings that ought to be said about kwis Carroll, let me begin with it and double back to it later.

,n'',1,i:ilri:il $ili ;;":::}ffi i:fffi:*L,::

had been forced to teach grade-school arithmetic for the last four years.That mrght hara beenwhy shesaid,a little sharply, "You don't think ideasare red?" Sisterlrene acquiesced with a smile,but of courseshedid not think so: ooly reality is red. Both of the two latestproductsof the kwis Carroll industry began as noble intuitions. One comesoff badly, the other well. The ideaof a Aspeas Alice was to assemble "comprehensive" selectionof essays of and poemson Carroll's Alice books, from the first delightfully obtuse rerriews the mo$ recentopinions, saneand otherwise.What splendid to writers a man could include' W. H. Auden, Viryinia Woolf, Alexander Woolcott, Walter de la Mare, Horace Gregory Allen Thte, Roben

ALICE IN WONDERLAND /

6l

Harry lrvin. . . All theseand more Roben Phillips includes Graves, when writing about Carroll, but nelrermind); (not dl areup ro standard drowns the readerin a great quoP of inanity. then he lovely The book is handsomelydesigned-plenty of white sPace, both the type and the drawingsby Carroll paperthat can accommodate and SirJohn Gnniel. Also includedaresomeof Carroll's photographs of the real Alice, plus photographsof Carroll and Sir John. But the readercan tell frorn the front matter what a pudgy book this will Pro\E in the end: a ponderouslyclevertitle, a dedicationpagetoo embarrassing to quore and a foreword that begins(with violins and Frenchhorns)' the wars and depressions, several "She hassurvived Victorian Lge, the Ag. of Anxiety, and when last seen. . I' One feelsone has stumbled on a book about Alice by the Water Babies. Mr. Phillips's assumptionis that the generd readerneed not be essays with the more difficult philosophicaland mathematical burdened studiesby specialists on Carroll, much lessthose arrestingbut heavy in linguistics.(He doesinclude A. L. Thylor's famous pieceon chess the On and theology-superb on chess.) the other hand, he believes their foolPhillips himself confesses generd readerwill want-though ishness-KennethBurke'spieceon how the Alice books are really all of dong with over a hundred pages Freudian about bowel movements, fanmsy. and Jungian, not to mention psychedelic, litde girls prorcs in Carroll'spleasure the companyof well-mannered As ominous,of course. for the meaningof the books,Alice is a penis; or Alice is Carroll's oral trauma; or Alice is Christ Our lord in drag' 'As he wasdeserted, denied,taunted in His royal robes,crowned with thorns and humiliated,madeto drink the bitter vinegarof man'sscorn 'King of the Jewsl so she is desenedby and lifted up on the crossas her sleepingcompanions,mocked by the powerful, crowned with a trght goldencnown,madeto drink'sand [rnixed]with cideri wry heavy, 'wool [mixedfwith wine'; stsrvedat her own triumphal banquet]' Such I thingsmay amuseup to a point and ought to be represented, suppose, though not at any length. They prove what the Alice books everywhere say,that rigidity of system is insanity. Heavy concentration the roots and symptomsof Carroll's benign on or mderolent lunacy(he was,of course,anything but mad) is perverse it's for two reasons' insidiousevenif we laugh at it, sinceit taints the mind; and it's out of date.It's a fact that Carroll liked little girls, and

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one in panicular. He told them storiesand frequently had tea alone with them in his college rooms. With self-righteous grown-upsand boisterous little boys,he stammered. This is merely to saythat he loved the opennessand innocence most commonly seen, in nineteenthcentury England,in upper-class femde children,and that he could not coPeemotiondly with harsherqudities-in other words,that Carroll, though a fine and gentle man (granted, he had two or three farnous untrums), was mdadjusted, harmlesslyneurotic. To go any funher than that is plain unbalanced. The psychoanalpicd readings which Mr. Phillips wasres founh on a of his colleaion are demonstrablybasedon doubtful, or an) ilay boring, suppositions(as eldestchild in a large family, Carroll may havefelt rejected),systematicerrors (all lakes in fiction representbinh waters) (the joke, popular with his students,thar Carroll was and falsehoods so paranoidhe sent off the rnanuscripts his Sylaieand Brano in shufof fled strips,and sent by separate the post a code for reassembling mess-a joke no one believeduntil the Freudiansand Mr. Phillips). Carroll's studenm,by the way, liked him, and one can easilysee why. He solemnly drew cartoons as he lectured, and passedthem around to the class the end of the period. The purposeof his "Syrat bolic logic" was to make hard matter teachable,and his enlivening "No kitten wirhout a tail approach is now standardin logic classes, will play with a gorilla. . I'When psychoanalysts write so well can and so sensibly,they may speak again. (Did you know, by the wa/, that drum majoreffes are penises?) many But the defense Carroll againstidiots has been presented of times, by W. H. Auden among others. Virginia lVoolf got the hean of the matter: unlike most people, Carroll never lost touch with his childhood-a point so obvious that its implications are sometimes overlooked. The naughty, bossy, seemingly irrational (but in fact of insanely rigid) Wonderland characters are the essence childhood in one of its aspects, and so is Alice, minding her mannerslike a good little glrl and trying to make senseof a crazy universebristling with commandsand admonitionsthat seemto make-and indeeddo and savagery childishness of make-no sense. The discovery nonsense, at the core of things-the discoverythat ends both Alice in Wonderland and Tltrougb tbe LookingGlass-signalsthe child's emergence into adulthood.

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Mr. Phillips All of which (and more) is explainedin the best essay 'Alice'sJourneyto the End of the NightJ' included,Donald Rackin's a piece that heroicallylabors up on dripping wings from the slough a of essays la Freud and Jung, hoversa moment, then crumples in L sad deliquium ro be swdlowed by mumblings on Lewis Carroll as Acidhead. Donald J. Grry's textbook in the Nonon Critical Edition seriesis more satisfyirg: outhoritatirre,illustrated,annotated texts of the Alice selec' books and "The Huntin gofthe Snark;' with a rich and sensible who knew tion from Carroll'sdiariesand letters,documentsby people though selectionof essays, him, and criticd essays-awiseand balanced Gray includesinvaluablecomone that rnight profit from expansion. mathematicianand logician. menrson Carrcll's work asa photographer, In mathematicsand logic, as elsewhere,Carroll shows e, quirky mind in which intuition and intellect war, and intuition wins hands He comic results. was not in fact a very good down-with sometirnes mathematician. opinion was that ideasare red. As his "New Theory His conscious of Parallels"shows,he doggedlyfollowed the old school of thought, tnre acioms-atl on should be based self-evidendy in which mathematics opinion Wonderlandwould laugh at, as would any of those modern who pretend to derive inspiration from Carroll. As mathematicians for Carroll the logician,R. B. Braithwaitesums up superbly when he that should cenainly haveappearedin Phillips's book, says,in an essey by that Carroll's mind "was permeated an admirable logic which he and was unable to bring to full consciousness explicit criticism. It is 'symbolic [oS.' so superficial. . . and his casual this that makeshis puzzlesso profoundl' Braithwaite'sessay should be studiedhard by all writers on Carroll, it because hints at somethingcentral.It is true, as C'eorgePitcher shows (in an essay Gray includes),that Carroll profoundly influenced Lldwig Wittgenstein; and true, asMichael Holquist shows(dso in Gray), that Carroll has influenced modern writers from the surrealiststo RobbeAlie in Wondnhnd rnto Rusian). Grilla and Nabokov (who translated Carroll did seemto write, as Holquist says,a strikingly *odern "depersondized" fiction that "could be perceived only as what it was, and (not included) once pointed not some other thingl' As Walter Kerr out, Carroll reachedmodern absurdismbefore anyone else.

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But the tnrth, all the same,is that none of the things awedmoderns say about Carroll would strike kwis Carroll astrue. He was the kind of geniusthat has baffled professors sincePlato wrore rhe "Ionl' He worked as great artists always do, pace the Professionof English, by Pure feel-as he put it himself, "in a dream," or asJames Joyce said, "by faithl' It nercr occurredto him that Humpty Dumpty was (or was not) a linguistic nomindist, much lss that "The Hunting of the Snark" wes a formdist manifesto.The puzzlesand garnes the Alice books, in righdy celebratedby modern thinkers, were to Irwis Carroll's conscious mind mere jokes, imitations of reality as seen by children. 'A The ringinglast line of Holquist's essay, Booju* Is a Boojum," that is, fictional creaturewith no red-life referent,is thrilling but probably fdse. Though a Snark may be anphing from a snake-shark to a snipe and spark ("you may serveit with greens, and it's handy for striking a light"), o boojum, as Edmund Epsteinhasexplainedto me, is a scay Ooo!) gargantuan circuselephantnamedJumbo whose wife was-that's right- "Alice." To the end, that strangely beautiful child was Carroll's muse. His pure and holy love for her, iilrd hers for him, freed his whole being as other pretty little grrls freed his tongue. She made him a genius, gavethe timid arithmetic teacher the courageto look straight at the red and overwhelm it with puns. Nothing could be lessmodern-or more constant in art. If we cringe at the thought that an is love, or hunt for nasty explanationsin the po$y, the whole history of mankind has been in vain. Or put it this wa/: As the greatestphotographerof children in the nineteenth century (his finest pictureswere of Alice), Carroll worked totally by intuition' he took the picture when his set-upfelt right. And as the greatestchildren's writer who ever lived, he did the same. It was Alice who made Carroll's set-up feel right. On the day of that famous picnic when Carroll spun out his story for Alice Liddell and her sisters, classicist Duckwonh looked over his shoulderfrom the rowing and said in pure amilzement, "Dodgson, is this an extempore romance of yours?" Carroll answeredthat it was. And it was.

Breast Tbe
..BETTER THE BANAL THAN THE APOCA. in lypticl' Prof. David Alan Kepeshsays-the centralcharacter Philip not dtogether clear to his For reasons Roth's new novella Tln Breast. , (somesay)of a rolcanic secretionfrom the pitudoctors-"the assault 'mammogenic'fluid"-K.pesh has turned into an enormous itary of round at one end like a watermelon, at the other end a nipple breasr, that can hear and talk and feel sexud stimulation but never reach it's orgasm,foreverhowling "more!" Perhaps a dream,Kepeshhopes. Perhaps madness, effectof having taught too much Swift, Ifufke and an C'ogol. But it's not; the transformationis real. So the professorrants or and reasons, tells banal jokes to himself and those who visit him. One of his visitors is his brave, banal father, who comes once a week and, "seatedin a chair that is drawn up close to my nipple," reports the dull adventuresof people who were once guestsat the Kepeshes's Jewish hotel in the Catskills. Another is his loyal, banal mistress, Claire. She has a nice grrl's distastefor sexualexperiment, but when she learns that his nurse'swashing him exclteshim, her question and his answerparody and celebratethe bedroom conversation of all good, banal lovers. "Would you like me to do what she does?" "Would you-do it?"

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The noblest and most band of dl the professor'svisitors is his psychiatrist, Dr. Klinger, a stubborn clinger to reality, who for yearshas been doggedlyridding Kepeshof neurotic arroganceand self-pity,plainmindedly, proving to him againand again that his troubles-even this recent transformation-are mere matters of fact, things to be taken for what they are, no more, so that now, going over his once exciting traumas,Kepesh, "citadel of sanityJ'can sigh, "My life's drama has 'The all the apped of some tenth-Sade readercontaining Maupassanr's 'The Necklace' and llck of Roaring Campl " Boring, /es, but a fine achievernent, that acceptance, that ability to tolerate and even affirm the ordinary. Nofiing could be funher from the ideds of, say,Heidegger and Sartre, whose guilt-laden,mad notions hartedone so much in this cenrury to make life and literature really boring. jive for laughs.Early Sensibly,cilsu"lly, Roth playsthe existentialist in his ordeal, Kepesh complains'

In the midst of the incredible,the irredeemablyordinary appearsto remind me of the level at which most of one's life is usudly lirred.Really,it is the silliness, trividity, the meanthe inglessness experiencethat one missesmost in a statelike of this; for asidefrom the mon$rous physicalfact, there is of coursethe intellectud responsibilityI seemto havedeveloped to the uniqueness and enormity of my misfonune. What does it mean? How has it come to passand why? In the entire history of the human race, why David Alan Kepesh?

With a little help from his friendsKepeshcomesoff it. [n the end he, though an odd form of life, achieves ordinary knows the foolthe romanishness his supposed of questions, responsibility askgrandiose to as of tic evasions Rilke's admonition ("which is not necessarily elevated a sentiment aswe all mrght once haveliked to believe") that you must changeyour life, changeit in the direction of the mundane,the banally committed, the merely honest.Good point. More and more novelists are coming to it. The 1970smay yet turn out. The highest value in fiction (aseveryonehas always known except novelty freaksand, of course,the criticism industry) is moral stability,

r H E B R E A S T/ 6 7

reality without distorting or evadingit, though the ability to celebrate in impossible fact, without masterfultechadmittedlythat'sworthless, nique and the ability to invent the right vehicle-realistic or, asin Tbe The truth of what you sayis what really mafters,and fabulous. Breast, of the only imporrance techniqueis that when you say it badly you as and haven'tsaidit. Sloppiness self-indulgence, in suchearlierRoth the norrels WIrn Sln Wa M and Pornry\ Cornpkint, debase vision, u of either falseor silly.Feebleness invention, asin some making it seern limits the vision to, at best,the merely touching. of his early stories, Technicdly at least Tlte Breastseemsto me Roth's best book so , far. The humor and pathos(it hasfair amounts of both) come from his solid graspof how life is, his firm knowledg. of the imponance and the will to live. Or, as Kepeshcdls them of strengthof character "S.of C., and the W. to Ll' He with his psychiatrist, in his meetings are explains,"These banal phrases the therapeuticequivdent of my lame jokes. In these,my preposterous times, we must keep to what is ordinary and familiarl' The trick which is the hean of the book is brillisnt: to celebrate the ordinary,the silly, the banal,createa grotesque and extraordinary banality-^ hugedetached breastwith human consciousness feeland ing. The trick is good, so obviousand easyand yet so rich with meaning, it's a little hard to translatefrom what it is, a piece of art, to reviewer's language. Roth playse\ry posible gamewith his conceit. For instance, Kepesh mournfully and rcry touchingly (though I know that soundsridiculous) compareshis "red life" situation with the merely fictional situation of, among others,Kafka's Gregor Samsa, cockroach-a joke that grves Roth a chanceto make fun of Freudianan and neurosistheories,to ape pompous and silly ideasof literary critics about "unique vision" (lighdy and slyly, of course)the whole and "geniusl' and to reconsider theory of the non-realisticnovel. For another instance, breastconceit allows Roth another conthe fused and loving slap at Mom, also at mankind the wailing infant; a shot at the Playboyculture we're mired in; and a cunning metaphor 'A joke. for post-Christian, man-blind, insatiable. post-Sartrean A grotesque."Or a joke and grotesqueto soffie; not to the wise. There are two secrets pulling off such a literary trick, and Rorh to knows them. First, once committed to reponing the experience a of

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rnan turned into a breast, the writer must by powerful imaginarion immerse himself in the situation. What exactlywould everyoneinvolved feel, think, say, do? (You can get Lwaywith mistakesin the redistic norel. That's why one can write best-selling trash. In a world constructedout of thin air, impishness and childish ioy, one little slip and you're a deadman.) Roth is on good termswith the hunchbacked rnuseof the outrageous.His dull, red peoplein an outlandishsiruation are hilarious. The spinsternurse who pretendsnot to hear the breast'sobscene su#estions. Or the former Englishdepanmenthead, now dean, at Stony Brook, whom Roth caricatures with relish and mad genius. The secondsecretis that one mu$, dl the time one wrires, be so steepedin the meaning of the centrd conceit (more a matter of feeling than intellect)that nothing comes into the story just for laughs. Every event, every joke, must ambush the readerwith reality while he laughs, and again Roth mostly pulls it off. He also does, I'm sorry to say, what I've always found tiresome and stupid in his writing, especiallyof late, and what's worse, he doesit right at the beginning, which may prevent some readersfrom ever reachingthe good pans. He talks too much-like a hungup schoolboyor like the trendy popular novelist he is, for dl his vinues-about taking down his trousers,studying his penis,moving his bowels,maintaininghis sexud potency,and so on. He says,for instsoce ", . . the flesh at the baseof my penis : had rurned a soft reddish shade. I looked stained,as though a smdl raspbety, or maybea cherry had beencrushedagainstmy pubes,the juices running down onto my member, coloring the root of it nggedly but unmistakably red." I know all the argumentsthat favor this claptrap0 mean the pun), including the argumentat the core of Roth's book about banality,but I still say it's boring. As a rule of thumb I say,if Socrates, Jesusand Tolstoy wouldn't do it, don't. Or metU, diny Chaucer, who does nothing like this, much lessSwift who, enyway, was crazy.The banal may be wonderful subject mafter, but it's lousy as a literary mefiod. Gass, Elkin, Purdy and Fowles, among others, deal brilliantly with sex and defecation.In Roth, as in Updike, the stuff's embarrassing, unhealthy. (The sick, the self-regarding, preciselywhat Roth attacks is in Tbe Breat. He shoots down all signsof it wherever he seesthem. It seemsto me he missedone.)

r H E B R E A S T/ 6 9

The fault'snot enoughto wreck the book; though for me, at least, the it undermines book's authority. And I may as well mention the sympromof what some may think another fault' The story doesn't linger the way the bestwriting does,imposingits own redity on the reader'sway of seeingfor days and weeks. like is I think the reason this: Roth doesn'tchiselout sentences a delightand sophisticated cleverness, poet. He writes with intelligence fully and lightly. Nowhere am I stanled by a fine new idea, a turn that inclinesmy hair to standup. Theseare mattersof taste, of phrase no doubt. In mattersof style, I persondly preferthe mildly apocalyptic to the banal. But I say all this merely for the sakeof completeness. Roth is no C'ogol-a comparisonhe boldly and jokingly invites-but Tbe Breast is terrific for a thing of its kind: inventiveand saneand very funny, though filthy of course,as I've mentioned.It's incredible,in fact, how sman he is for a man so hung up with his you-know-whar.

The \illray Ve Write Now

V E R Y O N E S E E M ST O B E A G R E E D L A T E L Y

that the serious novelin Americais goingrhrougha change. realThe istic novelis dead,one hears;and something excitingis risingfrom its ashes. takea dimmerview,but I do think something happenI is ing, and the decline redismis a superficid of pan of it. What is happeningis that aftera periodof cynicism, novelists srruggling-for are the most pan in waysdoomedby indifference novelistic ro forrn-ro seetheir wayclearto go heroic. Strange worldsarein, cynicism new and despair out, replaced by true affirmationbut by psychoare not logicd survivaltactics. Iet me b.g- with some statemenm theobvious. of American novelists,elren Americans choice VladimirNabokov Ieny Kosinski, by like or cannevergetrid of the qualifyingeffectof Arnerican literaryandcultural tradition-that is, the American character-as longastheywrite to or aboutArnericans.would say I that thisrneans, so rnuchhisnor torically * symbolically, Ti'anscendentdists, rheircult of the the with (Faulkner's child, Indianor illiterate Negroes, childrer,or idiots);"life(the like" speech Jewish idiom is asgoodasHuck Finn'sfor cutting down soulless sophisticates); Whitmanish and quopby way of formthe optimisticexpectation the bookwill somehow through, that pull like nature.

THE wAY WE WRITE NOw / 7l

redity's which organizes It means childlikefaith suchasEmerson's, but discourasnghowevers, when through reason's clutter and smashes forced ro seefacts givesway in a rush to petulant, childish despair IfJames and Fitzgerald,and like that of Howells or Twain-grown-old. innocence in his own way Melville, got pastthe blithe and unsustainable it that is the hean of the American character, remained their literary subject,as it remainsthe subjectof their heirs,John Cheever, John Updike and William H. Gass.For Nabokov it's frequently the butt of the joke, as in blita and Ada. (happyEmerson,black-heaned Melville, of Our experience extremes light and dark assimple asvinue and wickednessin a Congressman's Our normal view is that electionspeech) makesall Americansradicals. about isn't terrific, it stinks.Thus American self-doubts if everyrthing Vietnam, racerelationsand ecology lead instantly to a conviction that life is unendurable, God is horror, and our wives and children all hate us. So in the sixtiesblack humor camein-the Vonnegut shrug-and nihilism, asin William Burroughs,and smart-mouthsatireof the kind third-rate novelists still turning out, Brock Brower, for instance, are in Tbe Late GreatCreature. Where not crushed entirely, the built-in American hungerfor audacious and affirmationwent desperate kinky, as in Norman Mailer's An AmericanDream, which tried to savethe fat from the fire by witchcraft. Most critics assumedit was all some kind of metaphor,not yet having heardMailer's theories on telepathy and the moon. (FaulkIn the absence any remotely tenableaudacioussuggestion of ner, by now, was as dead as Captain Marvel), we began to ger by in the late sixtieson the merely audiculous,that is to say,the heroics of a $renuously encouraged mouse.It came to be generally understood-panly because William Gass's of tour-de-forcenovella Willie Masters'Lonesome Wtfe and his numerous anicles (later collected in Fiaion and tbeFigures Ltrt)-rhat though real existencemay be senseof lessand painful, oft makesup for it. And eft, when the anist is unable to say anything helpful, meansstyle. Gass'sown writing doesn't illustratehis theory. Some of Roben Coover's does,though not his best book , Tlte Origin of tbe Branists. All of John Banh's does.The "reality" of Tbe Sot-Weed Faaor or of GilesGoat-Bay the words of the novel, nothing else.Giles finds that is a librarian is readingthe rary book he'sinside.E*ry noral is a funhouse,

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as Banh has it elsewhere,in which the novelist pulls the leversand the hayseed reader rides. The themes in Banh are the traditional American themes-there are even mord problemsand thrilling soludons. But Banh is not so brazen as to recommend his solutions to humanity (if humanity exists). The recent cult of style has the splendid effect of making novels more enjoyable,lesssludgy; but the assenionthat style is life's only ralue-that style redeemslife-is fdse both to life and to the novel. Gass, in his own novel Ommsettcr's Inck, has nothing in his theory to protect him from a too-long middle sectionthat is mostly the verand nothing bal acrobaticsof an oversophisticated, character, exhausted to explain why the end of the novel, which involvesmoral affirmation and a changeof heart-a typicrlly American, totrlly convincing resurgenceof innocence-is so profoundly moving. Similarly, his own comments in the shon works collected in In tbe Heart of tbe Hcart of tbe Country have nothing to do with the moral Kid" Gassdescribes and poetic power of the stories. "The Pedersen Once watchesin r"ainfor the flicker as "an srercisein shon sentences." of a smile. Gassisn't joking. He's Huck Finn grown up and teaching by philosophy in St. Louis. In another sge, an age not embarrassed audacity, Gassmlght take pleasurein the fact that his bools are moving affirmations, and he might consistentlyconstructhis fablesaround the searchfor ralue, rather than around languagepeaks.As it is, by the and contradicts his age and, to luck of good character,he surpasses a large extent, his theory. lerzy Kosinski, another celebratedstylist (Tbe PaintedBird, Steps, is Being Tbere'), truer to both. The blood-curdling sketchesand story fragments which make up Supshave undeniable effect-like fdling from a silo and landing on a plow-except for the honest country throws awaythe book. The obsessively readerwho, not inexcusably, "to my father, a mild man" and has an ePi' dark vision is dedicated In graph on self-conrrolfrom the Bbagaaadgita. other words, Kosinski isn t imitating redity but making up a world whoseonly real-lifeparallel is rhe life of the damned. Escapeto purgatory and ultimate salvaiN to tion ere not, he seems feel, his business an anist. His business is not empathy and the andysis of mord and psychologicd process but strictly appropriatepresentationof a mordly stadc surface.His businessis "style."

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Where style really is the The purity of the experimentis revealing. whole concern,there can be no real drama-how people come to be music, the techdamnedor saved-and no "lessonl' Like twelrre-tone only boredom and horror. Granted, boredom and nique can express What makesKosinski'striumph suspihorror are legitimatesubjects. optimist (Tvain too furious and heancious is that, to the disillusioned the broken to makejokes,or Updike'sSkeeter, outragedidealistwho deliverstirades in Rabbit Rcdur) Supsseemsan accurate description of life, whateverdedication and epigraphmay hint. The affirmations lay outsidethe book, which itself supponsa grossoversimplification to traditional with Americans.Needless say,the unrelievedblackness readersfind in Steps, though Kosinski may not mean it, is the whole brg of tricks in William Burroughs, who believesevery groaned-out word .ln Tbe Ticka Tltat Erploded, style is explicitly a cruel falsehope to us soft rnachines, thing we must destroy. a The antithesis the searchfor sdvation through style is the gospel to accordingto Donald Banhelme. He avoidsstyle at any cost, and also despairby America's escaping avoidspsychologicdor moral analysis, and oldest,still commonesttrick' the childishness befuddledinnocence of YankeeDoodle, Huck Finn or Holden Caulfield-the childishness (in this casemad) that sneakspast oppressivereason. "The intellect,"saidThoreau, "is a cleaverl'In a world whose findings droveMelville half insane,the tanscendentdists' ideal child indefensibly assened convictionsthat felt right to basicdly sentimentaland good-heaned,though often fierce and wrongheaded,Americans. In a world where the mechanicsof DNA and RNA prove conclusively what Melville could only fear (it's DNA that makes Burroughs so furious) and where our noblestintentionsharreresultedin what some call genocide,our traditional optimistic feelingsare, for some crazy reason,as intenseas ever. To say we're wrong is like telling a lion to settle down and be a horse. Banhelme'scrazies express ralidate those romandc feelings, can and at the sametime checkingoirr coclsure tendency to meddle and preach and reform every passingjay. We laugh at his seven psychological dwarrcs n Srmu Wite , sincethey're lunaticsand fools; but their feelings about peopleand the puzzlementand ultimate wonder of things are exactlyour own. It has nothing to do with black comedy-Beckett's HoPp Days, for instance, which angrily laughs at brainlessoptimism.

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(Banhelme's characters not exactly optimists.)Like R"lph Waldo are systematically Emerson ("1 contradict myself?"), Banhelme'scrazies evadethe issue,and they encour4gethe readerto erade it too, with neuroticdly hedthy vigor. They work like the Christianity of those Updike adultswho haveshuckedreligion but carryon from childhood a security ultimately untouched by their knowledg. that it's groundless. At times Banhelme himself becomesthe sacrifice-when he says "baff " for "bath" and no one but Banhelme can be speaking(not weakness some narrator or character).He flaunts his psychological as Tivain flaunts Huck's ignorance,and for the same purpose:to stay of clear of the gro\iln-uplies. Frequently the management plot is the model of our evasionof what might wreck us. Notice, for instance, in the srory "Prunella" in City Life, how neatly Banhelme slips every red-world difficulty. He distorts reality but he survivesand (mostly) smiles.He stays with what feelsimportant but can't be defended,reshap ing the world to fit the soul and acceptingthe oddity causedoutside, for example a father who's been run over and killed but is also,for some reason, sitting on the bed and weeping. Banhelme's affirmation was never meant to havepoetic power and has lessfirst-ratehumor than his admirersclaim, but his work, slight or not, is mainline American-"innocent eye,"non-analpicd mind, fafuhorr knowledge,celebrationwithout irony of trifles that Americans love, like the phantom of the opera.Banhelme-and this is the irnportant point-affirms not a value or systemof valuesbut a way of being. His choice rules out novelistic form (conflict, profluence,enlightenment) and is typical, or so I hope to show, of what is now going on, the rise of groundless,cautiously optimistic affirmation, the good as psychologicd survival tactic. Superficidly, no two writers could be more unlike than Stanley Elkin and JoyceCarol Oates.Elkin at his bestis a mad barbarianturned srand-up comic (his favorite devicesare the pun and the punchline) that who answersall whining and pessimismwith perverseassertions in fact a great good. In A Bad whatever the whiner whines about is with incredibleverbalenetW,a bad man. ln Tbe Dick Man he praises, he Gibson Sbout turns that friend of midnight drivers, the trivial and dreary all-night tdk show, to a fast, loud circusof bickering and outrageous,consciouslyChaucerian tdes. In his fonhcoming novellacollection he goesfunher, hitting lunatic magni{icentheights-or maybe

THE wAY wE wRITE Now /

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reality. His charactersare forever arguing depths.Not that he arroids with eachother, or with the reader("Perhaps you with themselres, obiection sensible of will say. . :'). But the purpose eachdiscounaging, is to trigger an dtiloquent, crazymen resPonse. in Elkin's message, fact, is in nothing he proclaimsor pretendsto proclaim, nor even in the fancy symbolism, but in energy pure and simple. In his earlier writing (Crim and Kibitzen nd A Bad Man) all he sees human relationshipsin terms of power. In Tbe Dick Gibson Sbout(which is therefore a better book) relationshipswhich begin as for power-struglessoftentoward understanditgand appeals lora. Nerrertheless,ir's raw energy that Elkin loves-in prose and in characters. He's Ahab smashingthrough the mask with jokes, an eternal child reasonis to outperform it, outshout it. whose answerto oppressive Gfizzly reality is his straight-man. I happento know JoyceCarol Oates,the goriestwriter in America, Macbab.One knows shutsher eyesduring the bloody partsof Polanski's from her best stories and frorn watching the gende and humorous are in minor characters her novels,that her rralues Jamesianand that distincintellect neededto makeJamesian the shepossesses razor-sharp "gothic" novelsand has describedthe she tions. Nevertheless, writes of genreas "a fairly accurateassessment modern lifel' Unlike all the writers I havementioned,sheis capable,I think, of doing what other great novelistsdways do, which is to build tight form out of singleand moral analysis. minded psychological "Free") done this in long stories(for instance, She hasoccasionally though not in her bestor most typicd stories("In the Region of lce" and "The Wheel of [orc") which hara, though the technicalmeansare in different,the effectof her novels.In novelsshearoids analysis away intentiond, fragmentingthe world (and the novel'srhphm) that seems by ^ use of close,almost myopic examination followed by stanling enother era-that disorientthe readerlike cuts-to anothercharacter, the kick of a mule. Crisis situationsariseand ranish before either the tool can them, making fuie intellea a useless readeror characters assess (shewrites repeatedly the brilliant but mad) and producitg * image of wounds. Vdue or of history personal public, asa track of machine-gun aflirmations are as fleeting as destructions, and often as grotesque. The resultis that, asfor Banhelme or Elkin, thought-out rtaluesthe solid foundationsof characterthat Henry Jamesor Jane Austen

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fictiondly develop and recommend to the reader-are replacedby " philosophicallygroundless survivaltactic, horror and uneasycompassion as a fxed stateof mind. If her purpose is to "understandj' ,ry, the Detroit riots tn Tbmr, that is nor, I think, her anistic achievemenr. The technique she chooses-like Banhelme's, in this one respecmakesthe readera certain kind of person for the momenr, &n innocent who, wide-eyed and tremblirg, survives. Odd as the suggestion will no doubt seem,JohnUpdike doesmuch the same,though in another way. He is, in one sense, realist-he has a a keen, deadly accurateeyeand a surefeeling for his time and place.His work makesnonsense the theory that rhe realisticnovel is dead.But of his realism,like that ofJames,is rich in .ythic and symbolicoranones, archaypal pamerns. writes repeatedlyabout children and grcwn-ups, He country and ciry, past and present,often, as in Coupleq Arcadian rhe they shape-shifr Merrymounr to Pastof nymphs and satyrs(in Couphs revelers)and a present where Arcadia is sought in rrainby people of psychologicdly arresteddeveloprnent.In fact, asthe critic brry tylor hasshown in his book on Updike, all of Updike's work canin a way be approached a brilliant symbolic orploration of the pastoraltradirion. as Updike's chief way of "understanding" a problem is to discover its symbolic equivalents.Symbolism is his way of thinking and hope of salration, as perfectedstyle is the hope of Gas or energeric affnonrery the hope of Elkin. In Cmples,again,he plays a good dealwith (among a thousand such symbolic counters)the fact that in Christian tradition fate is represented ^circle, faith by ,straight line, but that in hyperby bolic geornetry, all lines make circles. Get the symbolic equationsright, Updike saysin effect(and include enough sexand precisedescripdonto keep the characters human), and the confusion will dl snapclear.The most baffling and painful questions take on order once you find all the possibleanalogesbetween (in Rabbit Redur) copulation, religion, spaceexploration, Parkinson's disease, the war in Vietnam, and race relations. All writers use this method to some extent, but in Updike it becomesmore imponant than plot, characteror style, any of which he will dter for a symbol. Symbolism, in other words, is for Updike, as it was for Hawthorne and Melville, a good-luck piece. The method is medievd, which doesn't rneanwrcng, and the hope is asgroundless, philosophicallyspeaking,asElkin's clowning or Miss

THE wAY wE WRITE NOw / 77

widenedeyes.ln RnbbitRedur,his finest book so far, Updike Oares's finds in the method not only solacebut a seeminglyfirm platform from which to launch funher affirmations, and in these he goes far beyond most other writers in terms of value commitment. I honor him heartily for that, yet I wonder if evenhere the assenionsstick. Even here he is relatively indifferent to what Jamesbelievedwas the of red business the novel, whether the novel is realisticor not. Though Updike comesro someof his conviction through the expehe rienceof his characters., neverputs his money on psychologicaland drama,inevitably unfolding norclistic form. That Process moral andysis, givesUpdike his rough draft, I suspect-the lines of his plot and those many fine moments of insight, penetration.But given the draft, he of mechanics sropsthinking about the real, scientificdly inexpressible He peopleand evenrs. beginsjuggling and ornamenting,working up his complex allegory and moving farther and fanher from dramatic At necessity. the point of the main dramatic conflict in Rnbbit Rcdur, the novel turns to tirade, a retreat from drama. What Rabbit really thinks about it all is left uncertain. Updike In shon, asother writers lately are doing for other reasons, and dramaticinevitability in favor of, simply, abandons closeanalysis There's the away of being-Huck Finn asingeniousequation-maker. problem in all our finest contemporaryfiction, I think. It's the reason for the thin, ungluedqudity in eventhe most dazzlingtechnicalperit's Whether you write about dragonsor businessmen, in formances. their conflicts characters, the carefulscrutinyof cleanly apprehended from immaturity, that the novel makesup its solid and ultimate escape to truths, finds courage defendthe good and attackthe simpleminded.

SaintWalt

FEW YEARSAGO WHEN YOU MENTIONED

Walt Disney at a respectablepafty-or an) vay this is how it was in California, where I was then-the standardresponse was a headshake and a groan. Intellectuds spoke of how he butcheredthe classicsfrom Piruabio to Winnie-tbe-Poob-how his wildlife pictures were of sadisticand coy, how the World's Fair sculptures hippopotamuses, disagreed, etc., were a national if not international disgrace. few crazies A and since craziesare dways people to watch, it beganto be admitted that the early Pluto movies had a considerablemeisure of je ne sais quoi, that the background animation inSnarutWbite was "quite extr& ordinary:' that Fantasiadid indeed have one great sequence(then it becamt\Mo; now everyonesaysthree, though there's fierce disagree' ment on exactly which three). Being a stubborn, intractablesort of personwith no innate good sense,and having investedhours and hours of my life riding my chaintread Roadmastersevenor eight miles every Saturday night to Walt Disney movies that came to the Star Theater in Attica, I held outof the way you'd hold out for a kind old uncle accused child molest' With animus,mind ing-for Disney'sabsoluteand total exoneradon. SnoutWbite you. The solemngenerationhad done me damage.Since (evennow I hide under was roo frightening, bad for children's psyches

sArNr wALr

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,,r'hen think the witch is coming),they'd emasculated CapI my sear (but a tain Hook in PeterPau they'd even half-tamedthe alligator and smilecan be asscary asbuzzards a wany noseand thunder).They alsotook awayour cornicsand Oz books-all about castration-and deploredthose terrific crows tn Dumbo as a sinisterpiece of racism. So I fiercelyarguedfor the sideof the unrighteous-"Disney is the grearesr!"I said. "Compared to Disney,Michelangelo is a lowbrow, . endingold friendships. . I will filthy-minded punkl"-ruining panies, northern Cdifornia tell you God's truth: when I wasin SanFrancisco, withdrawing frorn the pan of the sute Wdt Disney considered seriously lived in. me, and at overwhelminglyagainst I foughr on. The odds seemed But rimes,I admit, I felt a little discouraged. the outcome is history, zed as the greatestanist the Walt Disney is now universallyrecogni Apollonius of Rhodes. world has ever known, exceptfor, possibly, in There hasrecentlybeen published, fact, a huge, somewhatexpenwork, TbeArt of WaltDit*!' sive,richly illustrated book on Disney's an From Mickey Mouseto tbeMagic Kingdom (l$rams). It's a book well wonh buying,written by a bona fide professiondan critic, Christopher to Finch. Excepthere and there, when Finch seems me gratuitously and senselessly for criticd (he objects, instance, the "Night on Bald to which closes Fannsic, finding Mountain" and "Ave Maria" sequence it a lesssublimeexpression Christian feeling than, say,Chartres of Cathedral), and Finch hasexactlypinpointedDisney'sgreamess appeal, Walt Disneywasa rnan who wantedto pleas, man who had a down& right awesome faith in the ordinary. He was a celebratorof man-ashe-is.He had no grandprograms improving man'scharacter, for only for programs making man'slife more enjoyable, more hedthy. So, in an agewhen other people's animated canoonswere still jerking foolishly through vaudeville his gags,Disney produced Tbe Band Concert, first Technicolor musicshon, featuringMickey Mouse and Donald Duck and the best William TellOaerture you'll everhear; and in an agewhen people were just beginningto worry about ecology, Disney was not only planningbut building futuristcities,ecologically balanced, pollution free.(Finch closes book with an essay PeterBlake, practichis by ing architectand former editor of Arcbitectural Forum, or the profound significance Disneyland and Wdt Disney World for architecture of and urban planning-in fact, for the very survival of urban man.)

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Finch tracesDisney'slife from beginningto end-and beyond the end, sincesomeof Disney'snoblestprojects,includingthe Experimenml Prototype Community of Tomorroq were still in the planning stage when Disney died of cancer-and in the process showswhat it was about Disney that made him so nearly infallible. Disney knew what he liked, felt absolutelycenain that other human beingswere exactly like him, and went after it, cutting no corners.His assumptionwas absurd,of course,but it's an issumption everyreal anist makes,and the characterMickey Mouse alone would be enough to justify the assumption.Though Disney couldn't evendraw Mickey Mouse-as Disney was always the first to admit (Mickey was the invention of Ub lwerks, but everyline, every pucker or sheepish grin was subject to Disney's never hasty approval)-Mick y was, in fact, Walt Disney. Only Disney could do Mickey's voice,a point more imponant than it mny at first sound, sincethe voice controlled everyflicker of emotion the animatorsgavethat indefatigable, endlessly subtle mouse; and as Disney's charactermellowed,so did Mickey's. From Tln Band Couert, where neither bee nor tornado nor even Dondd Duck can interrupt his conducting, to TIn brrcrn's Appcntia, wherehe takeson the powers of the universe,Mickey is the Artist, the Ordering Intelligencethat will nor be abashedby its littleness,at least not for long. There is, of course, more Christian feeling in late Mickey Mouse than in the 'Ave Marial' of One could make much of this-the Midwestern Protestantism Walt Disney, his comfonable certainty that all is well, that evil is a thing never to be taken very seriously' though the beautiful apple may tempr Snow White, it cannot really kill her; the Wicked Queen will be thrown down like Lucifer by lightning out of heaven,and around Snow White's casket,lighted asif by a stainedwindoq the soundtrack will play, full of sorrow and devotion, "Some D^y My Prince Will he Comei' which, praiseheaven, will indeed.Theseare not at dl cheap appealsro srock Christian ernotion; for the mo$ part, they're probably symbolism,merelyan attitude so basic not evena maffer of conscious ro all Disney's work, even his propagandafilms during World War film, II, that he hardly understoodwhat was there. Take his greatest "a stunningly effecPinoccbio.ltopenswith what Finch calls,rightly, tive shot-the camerapulling back from a largewhite star, panning acrossthe tiled roofs of a sleepyEuropean village, then closing in on

sAINr wALr

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the lighted window of Geppeno'scottagel' liinch continues: "It is the kind of shot that has become familiar enough in lirre-actionmovies but taken within the zoom lenses, sincethe adventof po\Mer-operated context of its own period, and within the history of animation, it is Nor is it just a piece of flashy showrnaninnovative and spectacular. our imagination and draw us into the atmoship. It senesro capture sphereof the story before a singleword has been spokenl' It doesdl it's this, Finch doesnor go on to add-perhaps because too obviousasthe angel-likeblue fairy, ir's because corcnly Christian, as Christian or demonic Stromboli with the hell-fire eyes,the salvation through sacrificein the belly of a whale, the final death and resurrection of Pinocchio. If one wishedto be tiresome,one could go through all Walt Disney's films and show,in every m)'th or legendthat he treats, how he tends to transform it to the Christian one, or rather, the Christian one as and the like-people who, understood by Methodists, Presbyterians, in generd, feel so confident that C'od has things well under control, 'All shall be well, and all shall be well, and dl manner so certain that of things shall be welli' as the Angel told Dame Julian of Norwich, that they forget even to bother with religion, or, to put it a better way, they transferfeelinp to everydaylife. Whether in the hands of Mickey Mouse or Mary Poppinsor the benerolent witches in Bedkrwbs magc is miracle in a Disney film-stricdy Protestant and Brotmsticks, miracle, thrilling but commonplace,exactly what we should haveexpected.The temptation is alwaysto seesuch a view of life as evasive and simplistic-the standardchargesagainstDisney. Perhapsit is (no one knows), but it is a view that hasbeen held by some very complex minds, including Melville's. Profound and subde asMelville may harre been, he is closerin spirit to Disney than is usually recognized.If his "wickedly squinting whale" is no caftoon (as a whaler he must have known it was a litde inaccurate),considerthat caricatureof evil, Cap'n Ahab, and those prgtailed heathen Chinese he uses as his oarsmen. Like the Wicked Queen, Stnrmboli, and the rest, Ahab challenges the universeas cosmic outlaw and finds he nerrerhad a chance. Ishmael survives,floating on a coffin, and unharming sharks glide by "as if with padlockson their mouths"-all Disney images.In other moods, Disney was closeto Foe-haunted houses,rotting casdes, uneanhly the beauty of innocent ladies-good and wil in stark, "simplistic" contrast.

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oN wRrrERS AND wRITING

But whereasPoemovedfrom the early comic talesto a vision increasDisney grew increasingly cenain that all ingly dark and pessimistic, traditional villainswould be well. More and more he made heroes of witches, mad scientists. More and rnore he turned his art to the improvement of so-calledreality. Disney'strue works of art, of course,are the animatedfilms and his few really good live-action films (Tieasure Island, 20,000 Leagues Under tbe Sea, Mary Poppins), the televisionprogramswith which not he advenisedhis studio'swaresor the amusement parks and model cities they helpedto finarce; but the impulsebehind both kinds of work was the same,that well-beingthe moviescelebrate, convicthe tion that evil, rightly understood, is a threat no more seriousthan Cruella de Vil , tn OneHundredand OneDalmatians, ShereKhan, the comically menacingtiger of Tbelungle Book,or the great flunk-out most interesting villains of the animated RobinHood.What is perhaps about Disney'snew respectability what it impliesabout the world is graveobjectionsto Walt that hasgrown respectful.What once seemed like odditiesof his character, St. Francis's Disney's arr seemnow mere queer habit of preachingsermonsto birds. Takesentimentdity.In the fifties,sentimenalitywasa terriblecrime. it literaturegi*ly wamedagainst (Hemitt$"ty Books on understanding and Faulkner requiredapology),books on paintingexplainedwhy the was an optical illusion. "Underseemingsentimentdity in early Picasso cutting" and "irony" were very big words. Then came the Beatles, and that sameafternoon everybodystoppedlooking at the extraordinary backgroundin Disney'sSnru Wbite and stanedlooking at Snow distonion of the way real White, and behold,if shewas a sentimenml girls are, if shewasan absolutefiction, exactlylike the Wicked Queen, rrue that the way she moved-the way shefloated it was nevenheless thing to see,a thing background-was a splendid on the exrraordinary and the audience dwarves worth the grearplopping tearsof the seven roo. Why norl That is to say,American intellectualswere suddenly no longer afraidof seemingfoolish and childlike(asAmericanshave alwaysbeen,asAmerican anistshavealwayspointedout). Some may even have noticedthat the former scorn of emotion "not adequately grounded in the probabilitiesof characterand action" was defensive, tight-sphincteredimmaturity. Dickens, too, was beginning to be re' evduated. Somebody was growing uP-at leasta little.

sAINT wALT / 83

with animalsin the wildlife series. way of dealing Or takeDisney's by the He sets mating tricks of birdsto music;he emphasizes, camera of the and soundtrack, horribleness the wolf pack's angle,selection, understoodthat what had everyone for some reason, kill. Suddenly, streakin sadistic silly, sometimes as once beeninterpreted a sometimes of was an accident moment. He had decided Wa[t Disney'scharacter of adventure some kind, and had hired a to do an Alaskamovie, an to pair of Alaskanphotographers shoot him sornefootagewhich might story.Along with other footagecame trigger an ideafor an adventure Disneysat$il[, struck by the fact that he liked of somepictures seals. watching seals(thereforeeveryonemust), and puzzhngout what he He rnight do with the discovery. had invented,that instant,the Nature film, bur when Disney thought of it, there was no way under heaven to sell such a film except by the creation of an illusion of plot and character-exactlythe kind of thing his studio was bestat, the presentation of animalsas parodichuman beings.It neveroccurredto him to do anythingelse,but assoon asSealIslandwas on the storyboards, were inevitable.His real feelings Born Free and the greatdocumenmries and enorabout animds he provedby buildingthem safeenvironments television. for ecological moussanfiuaries and by his moralistic pieces Or take Disney'sattitude toward machines,from the flying car in TbeAbsmt-Minded Professor the willful Volkswagen,starof Tbel-oae to or of Bug,to' the audio-animatronic creatures the Hall of Presidents I the Country BearJarnboree.first sawDisney'srobot Lincoln in 196+, at the lllinois pavilionof the New York World's Fair.It was a horrifying business-even his devoted I, admirer,would admit it. Like a group of AuschwitzJews, audience movedinto alargeand plush audiis the torium, where the doors closeautomatically, almost silently,and you wait in blackness and unearthly hush for the sound of escaping gas. The stage lights come up, revealing funeral urns and sculpteddrapery (Disney'schief notion of the classicd came from mortuariesin lllinois and Missouri),and there'sthe huge,seated figure of Lincoln, obviously dead.Music, a crossberweensickeningly patriotic and sickeninglyreligious-then more light, and then, slowly, the great dark corpse rises and speaks. Finch tells us, not that one wants to know,

The sheer energy up and locked in the hydraulic pneumatic of systems anyaudio-animatronic is considerable, figure and

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oN wRrrERs AND wRrrrNc

unlessthis energycan be preciselyconrrolled,the figure can become quite violent. The Lincoln figure [just before its instdlation at the fairJwas very complex and posedseriouscontrol problems. The Presidentsmashedhis chair and threw mechanicalfits that threatenedthe safetyof the men working on him. But Disney was determinedthat the figure be ready in time, and eventually the power was harnessed. What redly made the figure seemhorrible, of course-and would later make the Hall of Presidents more horrible yet-was the ghastly sugge$ion,which had neveroccurredto Disney and his people,that all religion and patriotism are a sham and a delusion,an affair for monstrous automatons.Or perhapsa suggestion evendeadlier:thar all of us are monstrous automatons,helplessPinocchiosdanglingfrom rhe stringsof Disney's computerizedMuzak and mind-shushing "rides." lately we've learnedto shrugoff such sugge$ions. seethe PresiWe dents-or the goss and tiresomeCountry Bears-as Disney saw them, merely as big, remarkable toys, desperateeffons (if I tell the truth) to arnusea corn-pone audience.To put it another waf, nothing in Disney is threatening anymore. Those rides, for instance,in which you're given no choice but to starestraight ahead,and the car rnoves forward or turns side to side,forcing you to look at what they want you to look at-exactly asa movie editor or, say,an ancientpoet chooses which sceneyou're to look at and in what sequence. Those ridesonce indifferentworld in seemed proof of man'shelplessness a mechani?Ed, a of sdes pitches,Styrofoam cake,and accordionmusic.But the impression was mistaken. The computerized,impersonal,fully automatedworld that so terrified all men of sense-and that Disney so eagerlylooked forward to-no we've begunto suryiveit. His unspeakable longer threatensus because we waveoff like a mosquito' his dancinghippos in Fanlowbrow msre of tasia, sculptures hipposat the New York World's Fair,the innuhis at merableobscenities Disneyland,were neverintendedasa philistine assaulton the cimdel of an, and the reaction of anger,the feeling of imponant valuesrhreatened,now seemslunatic. His celebrationof the ordinary was a celebrationof dl of us, even intellectuals,as we ore; and the reasonWalt Disney hasgone up in our estimationis that decidedto admit we ourselves harr gone up in our estimation.We harre

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that despite and sentimental, a that we are sometimes little sirnplistic dire predictionswe are inclined to believethat life on eanh will continue for awhile-we're evenwilling to do things about it-and willthat as storiesgo, well, Finnegans ing to admit, just betweenourselves, Wakeis a little hard to follow. Or to put it more soberly, in a way that soundslessanti-intellectud,w havebegun to doubt those great dark visionsof the fonies and fifties and to be more nearly persuaded for by thoseoptimisticinnocents whom nothing, in the end, is more relativelytasteful imitation of how real imponant than a first-class, when no one'slooking-men like Chaucerand human beingsbehave Walt Disney. We haverelaxed into admittingthat Disney'svillainsand heroes-and like JayWard those he fatheredindirectly,through forrner employees and Walt Kelly-are the peopleof our age:you and ID,reader.Who or can expectreal seriousness dignity from the Road Runner or Pogo, not to mention that maniac Donald DuckP Who can expect oldwriters like from those middle-aged fashionedanistic high seriousness William Gassor StanleyElkin, writers whose tdents were licked into The whole reality shapeby some clownish,dumb-eyedDisney bear? of such writers is a huge animation that shuddersbetween extremes villageand R. Crumb'sjohn. It's futile, in shon, to atof Geppetto's tempt any judgmentsof Walt Disney's art. We can no longer tell it from so-cdled reality-which for dl our sakes,and for the sake of the future, is probably just as well.

TheAduenturer

I T ' S F R E Q U E N T L Y O I N T E D U TT H A T T H E R E P O are no longer heroes in literature, only anti-heroesand spoof heroes like 0O7, and that the reason for this is that writers and readerscan no longer believethat there are heroesin so-calledreal life. In a world in which everything seemsto havegone wrong, w long for heroes, secredywish we could be heroesourselves-that by some incredible act of intelligenceand daring we could make everythingnoble, as ir usedto be-and on the slightestprovocationwe rurn somequite ordinary mord mediocrity into a godly ided: Dr. Kissinger,for instance, before we learned of his involvemenrin the murder of Chile. Hope springseternd, but we know better oow; and so the novel really is, in a cenain sense,dead, and civilization has died with it. We wanly smile at the last-gasp humor of Banhelme, we laugh our loud ar the outrageouslyengaged,canoonish romantic heroesof Elkin, or, like Cato whiling awayhis last hours, we sniff our the tonuous windings of philosophical Gass. Optimists tell us our generaldespairis an effect of Vietnam and the Nixon Administration, but PaulZweig s imponant book, Tfu Adamturer, sugge$s that the trouble is rnuch deeper.The idea of the rrue, unselfconscious hero-"the adventurer"-went hollow long tgo, and went hollower and hollower, stageby stage. The object of his study is

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THE ADVENTURER 87 /

ro traceand explainthosesages.Evenwhen he'swrong about paniculars, his argumenr-for me at least-throws startlinglight on where we are and where we'r been and provideswhat e\reryfirst-rate theory ro is supposed provide,a new way of seeingnot only the books and o\rer in silence, to men he chooses talk about but also those he passes from the late Roman odes to, for instance,Wdlace Stevens. He beginswith the shamanisticelement in epic poetry mainly cy-tells how the adventurer (in this casethe Gitgamesbandthe Odyss to shaman)went Lwary such placesasthe country of death and brought back wisdom and power, helps to humanity; how the heroic advento turer was half maniacwild man, as dangerous his friends as to his an enemies,nor yet shackledby ethicsor common sense, elemental brought hedth to the whole comforce; how the adventurer-shaman with talk of the munity, gavelife meaning.All this Zweig elaborates Sir Gawain and the Grem Knigbt Throughout this Iliad, Beruutfand of discussion things ancient and medieval Zwei{s thesisis somewhat , of harmed, I'm afraid, by his fairly complete misunderstanding the but distractingas Zweig'smisinformation may be, the thesis poems; is a sound one, and a true argumentbadly arguedmay nevenheless be significant. When he turns to the adventurerin modern times, Zweig's book which touch on most of of takeswings. In a series brilliant analyses the imponanr modern European and American writers but focuses Edgar mainly on Defo e'sRolinsonCtusu, Casanovr,the gothic norrelists, Allan Poe, Nietzsche,Mdraux and Saftre, he traceswhat happened ro us: how the adranturer'sfhSt and figh, turned inward, so that where wildernessthe once monasticor castlewalls held out the dangerous adventurerbrought news of, there were now the thicker, far solider walls of Protestantmordity, Defoe's code of "due and regular conof duct," so that evenon Crusoe'sisland,potential paradise the adventurer, we find that (asZweig quotesVirginia Woolf assaying),"There there is no solitude and no soul. There are no sunsets and no sunrises; full in the face nothing but a large eanhis, on the contrtt!, staringus enwarepotl'Adventure, to Crusoe,is a dumb idea. It leadsto being Better to tame one's patchof land, fenceit in. capturedby headhunters. becomea prison, and as But alas,the walls of decencythemselves that fact beganto be recogntzedclearly, new forms arose-the gothic novel of impotent evil and bungling good, the frivolous attempt at

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escape Casanova, monstrc)usly in the stupid transvaluations the Marof quis de Sad,8swell asthings hedthier, what Zweigdescribes "rhe as new mphology of adventure" in EdgarAllan Poe, and the transvduations of Nieusche. On dl these Zwergwrites,with splendidoriginality and insight, such a set of analyses we haven't seenin years.To as rePon his conclusions,it seemsto me, would be like giving awayan earnedsurpriseending. Pan of what's surprisingabout Zweig'sbook, in fact, is that he can think of so mtub that's new and rrue to say about so many old chestnu$. His piece on Poe is the best, maybe. Someonehas finally managedto explain why the mysteriousending of "The Narrative of A. Gordon Py*" is so rerrifying. Zweigcloses with Malraux and Sanre.He points out the well-known terrible paradoxin T E. lawrence's Swm Pillan of Wisdom."rhe paradox of our culturet its longing for great acts,combined with a sense of their irrelevance," and shows that Malraux and Sanre divide that paradoxbetweenthem, "Malraux's adventureris locked into a solitary combat with the viscouselementsof the jungle,with the feverof decay which sapshis body, with the irreducible solitude which constitutes la condition lrumaine"; for Sartre,fighting evena jungle is absurd'"The treesfloated, more like a collapse;from minute to minute, I expected to see the trunks become wrinkled, like weary rods, shrinking and fallingto the ground in a soft, black, folded heapJ'Out of this come, among others, Beckett, Borgesand Norman Mailer, on all of whom Zweig speaksshrewdly. In the end Zweig leavesthe reader-wisely, perhaps-to write his o\Mnfinal chapter,a chapter that would get down beneaththe surface of one interestingremark in Zwei{s introduction: "We are facedwith adventurebecause an interestingparadox.Oriental tnaditionsdiscourage they considerthe vigorous individudity of the adventurerto be an illusion, a trick of Maya. Modern traditions in the West have been even lesshospitableto the adventurer.. .Yetvigorous individudity is precisely what our culture has come to value most." Zweig'sexplanationof our presentstateis that we in the West have gone inward completely,to drug literature,anti-realistic"fabulation" and so on. That sounds like a grim and terriblefinis, but I wonder if it is. The shamans took drugs and createdfabulations.Out of their discoveriesand symbolic tales writers like Homer made highly conthe scious, social and religious works of an like the Odyssey, story of

rHE ADyENTURER 89 /

a man (not a shamanbut a man)who fights his way backto the duties he loves,his kingshipand family, and purgeshis islandof peoplewho scorn "hospitality" in the highestsense-ordered community, glory Achilles of kus and the Chinese.Both in the lliad and the Odyssey is a splendidhalf-divineanimd who's vastly admired and ultimately judgedwrong-inferior to Odysseus, who lies and cheatsand, with Penelope's help, suryives. I might never have noticed if it weren't for Zweig's book, but it seems me that asfar back in time zNwe can trace the mind of rnan, ro the idea of the hero has alwaysrung hollow-for all its appeal-and declineare nothing other than alterthat the stages the adventurer's of snatchingat the nativeways,after old ways havefailed, of desperately heroic ideal we stubbornly refuseto live without.

BEond tbeBedroom Vall

IT'S NOT EXACTLY COMMON, IN RECENT years, to run acrossa clearly first-rate novel that tracesthe generawere tions of a family. The last really good ones, if memory seryes, Wallace Stegner's Big FockCandyMountain andJohn Cheever'stwo Wapshot books. There are dl sons of reasonssuch novelsdon't get written, and one wuy of dramatizing l-arrry Woiwode's achievement in his huge new norrel,Beyond BedroomWall, is to spell out some tbe of those reasons. We still have a foolish prgudice againstwhat Henry Jamescdled, in annoyanceat 1blstoy, "windy, b^ggy rnonstersl' Even as we admit the foolishnessof the prejudice,we must grant that the problem of really controlling the massof material necessaryfor a family sagais monumentd. By nature,life sprawls;and the iprawl inrolved in four or five generarionscan lead only, one would swear, to soap opera. For another thing, the "serious novel" has become,in our time, novelist self-conscious. Whereasthe eighteenth-or nineteenth-century knowledgeablyabout doctors,fish' talked comfonably and (it seemed) ermen, prime ministers,marriageableladies and madwomen, rnore recenr novelistsharretended to doubt their omniscienceand narrow their domain. Turn-of-the-centurynovelistsstuck to what they knew by v.'riting about the anist-usually a painter-or by writing about

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young man who may eventuallybecomea novelist.Later the sensitive Faulkner)one wrote directly (with major exceptions like, sometimes, trying ro write a novel, reveding all his cards,askabout the norrelist ing for advice. is novelfashionable not, I think, What hasmadethe self-conscious its greathonestyandwisdom. Evenin the besthands,such asSamuel Beckett's,rhis fiction is pretty pakry stuff intellectudly. Its advantage kind of "realistic" fiction is that it suits over the more old-fashioned our for the mosr pan childishly petulant contemporary mood-our self-doubt,our dienated,positivistic pesimism ("Can self<ongratulating And it suits,also,a nobler qudtoothache?"). one man feel another's how things work, life, our delight in discovering ity in conrernporary enjoying their colors and objectsfor themselves, in our pleasure seeing textures.In our tge, magiciansexplain their tricks, even print them and in magazines, our admiration soars.Hence, the movement in litto self-consciousness "fabulation": w no longer eraturefrom realistic pretend ro be omniscient authorities on doctors, fishermen, prime ministers,etc. We tell grand lies with gusto, flaunting our aft and trickery 0 am thinkin g of Pynchon, Nabokov and the like), making up, almost wholly from imagination, rocket-men, dragons and also postd clerks.The con$ruction of a novel,once hidden from view like the machineryon a film set, becomespan of the pleasure(like the exposedmachinery in a Fellini film). How is Galswonhy, I ask lou, to competewith tbat? But on the other hand how can such gim-crackerycompete with Gdswonhy? When self-doubt,alienationand fashionablepessimism become a bore and, what's wors, o patent delusion, how does one get back to the big emotions, the l"rg. and fairly confident life affirAfter Woody mations of an Arnold Bennett, a Dickens,a DostoyevskyP and Allen's fairly funny but unmistakablydreary film , Lotse Deatb(has even Woody Allen begun to doubt his doubts?), how is one to get back to plain, grown-up talk about love and death? Beyondtbe BedroomWall: A Famiu Album is a brilliant solution to to theseaesthetic problems.It seems me that nothing more beautiful and moving has been written in years.I was reminded, as I read, of a friend's predicdon that the next great movement in literature will be an unashamed return to Victorian copious weeping. That's ovencptimistic, probably;but it's a wonderful thing, it seemsto rl, to laugh

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and weep one's slow way through an enormous intelligenr novel tracing out the life of a family. The story begrns with Otto Neumiller, who emigratedto Mahomet, N.D., from Germanyin 1881,and in Mahomet, because his intelliof gence and absoluteintegrity, made and then lost a small fonune. The narrati\remo\s on to becomethe story of his children, mainly Charles, a dedicated,upright carpenterwhose finest pieceof work, perhaps, is the coffin he builds for his father. The story then gradudly becomes that of Charles'sson, Manin-school principd, handyman, anistic dreamer-and Manin's schoolteacher wife, Alpha. They move with their serreral children to lllinois, where Manin's father hasdready gone, and the move helps bring on Alpha's death. Manin's children grow up-one becomesa doctor, one an actor, one a poet and so on (they are all in some sensepoets)-and the family disperses, drifting away from the emotiond-geogaphic centerof their liras, the plain and solid, religious Midwest. Manin marries again, his second wife dies, and the narrative focus shifts to the problems of his children and (briefly) some of his grandchildren. Such a summary of the plot can hardly suggest richness detail, of the keennessof obsenation, and insight into the inter-relations of time and place and characterin @tond th BedroomWall. Woiwode is manlously convincing,genemtionafter genemtion,f.rily branchafter frtily branch, y4 manages, incredibly, rc find a focusfor it all in one chanacter, a Manin Neumiller, of the novel's middle generation, man fascinated by his life and loves,one who longs all his life to write a book about it all but knows no such book could possiblybe written-redity is simply too vast, is, indeed, "man's most powerful illusionl' From the beginningto end of this novel, Woiwode's dramatization of gettirg a hold on redity-the problem of fully realtzng what lies out there at the edgeof dreamsand memoris,"beyond the bedroom the story wall"-is simply brilliant. He tells, slowly and elaborately, of the love of Manin Neumiller and his first wife, Alpha-how they met and fell in love, how they married and raisedchildren, how Alpha died young (an episodeof unbelieiable sensitivity and power)-and and then he shows,with a $range mixture of tenderness disheanening objectivity, how little of all that story wi$ graspedand fully under' srood, even by Martin. The children of Manin and Alpha are all intelligent and inquiring, all fascinatedby the lives of their parents,and

BEYoND THEBEDRooM wALL / 9t

of and experience parents, all profoundly influencedby rhe character cousins,family friends;the children love one another grandparents, and love their parents,love their father's stories, and do errerything but to eachof them many pans of the family they can to understand; area mysrery a source of bafflement and frustration driving picture them more urgently to love. This frustrationis heightened,for the readeraswell asfor the char' acters,when Woiwode turns to Manin's secondwife, Laura. We get now from one child's point of view, now from her only in flashes, only for a moment, from Manin's, and the another's,occasionally, image in which the fragmentsdon't fit: there result is a fragmented havefull authority, absolute is no doubt of her reality-all the images conviction-but her character,her beauty and goodness,her streak are of bitchiness all left, quite intentionally,uncertain. The evidence is contradictory opinion is divided, and aswe try to understandher-try betweenher life and Alpha's (repeatedlyhinted, ro graspthe parallels beckoning, unredeemedby taken back),her {igure retreats, repearedly fanher and fanher into the meaningless aft or loving detailedmemory bedroom wall. character's darknes beyondeachdreaming,remembering In the sameway,the children of the last generationbecomeincreasingly mysterious-though we know them intimately, by suddenflashes. They move fanher and fanher apan, the world of family experience zooming out from the old family home in Nonh Dakou as smrsand planetshavebeenzooming out sincethe time of the big bang. Only and mutual faith can keep the separating experience lorc, panly shared pans linked, and by the end of the novelManin's children seemhardly to know eachother. Yet the links hold, or are holding for now, supponed by each family member's faith in the others' love. Ultimately, by devicesof which some readerswill disapprove,the link of love,fragmentarysharedexperience, and faith links all humanity together in Beyond BedroomWall. One of these devicesis a verbal tbe trick that drawsthe readerinto the family. In an introductory chapter, or "Prelude" as Woiwode calls it (echoingProust, purposely,I supcharacterspealsto his sleeping pose),a halidreaming,half-remembering wife as "youl'and the pronoun ringsoutward to include the reader, beside so and all readers, that the Preludecanend: "But now I'm asleep you in bed, and for right now, dear one, loved one, loved ones, and is friends,that's enoughl' The language patendy sentimentd, of coutse,

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but by the end of the book it seemsto be belatedlyjustified. (lt is true, by the way, that in going unashamedlyfor emotion, Woiwode sometimesslipsinto the embarrassing. take lrry. risksis to fail someTo times.) And at various points throughout the book, especidly in Manin's find lines to his son, the reader is similarly taken into the family. At least for a while-which is all an can hope for-the metaphysic of this novel, the exploding universeheld together by love, is totally convincing. Beyondtbe BedroamWall is old-fashioned in many ways-its lrtg. ca$ of characters, carefully developed,its derotedly reponed courtdl shipsand funerals,its landscaps, housesand weather,its lyrical flights (unabashed prose-poetrythat only now and then slips),its moments of super realism (PeggJr lee happens thnrugh, with the high school she went to and real-life family name)-but it is also, emphatically, a contemporary nowl. Time leapsbackwardand forward in an origind and spectacular fully controlled way; people'smemories collide yet and fail to match; points of view shift suddenly.We get no single omniscient narrator but rather a kind of narratirrecollage, what I've sometimes describedasnarration by rcntriloquy. As in every hip novel of the 1970s(and some from well before),the techniqueis an essential pan of the meaning. Panly by the brilliance of his storytelling, of panly by the beauty and fundamental goodheanedness the story he rells, Woiwode nails the dramatic truth summed up abstractlyin his epigraphfrom Erik Erikson: "Reallry,of coume,is rnan'smost power ful illusion; but while he attends to this world, it must outbdance the total enigma of being in it at alll'

(Your) Amber(Get)Waves of (Plastic) Grrin(UncleSam)

MoNTH OR SOAGO I HAD AN ALL-NIGHT,

(I relativelydrunkenconversation wasdrinking, oot he) with an elevenyearold aboutPatriotism.He, I shouldmention, is one of your more a brilliant eleven-year-olds, promising philosopher. My friend told his mother the following day, "You know, John Gardner'sa patiotl" She consoledhim and heroicdly defendedme. But how queerthat a love of one'scountry should requiredefense! endure a shudderof revulsionwhen I go into some ErrenI, I confess, dl foul, white hamburgerhole and find gritty Bicentennialplacemats clutteredup with flagsand idealized ponraitsof the FoundingFathersGeorgeWashin$on with his teeth in, SamuelAdams looking honest, Ben Franklin with his clothes on (among other crank opinions, you may recall, Ben Franklin held that it was healthful to go around barenaked), or that huge drunken ox Ethan Allen looking as sober as a church. EvenI, I confess, pale with ruge saywhen I seebumper stickers go ing, "This Is My CountryJ' implying, of course,"Not Yoursl' My skin crawlswhen Presidents speakaffectionatelyof "God" or car sdesmen speakof "This Great Country of Oursl' I get hot flasheswhen the American Rifleman'sAssociation,number one defenderof the rote by writes in antique italics,"O'er the rampartswe watch." assassination,

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But I get equdly hot flashes when I hear on every side,nor just from children but from intelligent, sophisticated adults-as they'll tell you themselveswith full confidence-that the American Dream is dead. The American Dre&D, it seemsto D, is not evenslightly ilI. It's escaped,soared twny into the sky like an eagle,so nor even a grear Puffy Bicentennialcan squashit. The American Dream's becomea worldwide dream,which makesme so hrppy and flushedwith panly chauvinistic pride (it was our idea) that I sneakdown into my basement and wave my flag. People all over the world havedecidedthey havea God- or Allahor Buddha'givenright to a more or lessdecentexistence, hereon eanh, right now. To Richard II of England, who had rhe God-given right to kill any man he pleased,as long as he was English, and no questions asked(not evenChairman Mao can do that with impunity), or even to the noblemen who wrung from King John the over-famous Magna Cana, the "self-enident"idea of the AmericanFoundingFathers would have seemedflat-out insanity. That idea-humankind's indienable right to life, libeny, and the pursuit of happiness-coupled with a systemfor protecting human rights-was and is the quintesential American Drearn.The re$ is greed and pompous foolishness-at worst, a cruel and sentimenul myth, ar best, cheap streamersin the rain. Tivo great pseudopatriotic moraments are gathering their coils to strike, thesedays,inspired by Bicenrcnnid fenrcr.One is a mormenr ro celebrateand canonizewithout mercy or thought all thar's foul and (The serpent the Right.)The other mindlessin the American heritage. on 'Uemythologize" is a movement to those eighteenth-centuryheroes who've been foully, mindlesslyadored,and supplanttheir mlnh with a new myrh, America astrash.(The serpenton the lrft.) I come,flag covenly waving, to exposethose frauds-expose, I mean, both frauds. When the Libeny Bell rang out victory for America s revolutionary forces (that "filthy rabblel' as their Commander in Chiel George Washington, cdled them), the noise did not mean victory for the American Dream but only victory for those hoping to pursue it. The success the idea of government "of the people,by the people,for of the people," in Lincoln's phrase,rneant in fact the success governof ment byfuwd people-e\ren, occasionally, Wribh people-becausethere have never been, anpvhere on eanh, perfect human beings.

(cET)wAvEs(youR)oF (plAsrtc) cRAIN (uNcLEsAM) / AMBER

97

The first principle of American democracyis that, giventhe basic freedoms,majority rule is right evenwhen it's wrong (as often h"Pusing free men to struggle as adrarsaries, it pens),because encoureges legal means,to keep governmentworkin g Lt the business established of justice for all. too much pain The theory was and is that if the majority causes ro rhe minority, the minority will scream(with the help of a free press and the right of assembly)until the majority is badgeredor shamed into changingits mind. To put it another waf, most people are indifferent most of the tim'e, and rightly so, to what governmentdoes;on any grvenissue,only those citizenswho are redly hun, one wey or crowd in force to another, are likely to write anicles, make speeches, the polls, or set fires in tarcrns. Ohe most rnrlgar and unpatriotic thing you can do-worse even than putting on a three-corneredhat-is indiscriminately"g.t out the rote," making e\rerycitizen pull his rotingbooth lever,whether or not he givesa damn.) It's tme that the systemprfity frequendydoesn'twork. For decades, pollsterstell us, the Americen peoplefarored gun control by three to one-law-enforcement officials hara farroredit by as much a nine to one-but powerful lobbiesand cowardly pliticians hare easilythwaned the people'swill. Nevenheless,the American democratic adrarsary systemclearly beatskingship from acrossthe Adantic, and surely beats the systemin modern China, which achieresefficiency and unanimity by the destructionof somethinglike "sixty million bandits"-the entire Chinesemiddle class. The grand promise of the American Revolution was that people here(except slarcsand women, who were legdly definedasmoderfor ately subhuman)should havethe right, guaranteedby law, to live, to be free, to strugglefor happiness. Once that incredible promise was made,peopleeverywhere beganhowling for their rights.The French, Russian,and ChineseRerolutions were direct results. If none of theselater rerolutions was as successful ourr, the reas{on as is that, for dl its faults, the American systeffi,pitting pressure group againstpressure grcup (Nader and the consumer againstVolkswagen, city againstcountry women againstmen) came close, at least sometimes,to keepingthe re\Dlutionarypromise.Life, libeny, and the pursuit (as of happiness well as the flotsam of the American Dream, wealth, abundantser(, and the dl-white nei$borhood) took rcot in this country and flourished.

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oN wRITERSAND wRITING

These are nor the truths of the fast-food patriot, with his fltgcluttered placema$ and idedized ponraits. Someonehasbeen telling that patriot lies. There wasne\rerunanimity. Hundredsof the wealthiest New Englandersshippedoff, in 177 J, for Canadaand King George, {ighting down citizens' and the Founding Fathen spenrtheir whole lirres revolts like the Farmers'Rebellion and the Whiskey Rebellion"Murder will out," asChaucerwrote. That may be optimistic,but ir's a bad idea to tell sentimentallies about America's nevenheless Founding Fathers. derotedto a philosoPhiCreorgeWashin$on was a man passionately men; but it is alsotrue cal ideal, the notion of a socieryof reasonable noisily at his soused,grubby,disorganized, thar he once gor so angry to speak, uoops that he stood stammeringin rage,unable disrespectful for a full thiny minutes. Thomas Jefferson,the greatestidealist of them all, and a man who a tried to make slaveryunconstitutional, was nevertheless slaveholder in all probability, a man tragically compromisedby his love for ssd, "dusky Sallyl' There hasdways been such conflict. Abraham Lincoln, for all his good humor and lofty idedism, did not in fact free all the slaves,only the ones in the Confederacy. It's righr to demyrhologizethose heroes, as long as we remember those rough, contradiction-filled idealistswere, for their time and in some ways for any dme, heroes.It's right to insist that when we tdk up about "rhe good old days"-when we gaze in awe at those Yankee that it's panly illusion' Things demigods-we should remind ourselves were not as good then, and are not as bad now, as we sentimentdly maintain. The American dream of justice for all is only an ideal-a thing we strirrcfor and musr continue to strivefor but a thing we have never, at least so far, completely achieved. But the m1nh of the mindlessparriot is not worse than the myth of of the cynic who speaks America with an autornaticsneer.Because America has committed crimes againsthumanky-against blacksand American Indians, againstMexicans (long before Chicanos were insome of the Vietnamese-mainly, it may rrented),and recently agarnst be, the Vietnameseon our side-the cynic claimsthe American Dream was a lie from the beginning.If someonehasbeenlying to the creampuff patriot, someone has also been lying to the American left.

sAM) / (youR)oF (pLASTIc) cRAIN (uNCLE (cET)wAvEs AMBER

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an We believein fairness, American obsessior,and our belief in when any foreign governfairnessmakesus cringe in embarrassment menr, Do matrer how repulsive,is compared unfavorably with our we own. ("Well, we're not so perfed ourselves," say.Which lets off sometimesinclined to fotg.t, and The result is that we're Uganda?) our childrenmay neverhear,that our nation is one of the most decent this planet has ever known. may be odious,but it's important that we makethem, Comparisons draped now and then-quietly, not vulgar Bicentennialgrandstands can we girls. Only by making comparisons in bunring and half-naked in measure-or evennotice-wonh. Knee-jerkfairness, fact, is unjust' proposition,but it neednot imply Ditente's all very well asa business that we've forgivenRussiafor her mnks in HungaA, or China for the rape of Tibet. The lie to the Americanleft is this, that the American theory promand has sometimesnot delivered, whereas We ised such-and-such Delirar. The truth-a meaphysicaltruth, in fact-is that rnMy delirars. Each group struggles, whatever way it must, to achievewhat is at in wants more than what's fair, least fair. Sinceunfonunately everyone there's no foreseeable end to the struggle. But the American systemprovides,at leastas a visionary goal fair and legalmeans fighting. And fighting to captureor keepwhat we've of learned to call our natural rights is what this country-and now all the world-is about. The fight for the basichuman freedomsis a continuing, intensely seriousbusiness, theoreticallyat least,the occasionof America's and Bicentennialmight be a sensible time to pauseand take stock of where we're coming from and where we're bound. That's happening, some extent. But seriousdiscussion what to of America hasmeant-and should mean more purely to future generations-is mostly drowned out by obscenecommercial chatter about 'America's 200th Binhday Panyl' with clowns and cupcakes, rock"The Star-Spangled and-roll versions of Banner," and a trashy-carnirral eyesore a train which carriesauthenticdocumentsand a simulation of of the "historic" basebdl Hank Aaron hit. A hundredyearsago,at the time of the Centennial-and the Reconstruction-no one had the nerve to have a Binhd"y Party. Arnerica was in trouble, as an honest democracyalways is. They let the great

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oN wRrrERs AND wRrrrNG

occasionslide and got on with the labor of trying ro fx things, each group putting the screwson every other, insistingit had cenain inalienable rights, strugling (to some CIcentby l.pl means)for life, libeny, and the pursuit of happiness. It's a tedious and fairly discouragrngprocess, and in the daysof Reconstruction, as we dl now admit, it was a ghastly failure and a colossal bore-not at all like watching some grccer fall off his horse while galloping hell-for-leather down a roped-off highway, playing Paul Revere. But the jockeyingfor rights, the continual process trying to make of things fairer-despite such impediments asdrunken Congressmen and bawling mobs, despitethe sly drone of the unspeakable rich and the penchant for murder in the innocent, blue-eyedCentral Intelligence Agency-in shon, the as-yet-unabandoned pursuit of the dream of libeny and justice for all, is a thing worth sneakingdown cellar and waving a flag at.

TR
T Y V E M A Y E X P E C T H A T S U C HA L O N G A N D long-awaitedbook as /R will fdl into one of two categories'either like somework intellectuallyand emotiondly gargantuan, Don Quirou, of War and Peace, Rcmentbrance Tbings Past,or Tbe Magic Mountain, ingenious,and rnemorable or elsesomehugeand magnificent,generous, like Our Munnl Frisndor Old Wioes'Thlc.If one judged entenainment, by the reviewsthat have appearedso far, one would imagine /R to be the former kind of work: obscureand full of boomings, perhaps e\n a true work of genius,which normdly meenspretentiouslyexclulike Finnegans unreadable, sive,turgidly self-indulgent,and awesomely (and there are Wake.According to George Steiner in Tbe New Yorker signsthat Gaddiswould like to think it's true),/R is indeedthat fashbookl' Steinerscornfully quotessome ionablemon$er "the unreadable But and passages, to anyonewho hasn't read IR, they're persuasive. if one ba readthe novel, one can only hop on one foot, spluttering in confusionand rage(ike youngJR), yelling"Crazyt. holy shit!"what right in a way./R is, findly, bad aft, but despite because Steiner's Steiner thinks, it's wonderfully and easily readable. or Except for the last two hundred pages so, where the novel takes a turn toward rant-filling the readerwith an indignation he would fiction-/R is a delightful, nelar feel at a writer's betrayd of somelesser

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oN wRrrERs AND wRrrrNG

large and various, technicdly brilliant entenainment. But it is also fh.lse, the end, because noral's self-righteous, in the emotionally uncontrolled last movement poisonswhat went before it, castingsuspicion on what seemedat first basicallygenerousand fair-minded, genidly satiric or justly sardonic. In all fairness,Gaddis was apparently uneasyabout bringing our in IR. One of the characters his novel wails, talking of his o\Mndifficult, long-unfinishedbook' -Sixteen years like living with a God damned inralid sixteen years every time you come in sitting there waiting just like you left him wave his stick at lou, plump up his pillow cut a parargreph a sentencehold his C'od damned add hand little warm milk add a comma slip out for some air pack of cigarettes come back in right where you left him, eyes follow you around the room wa\ his C'od damnedstick figu* out what the hell he wants, plump the C'od damned pillow change bandageread aloud move a clausearound wipe his chin new paragraph. And a little later in the same monologue' -C'od damned friends getting indtgnant tell you bting him out, tell you bring him out like he is a little crippled maybe don't Su. a C'od damn, quick and diny just dresshim up a little bring him out anyhow go back waiting, plump the C'od damned pillow rnove a clausearound. . . Well, the inralid /R is out, more than a little crippled, though the trouble comesnot from eny faltering of clauses from deeperforms but of moral and aestheticconfusion. For five hundred pages,grveor take a few, Gaddis tells a crazybut interesting, tightly plotted story full of fascinatingcharacers and caribut catures,all of them more or lessoutnageous viewed sympathaically and meant to be, or with comic detachment.The plot is implausible, shot through with coincidenceand misundersandingasin an old'time farce. But the tone is alwaysright, and as in dl good farcethe chanrcers are sufticiendy roundedto make the foolishnes important. And anyway,

IR /

lo3

Gaddis is going for meaning in Ben Jonson's wA,not Aristotle's. Events-however comically jerked around, howeverblatantly staged by the novelist-rrickster-forcevdues and ideasinto collision. This is of coursea techniquethat only works if the novelist has the sense to takeno side,or et leastto take none openly, and indeedfor something like five hundred pagesGaddis does take no side. bankers,Wall educators, of Tiue, he rnimicsthe language so-catled Street brokers,PR men, and the like; and true, the readergenerdly with the anistsin this novel mosdy about money versusart; but sides on the whole, the languageand activitiesof the anists are as comic asanfhing the rnoneymensayor do. Both anistsand moneymen can and in two of the novel'ssymor or be clever stupid,generous sel{ish; the bolically focal characters, sixth-graderJRand his composerfriend art-are mixed. (To a greater Basr,the rwo inclinations-money versus or lesserextent, they're mixed in all the characters.) k's obviously impossibleto summarizethe plot of an intricately work written, intelligent,and enorrnouslycomPressed ploned,concisely nothing, neither yet of fiction that runs 726 pages; sinceGaddiswastes actionsnor words-since here as in Tbefu*gnitions everynhinghangs juxtapositions,mirror images-the plot must on repetitions,parallels, V.ry well then, this: One plot concernsa school somehowbe suggested. officid, Mr. Whiteback, is dso a banker where the chief administrative (among others)on his desk.He dealsin PR, and hashis bank phone educationalmachinery politics, and finance,ffid has terrible worries elderly citizens(who watch, in horror, his t&'payers, about meddlesome "packages" TV), teachers, students. and his toadies He and on school's speaka wonderfulgibberish-"tangibilitizeour gods"-and books, for him, are always quite naturdly and rightly the first things to go. who makes Among his mad teachersare a scientist-technician machinerylively by making it sound like seX;two strugling anistsEdward Bast, composer,and Jack Gibbs, novelist-who make more than trouble,for othersand themselrres, an; and beautifulAmyJouben, daughterof a brilliant and vicious Wall Street broker. All the characters who are old enough are either falling in love, miserablymarried, or fighting for divorce. The trouble begins-or some of it-when Amy Jouben takesher hero JR, to Wall Street sixth-grade class,including our more-or-less to "buy a sharein America," that is, buy a few dollars' worth of some

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miserable,foundering stock. Half by brilliance,half by luck, JR, who has panly the soul of an anist (dso sneakers, runny nose),rurns that a stock-without consultingMrs. Jouben or the class-into an empire, He is ambitious, generous,and humane; but the resultsare bad. To free his friend Bast to write music as he'd like (rhough JR has not rhe slightestunderstanding music),and because of Bast, in tum, can help with his schernes,JRmakestimid, alwayswell-meaningBast the JR company's one visible execudve(JR is, himself, roo young to show his face)and thus accidentdly drowns Bast in laborious trivia, throws his life into even more than usual chaos,and unwittingly forcesthe composerto write music he hates. idealism-dong with JRs energetic other forces-has funher bad results:a suicide,some murders,some careersdestroyed,some deaths by economic pressure-above dl the debasementof JR himself. JR s moral ruin is one of the few things still moving in the novel's diabolicd, dogmaticclose.JR,who hastried to free Bast for composition, who hasdso tried, at leastin his oryn view (panly rationdizadon), to advancenot only himself but dso the stockholdersand workers in the companieshe buys, is trying to catch up with outraged,sick,'and demoralized Bast-JR tripping on the lacesof his sneakers, cdling to Bast through sleet and darkness,hdf-furious, half-crying, defending the changeof policy he's imposedon a recently acquiredFM station' is it my fault if this here symphony takeslike half an hour to play it! And I mean you say cheapen[Bast has accused of cheapeningand debasing he touchesfboy JR "ll this whole deal it's like two million dollars in it and I mean like who wanted to buy their lousy station an) ilay! I mean agency they go around there for us this here Pomerance's where dl we want is like this one hour a night to get our message acrost so they tell us how much and then they get red snorty and saythey still control the program contentwhich that's these here symphoniesand all so I mean how many to messages you supposed get acrostin this herehour where are it takes this band half of it to play this one symphony for thesehere peoplewhich aren't hungry where this other crap takes like three minutes each, I mean what do I care what they play rhere! Like we're paying them for this here whole -[ook

rR / lot
hour aren'r we? I mean if they could get through thesehere in symphonies like firc minuteswhere we'I getting this bunch in of messages we're paying for I mean what do I carewhat they playl I mean who s payingthem to play dl this heregreet where musicthesepeoplewhich aren't hungry like at Russia) th'e government makes erarybody listen to it? Like I mean this here station it's losingso much money it can't hardly last so an) May I mean we haveto buy it to help them out I mean what am I supposeto do!

Everyone in the norel howls about or suffers the unfairnessof of things-frndly the unfairness an unbdancedunirarse(asthe noralist manqui Jack Gibbs points out), not merely the good and evil in capitdism.That vision, if Gaddishad been true to it, mrght hara made ]R a fine novel. The intricate,seriocomicplot, the glorious plethora of vividly imagined characters, and the bite of the social criticism could have set on a levelwith the bestof Dickens.And theseleaveout of account /R the brilliance of technique.Gaddis introduces the readerby easysqges to his method, narrativethrough didogue. He opens the novel with a classical scenefrom farce, two dotty, chattering old ladiesand their frustratedlawyer. Notice how quickly, guided almost exclusirely by didogue, one catcheson to the comic charactersand situationt

-Money...? in a roicethat rustled. -Paper, yes. -And we'd neverseenit. Papermoney. -We neversaw papermoney till we cameeest. -lt lookedso strange first time we sawir. Lifeless. the -You couldn't beliercit was wonh a thing. -Not after Fatherjingling his change. Jfhose were silrrer dollars. -And silver hdves, andquarrers, yes from Julia.The ones his pupils.I can hearhim now. Sunlight, in pocketed a cloud,spilled suddenly broken ecross the floor thnrughthe leawsof the rreesoutside. -Comirg up thercranda, how he jingled whenhewalked.

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-He'd havehis pupils rest the quanersthat they brought him on the backsof their hands when they did their scales. He chargedfifty cents a lesson,you see,Mister... -Coen, without the b. Now if both you ladies.. . -Why, it's just like that story about father's dying wish to have his bust sunk in Vancouver harbor, and his ashes sprinkled on the water there, about Jamesand Thomas our in the rowboat, and both of them hitting at the bust with their oars because was hollow and wouldn', go down, and it the storm coming up while they were out there, blowing his ashesback into their beards. . Thus by half the first page,Gaddis has his themesgoing (an, money, education, and vdue), his heightened,comic reality established, and the roices of his characters carrying the story. He can do nearly anphing with voices.Characters who appearfor only a moment (a crny rock errents musician, a train conductor)becomesolid presences, slapstick and (people steppingon one another'stoes, comicrlly symbolic)are made instantly vivid through didogue alone. The wit seems inexhaustible-in the farcically symbolic names,for instrnc: Bast,phloem, relatedto Greek pballos,and shon for bastard(child of opposing values),and a cheatedAfrican leadernamed Nowunda, to mention only two. A marvelous novel for pagesand pages-one frequently laughs doudand then something goes awry. Dark satire is not an easy literary game: Melville managedit in times;Sodid BenJonson. it Ttx Confuruc-Mau Swift managed several It requiresactivecontrol over the reader'soutrage-otherwise the satire rurns ro melodrama.Gaddis is fine while the satireremainslight; but in the later pagesof the book he is determined to go dark-blackheaned and terrible asSwift, or Melville at his angriest.It's a wonhy enough ambitior, but he fails to pull it off. He gradually seemsto distrust his material, beginsto force it, loseshis ironic detachment, gets too angry,Feelinglife's pressureasJack Gibbs might say,Gaddis sropsstudying the invalid to discoverwhat it needs,begins,instead, to ram down pills, demanding that the invalid get up, try to walk. The wildly cluttered mail- and machinery-filledoffice where Basttries, comically, to work, beginsto be unfunny, especidly afterJack Gibbs rnoves in, trying to write his novel.

rR / ro7
world's to begins be the fault of the moneymen,a crass Everything stupid imposition on intelligentand decentanists.Bast hasin a sense he and misguidedgentleness his deserved rroubles;through weakness but went alongwith JRr schemes; Gibbs is not to blamefor the foolall ishness aroundhim, keepinghim from work-JRs phone callsand We wife's viciousness. of mail, the sponging fakeanists,his e$ranged novel's begin ro hear more often, 4t higher and higher pitches,the refrainline, "believingand shining arerwo different things"; and though Gaddismakesan effort to keep the forcesbdanced-Bast's "fatherJ' and unloving asAmyJouben's father, wasasselfish conducror, a musical a Wall Streetbroker-the balanceis at bestintellectual.Bastand Gibbs victims. becomesimply sentimental The mask fdls, the writer is mad as hell. Whereas Gaddis could earlierlegitimatelyjerk his plot around, sincehe was then still faithful emotions and ideas(howeverlunatic), his piling up to his characters' arguaimsnow at driving home a skewed,self-righteous of coincidence ment: tru anists "believe,"falseanists and moneymen(the two can be the same)merely "shit." them, of of JackGibbsspeaks the values true art, and Bastexplains moreorless,toJRwhen he tellsthe boy that in listeningtotrue music "you weren't supposed or one is raisedto selflessnss: [i.e.,expected or requiredlto hear anything. . :'Tiale an one sees hearswith one's eyesand ears.(The Wall and own godly, dispassionate, compassionate and hearswith eyesand ears broker,A*yJouben's father,sees Street His of that aretransplants. wife says him, quite rightly, that he should null and void.) Thue aft, to put it another way-Bast's be declared way-never plays to win. But Gaddishimselfplaysto win. Despiteall he knows,Gaddisjoins brays,whines, the enemy he himself has identified, he manipulates, he refuses risk writing the bookJack Gibbs at one point says would to like to write, one that boldly runs the risk of being misunderstood. This chargeis a hard one to prove, short of a line-by-lineanalysisof the last two hundred pages, but some of the ways in which Gaddis overloadshis argument can be perhapssuggested. When Basthasbeendl but crushedby catastrophes largely brought on by money peopleand phony anists,we get a scenein which, ferrcrish with JR, Bast and deliriousafter a train ride and painful conversation talks with the lawlr, Coen. Bast rambles,echoingone of the novel's

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refrain linesafter another,pageafter page-his father'sline, "believing and shimingare two different thingsJ'several lines spokenearlierby other characters, especidlylines spokenby JR, "Nor pissed ar me off are you. . . ?" {3Imean *hy is everybodyalwaysgetting mad ar meP" "Get to stan over rightP" and so on. The scene unconvincing, two reasons. is for First, delirious"speech, like dreams, can rarelybe madeconvincingin fiction: eirherrhe character speaks nonsense, which is convincingbur boring, or we feel rhe authorid manipulation.And second,refrainlinesin ficdon alwayshave a specidemotionalcharge, and when touching,symbolic,or otherwise significantrefrain lines are presented pageafter page,one after another, the readercan rea$ in only one of two ways,with srrongsymparhetic emotion (because poetry hasworked) or with revulsion(because the the writer's aftemPtat poedceffecthasfailed). In this scene, wrirer's rhe manipulation is painfully obvious, and can only have one purpose, to bully the readerinto feelingpity for Bast and (to some exrenr) JR, and make him hate all those wicked capitalists. People are not very loving in the world of William Gaddis.The generousreadercan irnagine asa young man who, rhough he uses JR people,does honestly intend to do them good at the samerime, so that the fact that his work hasthe opposireeffectis no proof of mderolence.Gaddisse$ up that possibiliry, but he doesn'tseemto believe in it. Notice how misanthropicdly he rip things.The musicteacher, Basr, forcesJR to listen to a snippetof Bach'srwenry-first canrara. Almost violently (because his feverishcondition) Bast demandsrharJR rell of him what he's heard.JR answers literally and accordingto his lighm, -Okay okay! I meanwhat I heard{irst there'sall this high rnusic right? So then this here lady starts singing up yours up yours so then this man startssingingup mine, then there's somewords so shesmnssingingup mine up mine so he smns singing up yours so then they go back and fonh like that up mine up yours up mine up yours that's what I heard!I mean you want me to hear it againl Bast ravesin furious righteousindignation-and because forcesit, he the voiceseems not Bast's,but mainly Gaddis'sown-and eventually says,in ansu/erto JR's "is it my fault if. . :'

rR / loe

;',il fT:xi n:[:#il::Iilf, illil:il:#ffi ,"

you couldn't do it you couldn't ern leaveit done for a few people still looking for something beautiful, people who'd rather hear a symphony than eat who can still, who hear a magnificentsopranoroice singing ach nein when you hear this here lady singingup mine you can't get up to their level so you drag them down to yours if there's eny way to ruin something,to degradeit to cheaPenit. . is things-his farorite expression "holy shit" It is true that JR cheapens (often repeatedpay-off to the often repeatedtag-line, "believing and shitting ererwo different things")-but it is also true thatJR is an eager, energeric student, by no meansstupid, and none of the supposedly enlightenedpeople in the novel has made the slightesteffon to teach him anything at dl-with one exception,AmyJouben, who fails beBast and Gibbs, and others of cause shemakessentimentalmistakes. and their kind, arso cynicd, arogant, crimindly self-centered, cheaply enragedat "mechanization" and other modern evils that they never notice for an instant that a studentlikeJR might needthem. No evidenceanywheresuggests Gaddisthinks them wrong in this regard. that Except for his inaniculate ranting and raving at the end, Bast gives only one lecture in the courseof the novel: askedto deliver a TV of lectureon Moaft, and S\renan idiotic script which speaks the composer as "this little Peter Pan of music who never really gre\Mup" and so fonh, Bastdepansfrom the script, vituperativelymocking the script in his handsand whining about the victimization of anists by the rich and cmss-ne\Er recdling for a moment that he is being listened to by people who might learn something from him. Still readingfrom the scriptBastsa/s: "His wife's name Constanze meansconstancy, and shewas constantto her dear childlike husband all the restof his"-then Bastbeginsto stumble, furious-"of his, his cheapcoffin in the rain that..:'Now Bast goes ctuzf: -the uffi, consmntyes she, she constantly spent what little rnoneythey had on luxuriesand she,shewasconsmntlypreg nant and she, findly she was constantly sick so you can see why she,*hy Mozan burst into tearswhen he married her.

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He was alwaysthe, this little darling of the gods [the script earlier translatedAmadeusfhe'd supportedhis whole family since he was a child being draggedaround by his father and shown off like a, like a little freak. . And after more rant, and oh yes this mysterious $ranger dresseddl in gray who Mozan thought was a messenger death, it was redly just of a messengerfrom a crackbrain counr named Wdsegg who wanted to hire Mozart to, and then pretend he'd written it himself. What elsecould Mozan do? He's sick, worn our, usedup, he's only about thiny-fira and he's beensupponing everybody in sight for thiny years. . . Well, you will say, anists are temperamentd. (Gaddis returns as if obsessively van Gogh's chopped-off ear, conveniently forgetting to a number of things as,aborc, he foqpts Mozan's kidneys.)But temperamental or not, Bast has shown only contempt forJR and his fellow students,and given them nothing. Or wors: he haspresenred anist the as a weakling and financial sucker who ought to get his silly wife in line and start entering his checks.This does not, of course,prove Bast a bad artist-he's the book's one survirror.But sinceGaddisseems to side with Bast, it leavesthe reader with a legitimate objection' how are the valuesBast drubs JR for not possessing be passed on? to Though I've pointed to signsof it-the writer's manipulation of a delirious character, and the writer's attack on so-cdled educators whom he hateswithout noticing the failure of thosehe approves-it's not possibleto prove here that Gaddis loads the dice. But pageafter page through the novel's last movement, the reader gets a stronger and stronger senseof the writer dlting the machine, not following want to the argument to seewhere it leads or where the characters gp, but forcing, bullying, like a trial lawyer or a Marxist in debate with an innocent. One learasthe norrel,or an)nvayI do, annoyed and frustrated,wishing that Gaddis might havebeenlessarrogant in his scornof all things crassand more in favor of the anist's pursuit of truth-wishing that he might harreabandoned his own fierce and fashionableprejudices

rR /

lll

for (which everyreaderhe getswill share anyway) the sakeof learning the invalid whole and well, a wise and balanced what would make to work. It is easier imitate Proust the bitchy man than to imitate his to carefuland judiciousan, easier imitate Poe asGriswold understood him, or Goethe all but his bestfriendsunderstood as him, or Beerhorren justice to their full and finally the red-life monsrer,than it is to do humanevision. closestto Gaddis himsell is at work on Jack Gibbs, rhe character book about an and mechanization.He takespride a vinually endless in his knowledgethat his book will not "communicate," that is, it remarks will be full of big words,hard to read.When another character "Difficult as I that the book sounds"difficultl' Gibbs sayssmugly, can make itl' One is remindedof the remark William Gassmade not long ago (in Joe David Bellamy's TlteNau Fiaion: Intentinss witb Innt American Writersl,"I began Tlte Tirnnelin 1966.I imagine it aatiae is several yearsaway yet. Who knows, perhapsit will be such a good book no one will want to publish it. I live on that hopeJ' The differof enceis that for a man asconscious nuanceasis Gass-a man Preterand a rnasterhumorist when he chooses to naturallysensitive languLge, can to be-the rhetoricalI lioeun tbatbope only be comic self-mockery of a joke at the expense exactlythat posturing misanthropywhich seems to lessermen the proper mark of genius, and which ruins Gaddis's book. It pays,of course,that scornful sneer;people love to be told everythingstinks. It soundsso intelligent.

The Acts of King Artbo,lr and HisItlobleKnighfs

---w VY HENJoHNSTEINBECK AS AT woRK oN hrs Tbe Aas of King Artlnrr and His Noble Knigbts in the middle and late l9f0s, he hoped it would be "the bestwork of my life and the mo$ satisfyingl' Even in its origind form, the projectwasenorrnoustranslation of the complete Morte dArtbur of Sir Thomas Malory; and the project soon becamestill more difficult, nor translationbut a complete retelling-rethinking-of the m)'rh. Steinbeckfinishedonly some 293 uncorrected, uneditedpages, one-tenthof rhe orig perhaps inal. Even so, the book Steinbeck'sfriend and editor ChaseHonon has put together is large and imponant. It is in fact two books, pteinbeck'smphic fiction on King Anhur's court, and a fat, rich collection of letters exchanged betweenSteinbeck,Horton and ElizabethOtis, Steinbeck'sagent. The first is an incomplete but impressive work of art; the second,the completestory of a literary tragedy-how Steinbeck found his way, step by step, from the idea of doing a "translation" for boys to the ideaof writing fabulistfiction in the mid-l9JOs,when realism was still king. Pan of the story told by the letters is Steinbeck'sdiscoverythat the Morte dArtbur is a great and difticult work of an. He had expected to translatefrom Ca,rton and expeced the work would go very fast,but when he dipped into the more authendc,recendypublished Winchester

n2

ANDHIS NOBLEKNIGHTS / THE AITSOFKINc ARTHUR

IL

manuscript,longer and linguisticallymuch more difficult, he quickly "lorrelynuances the Winchesterwhich hara been remorred in discor,ered by Curon" and, eventually,real and deep mysteriesin the work. As he puts it in one letter, "sornewhere there's a piece missing in the beganto work much more slowly fascinated, became jigsawl'Steinbeck and carefully-* well he might, sincevinudly all he had available was EugeneVinaver's superbly edited text. No critic had yet shown the coherenceand overall $ructure of the Mor-tedArtbur, aindas for the light biography might throw on Malory's epic, Prof. William were studythat scholars Matthews had not yet publishedhis evidence ing the wrong Sir ThomasMdory-that is, studyingnot the educated aristocrat kept in genteelhouse arre$, surrounded by his books, but and thug by the samename. Steinbecksoon the rapist,church-robber that, as he puts it in one letter, he "must write the writer realized aswell asthe Mortel' He stoppedtranslatingand began studying still harder, soakingup the Middle Ages, trying to get a clear impression of the writer he must make up. ByJanuary 9, 1917,when he writes to ChaseHonon, Steinbeck is readingslowly. "I literally rnovemy lipsl' He has a meeting set uP 'Adams of with the P.M. Library" and with Dr. Buhler "whose name workl' He's read will know from his Medieval and Renaissance you history and criticd books and pored o\r Malory and is "getting many glimmerings"but is still holding fire. By August 7, 1957,he hasmet repeatedlywith Vinaver, has inspectedCuton's first printing at the RylandsLibrary in Manchester,hasvisitedmany of the placesassociated with the Anhur legend,and can speakof what he still callshis translation as the largestand most imponant work he has ever undenaken. By July 7, 19t8, he can speakof "the hundredsof books bought, for rented and consulted,of the microfilms of manuscriptsunavailable with scholars in the field, and study, of the endlesscorrespondence finally the two trips to Englandand one to ltaly. . :' By April 9, 19t9 , he is learningto make medievalaxes("With the old a:(eyou can pracof tically carvewood because the smdl areaof impact") and carving kitchen spoonsout of oak. Some of the most interestingpassages the letters haveto do with in translationin the highestsense. one point, having studiedthe beauty At of Mdory's language and feelingsomethinglike contempt for his own and the langpageof his fellow modern writers, Steinbeck swearsoff

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even letter writing. "l want to forget how to write and learn all over again with the writing growing out of the material. And I'm going to be real meanabout that" (October 2J, 19t7').later, more optimistic now, he saysof American English,

,*ffiJi:,I'#:.T,Tf :"illi,T?ll;':ffi.,by . few sportswriters. It has also beenusedby first person " telling a story but I don't think it hasbeenusedasa legitimate literary language. And a moment afterward' The American languageis a new thing under rhe sun. It can combine all the erudition of which I am capablewirh the communicationof our own tirne. It is not cute nor is it regional.The fr"),., have grown out of ourselves but have used everythingthat was there before.But mosr of dl it has an ease and a flow and a tone and a rhphm which is unique in the world. There is no questionwhere it comesfrom, its its references, inventions,its ovenones grew out of this continent and out of our rwenty generations here. It is English with Negro,Indian, Italian, basicdlybut manuredand seeded Spanish,Yiddish, German, but so mixed and fermentedthat something whole has emerged. The sentimentsoundsold and familiar, but as Steinbeckmeansit I think it is not (though Walt Whitman understoodit). The point is not that when we drop into American we feel a slight impulse to put it in quotes(as in "drop into American") but the plain American might be assumed have grandeur and nobility and so used,so to for that it might express us, without apology,what we do in fact re' with a spect. Steinbeckends this panicular meditation on language brillianr meraphor,"My looking is not for a deadAnhur but for one sleeping.And if sleeping,he is sleepingeverywhere,not alone in a cave in Cornwalll' to At about the sarnetime he carneto seeMalory's full relevance writes, our times. Steinbeck

THE Acrs oF KING ARTHURAND HIs NoBt E KNIGHTs /

I I t

Mdory lived in as rough and ruthlessand corruPt an age as the world has ever produced. In the Mnrte he in no way thesethings,the cruelty and lust, the murder and minimizes . childlike self-interest. . But he does not let them put out the sun. Side by side with them are generosityand courage of and and greatness the huge sadness tragedy rather than the little meanness frustration. . . There is nothitg it literature of one of them nastierthan Anhur's murder of childrenbecause may grow up to kill him. [Many writersf would stop there, saying"That's the way it isl' And they would never get to the heanbreakin glory when Anhur meetshis fate and fights g againstit and acceptsit all in one. How can we have forgotten so much? Steinbeckis well beyond translationnow. In March 1959, he writes to his agent that his work is "no more a translation than Mdory's wasl' He writes more and more surely about what he is doing and his excitementin the work. Then he sendshis agent the first section of the manuscript. The letter collectiondoesnot includeElizabethOtis's reaction,but clearly shewas troubled by what she read.Steinbeck'sansweris formal, careful, polite. In apparentresponse something she has said, to he praisesT. H. White's delightful piece of cotton candy, Tlte Once and FutureKing, but tells her he wan$ to write "a permanenrbookl' A few days later he writes sadly, "I am moved by your letter with the implied trust in somethingyou don't much likei' rhen, still later, 'As for my own work-l am completelydissatisfied with itl' And the project dies. Steinbeck's Anhurian fiction is indeed "strange and different;' as he put it. The fact that he lackedthe hean to finish the book, or even Put what he did completeinto one style and toner is exactly the kind of petty modern tragedy he hated. The idea was magnilicent-so is much of the writing-though we seeboth the idea and the writing changingasthey go. In the early pages follows Malo ry fairly closely, he merely simplifying and here and there adding explanation for the modern young reader. As he warrnsto his work, Steinbeckuses Mdory more freely,cutting deeply, expandinggenerously.In the passage Merlin's defeat by on

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Nyneve he writes like a man retelling a story from his childhood, interand pnaing ashe pleases echoing hardly a line. Merlin tells King Anhur what he must guard againstand sayshe, Merlin, must go to his doom. Anhur is astonishedthat the wizard would go to his doom willingly, but Merlin does so nonetheless, because, he says,"in the combat as between wisdom and feeling, wisdom neverwins" (Steinbeck'saddition). He travelsoff with the young woman he loves,fated and knowing it. With only an occasiond glanceat his source-sixteen cool lines (in tight modern English they could be written in three)-but keeping the formal old sound, for the mo$ part, Steinbeckwrites' Nynerrewas bored and resdess sheleft Ban'scoun with and Merlin pandng after her, beging her to lie with him and stanch his yearning,but she was weary of him, and impatient with an old man as a damsel must be, and dso she was afraid of him because was said to be the Devil's son, but she could not he be rid of him, for he followed her, pleadingand whimpering. Ihen Nyneve, with the inborn craft of maidens,beganto questionMerlin about his magicarrs,half promisingto trade her farors for his knowledg.. And Merlin, with the inborn of helplessness men, e\renthough he foresawher purpose,could nor forebearto teach her. And asthey crosed back to England and rode slowly from the coa$ of Cornwall, Merlin showed her many wonders, and when at last he found that he interestedher, he showed her how the magic was accomPlished and put in her hands the tools of enchantment,gaveher the antidotes of magic, and {indly, in his aged folly, taught her those spellswhich cannot be broken by any means.And when sheclappedher hands in maidenly joy,the old man, to please her, createda room of unbelierablewonders under a great rock cliff, and with his crafts he furnished it with comfon and beauty to be the glorious apanment for the and richness consummation of their lorc. And they two went through a in passage the rock to the room of wonders, hung with gold and lighted with many candles.Merlin steppedin to show it to her, but Nyneve leaped back and cast the awful spell closed that cannor be broken by any rneans,and the passage and Merlin wi$ ffaPPed inside for all time to come'

A T H E A C T |o F K / N G A R T H U R N DH I s N 2 B L EK N I G H T S/

| l7

beginningwith Here there are still Malorian elements-sentences 'And," formulaic repetitions, archaicdiction-but dl the "Then" and rest is modern. For instance,it is novelistic,not mythic, to speakof Merlin's "pantingl' "pleading and whimperingJ' or of "the inborn of craft of maidens"and "the inborn helplessness men," novelisticto speakof riding stwly from the coast of Cornwall (a quick touch of to rarisimilirude),norrelistic show Nynera clappingher handswith pleasure,or later,leapingback. By the time Steinbeckreached"The Noble Tde of Sir Lancelotof the Lake," he had his method in full control. He makesauthorial comments of a sort only a novelistwould risk, Malory's curs pagesby the fistful, and at the sametime embellishes of sparelegendwith a richness detail that transformsthe vision, makes with no real sourcein Here is a passage it no one but Steinbeck's. the original, and A man like Lancelot, temperedin soldret!, seasoned tanned by perils, lays up suppliesof sleep as he does food or werer, knowing its lack will reducehis stren$h and dull his mind. And although he had slept awaypart of the dry, and the unknown the knight retired from cold and darkness rest morrow and entereda dreamless and remainedin it until a soft light began to grow in his cell of naked stone. Then free of cold cramp and and wrung his muscles he awakened his againembraced kneesfor warmth. He could seeno source as of light. It cameequdly from everywhere dawn doesbefore the rise of the sun. He saw the monared stonesof his cell with patches dark slime.And ashe looked, designs of stenciled with golden formed on the walls' formd roundedtreescorrered fruit and curling vines with flowers as frankly invented asare those of an illuminated book, a benign shelteringtree, and under it a unicorn glowing white, with horn and neck lowered in saluteto a maiden of bright needlework who embraced the unicorn, thus proving her maidenhood.Then a broad soft bed shivered and gre\/ substantidin the corner of the cell . . . There is nothing at all like this in Malory. What we have here is with contemporary meanmyth newly imagined,revitalized,charged ing, the kind of thing we expectof the bestso-called post-modernists,

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writers likeJohn Banh. Steinbeckcreates lifelike Lancelot,a veteran a (how to grabsleepwhen you can and soldier who knows his business so on); shows, in quick realisticstrokes,'how the soldier wakesup, wrings his musclesagainstcold and cramp; and how magic stans to happen to this cool, middle-agedrealist.The falsity of the magic is emphatic-"as frankly inranted as[the designs atr illuminated book]' inl The paragraph whole purposeat this $ageencapsulates Steinbeck's a purpose closeto Malory's yet utterly transformed-to show in the manner of a fabulator how plain reality is transformed by magic, by the lure of visions that ennoble though they ultimately betray.It's but a theme that has a theme we've encountered before in Steinbeck, here the simplicity and power of myth. Tbe Aas of King Anbur and His NobleKnigbtsis unfortunately not Steinbeck'sgreate$book, but as Steinbeckknew, until doubt overcame him, it was getdng there.

Lancelot
|T1 T' HANKS To Tun MovIEGoER, THE Lesr GentlemanandLoaein tbe Ruins,readershavecome to exPecta good His vinues, in this ageof mostly terrible fiction, dealof Walker Percy. making fictions he caresabout plot and character, arenorable.Though evenmoderatelyphilointo movies,he is a serious, that easilytranslate Nor of sophical novelistnot at all ashamed his seriousness. should he and he questions raises, his waysof raising the familiar philosophical be, and plots, or an) Maythey them, are as interestingas his characters would be if he had any idea of how to answerthem. He caresabout enoughso that-as is often the casein the very bestfiaiontechnique, techniqueis one of the things we watch with interest,though here with dismay.He's clever,witty, efficient,concerned,and sometimes tsts: his fictionspass one of the two or three most imponant aesthetic which All this I say without much reservation, they're memorable. is to sayI think he'sa novelistpeopleought to read,as they will anyway, sincehe's caughton. is Lancelot the story of a man, lancelot Andrews Lamar, who, after learnsthat his beautiful,r'oluptuouswife has yearsof happy marriage, rich, low-born, a bad movie beenunfaithful to him. The wife is Texas he actress, originally attractedto Lancelot because is of an old louisianafamily, owner of a huge decliningmansion.Shetook on his class

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as she takeson accents. From the beginningthere was no hope that she would be faithful. Out of his disappointment and jealousy-and out of his sophisticated modern sense that perhapsthere are no evil acts,no good actseither,only actsof sickness, one hand, and acts on {lowing from unrecognized self-interest, the other-Lancelot turns otr his wife's sexualbetrayalinto a central philosophicalmystery.Question, Is all good mere illusion?-in which case, there can seemingly, be no God-or can we at least affirm that evil exists,so that (asIvan Karam azovsaw) we seeGod by His shadow? This question setsoff LancelotLamar's"questl'as he tellshis old schoolchum, now father(The whole novelis lancelot's "confession]' confessor, Percival. though "We've spokenof the it readslike writing, not speech.) Lancelotsays, Knights of the Holy Grail, Percivd.But do you know what I was? The Knight of the Unholy Grail. In times like thesewhen everyone is wonderful, what is neededis a questfor evill'A good stan for a philosophicalnovel. One beginsto read more eagerly. making absolutely In his pursuitof evil, lancelot first triesvoyeurisffi, cenain of what he alreadyknows, that his wife-and nearly everyone around him-is betrayingall traditionalvdues,turning life to garbage. Predictablythe proofs do not satisfy, and Lancelottakesthe next step. He turns himselfinto a monsterto find out how evil feels-if it feels like anything.Even as he commits his most terrible crime, Lancelot therecan be no suchthing feelsnothing, so for him as for Nietzsche only strength,on one hand, as good or evil in rhe Christian sense, and, oo the other, "milksopinessJ' transformationare typicalof The evenrs that dramatizeLancelot's but sufficiendyconthe Southerngothic novel at its best,grotesque and flow from the potential of character vincing to be chilling. They siruationwirh deadlyinevitability,supponedby brilliant descriptions of placeand weather-the climax comesduring a hurricane,or rather one real, one faked by t film crew-and supponed rwo hurricanes, of insightand wit that make the progress by the kind of intelligence, the novel delighrfulaswell asconvincing.A quick example'Lancelot's huge l.ouisianamansion is full of peoplewho are making a typic ally stupid modern movie about, in fact, promiscuityas freedom.Nearly all of them are slightly crazy,in the way many movie people really what's precisely are, and lancelot, eagerlyon the watch for evil, catches wrong with thesenew Californians.On the night of the hurricane,

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one of them, rD a$resscalled Raine, talks mysticdly about "fields of force", minds of force. of "I feel the convergence dl our separate in the air berweenall of us?" Can't you feel somethingchanged " W e l l. . : ' 'There's forcefield around all of us, waxing and waningJ' a suddenlywaning herself,losing interest. said Raine absently, tn: spoke a little more, but inattentively. 'Maybe you're right, Raine." I could neverfigure out the of enthusiasm movie folks. It was as if they were possessed fitfully by demons,but demonsof a very low order to whom one needn't pay strict attention. I've saidthat techniqueis one of the things one watcheswith interthroughout the noral, the contrcnesrasone readsl-arueht.Percyuses, tional deviceof regular rotation from motif to motif, incrementdly building roward the dramatic and intellectud climax. Lancelot tells, then breaksoff to for a while, the story of his wife's unfaithfulness, speakof Elgin, the brilliant young blackwho turns out to be, in effect, (without a moral secondthought he covenly films the a modern slave novel's betrayalsfor his "master"), then shifts to talk of Anna, the raped girl in the hospitd room next door-the true "new woman," l,ancelot thinks, violated back into innocence-then turns to direct to address his silent confessor,Percival,then to elaborating one or anotherof the novel'scentralsymbols,or to wonderful rant on what's wrong with the modern world. All this is well done, and the rantmuch of it true, someif it intentiondly crazy-S\Es the nortel rhetorical oomph. For instance,Lancelot rails at his confessor' Don't speakto me of Christian love! Whatever came of it? I'll tell you what came of it. It got mouthed off on the radio and ry from the pulpit and that was the end of it. The Jews knew better. Billy Graham lay down with Nixon and got up with a different set of fleas, but the Jewish prophets and and wildernesses had no part with corruPt lirad in desens This country is going to rurn into a desen kings.I'll prophesy' and ir won't be a bad thing. Thirst and hungerare better than

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jungle rot. We will begin in the Wildernesswhere ke lost. Desensare cleanplaces. Corpses turn quickly inro simplepure chemicals. Convincedthat Percival's meek Christianiry and faith can haveno effectand incensed, righdy,by the modern world's obsceniry-summed up in the trashy illusions of the film maker, Merlin-lancelot decides, slipping into madness,to start up, somehow a new rerrolutionand, like Christ Triumphant, either purify the world or destroyit utterly. We're encouraged believethat he and others like him might really to pull it off. He's a competentmurderer.l.ancelot'sdecisionis nor quite firm, however. He would like to be answeredby his priest-confessor, though faith, we're told, has never been sufficienr to ans\ilerreason. Percy is content to leave it at that. He suggests his final line that in some answeris possible,but he doesn'rrisk giving it to Percival. Certainly no answercan be deducedfrom the novel exceptKierkegaard's "leap of faith"-s blind, existenddaffirmaconsciouslyunreasonable tion of the logicdly insensibleChristian faith. Bur surely everyone must know by now that Kierkegaard's answeris stupid and dangerous. Why Abraham'sleap of faith and not Hitler's) lancelot himselfmakes that point. The reader has come all this way in critical goodwill-ignoring Percy'sern)rs of scientific and mphic fact, though i-po*ant arguments h*g on them (human femalesare by no means,as Percythinks, the only ones that make love face-to-face, and Malory's Guineverewas by no rneansindifferent to the betrayal).And from interestin the story and argument the reader has put up, too, with quite grossaesthetic mistakeson Percy's pan. Even granting the funny way Southerners nalne their children, the dlegory is too obviously contrirred;it distracts us from drama to mere message. Also, as I've said, the "confession" -a. bad fault, sinceit showsthat the writer soundswritten, not spoken is not seriousabout creating a fictiond illusion but is after only a mod"rehiclel' like the occasions Chairrnan Mao's verse. erately successful of From interest in the drama and argument,we blinked all this, but when the end comesand we seethe issuehasbeenavoidedand evaded, as it nearly dways is in our stupid, whining, self-pityingmodern novels, talking, as Lancelot does, we hurl away the book. When everyone's about the world havirg no values,it's not a good time to rehashTbe

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(Is Karamazou there evil?Doesit imply C'od) or offer a snivelBrotberc ing versionof Ayn Rand, that is, "Maybe-just maybe-Lancelot is ngh.l' E*rybody, thesedays,is thinking and feelingwhat Walker Percy at is thinking and feeling.Lancelot rages, one point, "I will not have or daughtergrow up in such a world. . . I will not haveitl' my son say mad TV news commentatorand his disciples PaddyChayevsky's the same-only better-in the movie Network Everybody saysit. Over and over, film after film, novel after norrel,people keep whining about the black abyssand turning in their ignorance to Nietzsche and them (GeorgeSedgwick,Brand Kierkegaard,asif no one everans:wered Blanshard,Roman Inganen, Paul Weiss,dozensrnore). e Fiction, at its best,is a meansof discoveV, philosophicalmethod. By that standard,Walker Percy is not a very good novelist; in fact for I-ancelot, all its dramatic and philosophicalintensity, is bad an, and whar'sworse,typical bad an. Like Tom Stoppard's plays,it fools around with philosophy,only in this casenot for laughsbut for fashionable to An, it seems rn,shouldbe a little lesspompous,a lot more groans. serious.It should stop snivelingand go for answersor elseshut up.

Falconer

J O H N C H E E V E RI S o N E o F T H E F E w L I V I N G American novelists who might qualify astrue anists.His work ranges from competentto awesome dl the groundsI would count: formal on and technicd mastey; educatedintelligence; what I cdl "artistic sincerityJ' which implies, among other things, 8n indifferenceto ae$hetic fashion, especidlythe tiresomemodern fashionof dways viewing the universewith alarm, either groaning or cynically sneering;and last, validity, or what Tolstcf called, without apoloW, the artist's correct moral relation to his materid. I will not spell out in detail what all that means,especially unspokenpremiseherethat someopinions the on life are plain right and some plain wrong, nor will I waste space novelistsseemto explaining why nearly all the re$ of our respected me either mediocreor fake. I will simply try to explain*hy Cheever's ' deroid Falconn,though not long or difficultl' not profound or massirre, endless explanations the one hand, and of overon of verisimilitude's wrought allegoricalextensionon the other-though in fact merely a to dramaric story of characterand action accessible the most ordinary sensitive reader-is an extraordintry work of an. Fdconer is a prison.The novel tellsthe storyof one man'simprisonThe man is Zeke menr rhere, and of his quietly miraculousescape. addict who acciFarragut, 4 collegeprofessorand heroin-methadone

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dentally,and for good reason,haskilled his brother, a man who was although bur truly murderous, the kind you canne\rerput in i"il because affemPtedsuifriendsand causes his he cruelly persecures family and cides,he does it all legally. Structurally,the novel is a set of Browningesquemonologuesby $rangers,along with a few dialogues, guards,and passing prisoners, play dumb), some chilling (aswhen somefunny (aswhen the prisoners wife comesto visit). The novel moveslike an opera built Farragut's or alrnostentirelyof ariasand comic, tragicomic, tragic duets.Cheever of in the hasa gift for catching emotionalnuances the speech murderers, larcenists, piousand deadly "good" people,people petty d*g addicts, full of contradictions-like the killer guard who meansno harm and loveshis plants-like all of us. more authoritativethan any the Everywhere, writing is convincing, and it showsus what is wrong with Philip Roth'snotion tape recording, of that literaturecan never hope to competewith the craziness life. One of the thingsa greatwriter can do, in a mad time, is simply write things down as they are, without explanation,without complicated analysisof motivation, philosophical,sociological,or psychological he simply trustingthe authority of his voice,because knows that all is infallible,and that in a world bomhe's sayingis true, that his ear and bardedby "communications"he cantrust the reader'sexperience sensitivity-or can at least trust the best of his readers. Suchwriting is of courserisky,but that's the wonder of it. All true and a an takesrisks,and all true fiction assumes readerof intelligence goodwill. Farraguthasa wife, Marcia, who wanted to be a painter but was no to good-an infuriating fact sherefuses face.She is a beautiful, intellibut loveshim no more, sincein gent woman who once lovedFarragut her view his drug addiction,casual and, now, imprisonphilanderings, ment haveruinedher life. The thingsshesayswhen shevisitsFarragut cruel and could come from no one but an in prisonare unbelievably wife, though many readers-lucky people-will surely cry in injured the faceof suchcruelty, "Impossible!" Cheeversimply copiesdown down as unjudgmentally making no excuses-sets redity at its fiercest, asany machinethe crackleof fire in the angrywoman's voice,the fake and specious objectivity, the undying murderousjealousy disinterest affair, toward r gtrl with whom Farraguthad long ago had a briel s\Meet

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"So tell me how you are, kke.l can'rsaytharyou lookwell, but you look all right. You look very much like yourself.Do you still dream about your blonde?You do, of cours;that I can easilysee.Don't you understand that sheneverexisted, Zeke, and that she never willP Oh, I can rell by rhe way you hold your head that you still dream about that blonde who nevermasturbated shavedher legsor challenged or anything you said or did. I supposeyou have boyfriendshere?" One could write for pages the terrible cunning and cruelty in on that speech.No one, I think, has ever wrirten down a more deadly wife than Farragut's. Yet for all her unutterableviciousness, Marcia cornesoff in Falconer asan understandable human being, not a merebitch, yer also nor-as shemight hara beenin someoneelse's novel-one of rhosepitiful people "more sinned againstthan sinningJ' We simultaneously despise her and understandwhy Farragutonce loved her, evenlovesher still. The achievement-the mature nonsentimentalityof it-is remarkable, for Marcia, like Farragut's brother, is one of thoserrue murderersrhe law cannot punish. It's pure accidentthat she hasn'tkilled her husband. Cheever writes' At a rehabilimtion center in Colorado where Farraguthad been confined to check his addiction, the doctorsdiscovered that heroin had damaged hean. . . He must avoidsrrenuhis ous changes temperatureand aboveall exciremenr. in Excitement of any som would kill him. . . Farragutflew easrand his flight was uneventful. He got a cab to their apartmenr, where Marcia let him in. "Hi;' he saidand bent to kissher, but sheavened face."I'm an outpatienrl'hesaid.'A salrher free diet-not really salt-free,but no salt added.I can't climb stairsor drive a carand I do haveto avoidexcitement.It seems easy enough. Maybe we could go to rhe beach." Marcia walked down the long hall to their bedroom and slammedthe door. The noiseof the soundwasexplosive and in casehe had rnissed this sheopenedthe door and slammed it again.The effect on his hean was immediate.He became to faint, dizzy,and shon-winded. He staggered the sofa in

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the living room and lay down. He was in too much pain and fear to realizethat the horne-comingof a drug addict was not romantic. No two waysabout it, Marcia hasbecomea temiblehuman being. though we grow irnmenselyfond of him for his sensiBut Farragur, tivity and wit, aboveall for his suffering, is no angel either. We get sincethe noral is mostly from Farragut'spoint of view, only glimpses, of how painful it is to live with him. But Cheever hints at the evi' his dence-Farragut'smany mistresses, neurosisand floating detachment from his family and work, his own disgustat his more blatantly way, cuts out and kills cruel brother, who, in the socially acceptable by meansof vodka. the No one is simply good in Fatconer; novel convincesus that in poinr of fact no one in the world is really good. Yet Falcmq hasnothittg in common with the typicd contemporary novel about how life is Life, for Chee\r, is simply beautiful and tragic, or that's how garbage. he presentsit, and both the beeuty and the tragedy in FalconerLre s finds no easyenemies, William Gaddiswould, no earned.Cheever and spirit, as Updike would. He easysalvationfor the liberatedpenis finds only what is there: pathosand beauty, "the inestimablerichness of human nature." The pathos can strike surprisingly, as if from nowhere. There is a minor characterknown only as "Chicken Number Two," a Petty thief and killer who bullies and bragsand makestrouble throughout the novel, a crearureof bottomlessstupidity who at the time of Fdconer's minor riot demandsthat visitors be allowed to sit with their prisoner friends at a table, not separatedfrom them by t counter. A guard points our that Chicken hasn't had a visitor in twelve years, nobody out there knows or caresabout him. Cheeverwrites: to Chickenbeganto cry then or seemed cA, to weepor seemed to weep,until they heardthe sound of a grcwn man weeping, an old men who slept on a charred mattress,whose life savinp in tattoos had faded to a tracery of ash, whose crotch and gay, whose flesh hung slackon his bones, hair wassparse on whose only trespass life [now, Cheertermeansfwas a flat and pitiful air of "I don't know where guitar and a rcmembered

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it is, sir, but I'll find it, sir," and whose name was known nowhere, nowhere in the far reaches his memory where, of when he tdked to himsell he talked to himself as Chicken Number Two. It is familiar theory that people outside prisons are as bad as the people inside, but Cheevermakesthe argument stick, ood in his srarement of the old opinion there is nothing liberal or slogany.He does not pretend that the prisoners ane really wonderful people and rhe outside citizens,all hypocrites.He sayswhat is true, that we're a miserable pack, yet a pack capableof vision, like Farragur,who "even in prison. . . knew the world to be majestic."Throughout the novel, in one prisoner's story after another, and in the continuing story of Farragpt's life, wil falls on enil-in flat, sometimeshalf-comicprose,disaster on disaster,shot by shot. Here, for instance, a mere parenthesis in a larger disaster:"Mrr. Farragutwas not an intentiondly reckless driver, but her vision was failing and on the road she was an agent of death. She had dready killed one Airedale and three cats." No one who has not happenedto live unluckily-* eny people have-will believesuch a catalogof small and largedisasters; el{ceptfor the maniacwho believes life "wonderful" (asNailles usedto, in Cheercr's Bullst Park),Cheerar's catalog, becauseof the authority of his writing, will convince. What is more, the catalogof disasters here is tolerable, not inconsistentwith an affirmation of life and lor. What redeems miserable, this world is miracles-the small miraclesof humor and compassion gh*tly that we may without lunacy extend to universd principle, even to a loving though somewhatfeebleC'od. Falcorcrcontainsnumerousminor miracles(the occasiood, hdf-unwitting generosityof prison guards, the prison humor that grvesbrutalized men dignity) and two major miracles-two escapes from prison. In the first major miracle, a friend and hornosexuallover of Farragut'sescapes disguiseas a priest and in is-for no reason-helped by the local bishop. Tolstoy would give us kind of novel. the bishop'sleasons,but that is unnecessary Chee\rer's in Mostly, the world is inexplicablybad, bad beyond all probability, children die, or even purposely causeothers to die. (Farragut'sbrother the once casudly tried to kill him.) But dso, on rare occasions, world is mysteriously good. That is enough. lb emphasizethe miracle of breals Cheerrer the friend's escape and the bishop'swhimsical assistance,

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to point of view, shifting from Farragut'sconsciousness the friend'she doesit in the novel, and the effect is like a wdl it', the only time magicatlyopening, letting in light. or, own escape rather, resurThe secondmajor miracle is Farragut's friend dies,either of influenraor from the new lacrection. A prison Farraguttakesthe placeof the cine being tried out on the prisoners. corpsein its deathsack,getscarriedout through the prison gates,and wdks aw^y. of end is a masterpiece poetic prose,not only stylistic"lly The norrel's it but also because rings rrue. Farraguthas nowhere to go-his wife prison, ioy' FarragutescaPes hateshim, his hean is bad. Nerrenheless, meets,in bald-facedmiracle, air, free,garbage-scented and fully breathes a generous,odd crearurewho giveshim a coat and offers him a place ro sray.Habitud cynicswill scoff at suchmiracles,s the sentiment.lly optimistic will purse rheir lips on hearing of the misery inside and outside Falconer.Bur that is how it is, Cheeversays.Cheever Proves what we are alwaysforgetting, that great an is not technical trickery novelty of effecr,or philosophicalcomplexity beyond our depth, but absoluteclarity: reality with the obfuscatingwrappinp peeled awey, The reasonCheeveris a grearwriter-besides his command of literary comPission-is that what style, and unsentimental form, impeccable he saysseemstrue.

TbeCastle of Crossed Destinies

LTHOUGH NOT YET AS WELL KNOWN AS

he deserves be, Itdo Calvino is one of rhe world's bestliving fabulists, to a writer in a class with Kobo Abe, Jorye luis Borgesand Gabriel Garcia Marquez. He is most famousfor his drz.ling, astonishingly intelligent fantasiesJTbe NoneristcntKnigbt, Tbe CloaenViscount, Inaisible Cities, Tbe Baron in tbe Tiea-but his mastery is equally evident in what might be called,loosely,his whimsical science fictionson the history of the universe-Cosmicomics t zero-and in his more-or-less and realisticfictions, for instance,Tbe Wauberand Otber Stories.In redistic stories the and in TbeBaron in tln Tiees, Calvino creates substantial, moving characters and fully elaborated,thoroughly convincing fictional worlds. In dl his books, but especidly in InaisibleCities, hasmornentswhere he the proseturns into pure, firm lyric poetry. In the science fictionshe brilliantly translates modern scientificand mathematical theory into fictional emotion; and ever) Mherehis final pursuit is metaphysical. His strangenew production, Tlre Casthof Crwsed Destiniel usesall these talents, risesdirectly from the worldview he has been developingall these years, yet is like nothing Calvino has done before. The book is, in ^way, a collectionof tales.The framingstory concerns a group of pilgrims who, after travelingseparately through an enchantedforest, come together at L castleor, perhaps,a cavern(no

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one is sure)and, trying to tell each other their stories,discoverthat they havelost their ability to speak.The talesare wonh hearing,we The hair of all the pilgrims, both young and old, know in advance. One of the pilgrims hits has been rurned white by their adventures. the on the idea of telling his tale by meansof tarot cards.He selects himself,he thinks, then addsa line of other which bestrepresent cards cards,and, with the aid of grimacesand ge$ures,tells his tale. His actud srory may or may not have much to do with the tale we are readingsincewe get only the narrator'sinterpretation,and the narraror is by no meanssure of himself-an annoying, unsatisfying rhe business, narratorwill readily admit. But the cardsaredl the pilgrims have,and they decideto do their best with them. Another pilgrim his chooses cardsand tells his tde; then other pilgrims follow, comtheir narrativelines with those of other pilgrims when they pressing need to make use of some card already played.By the time all the cardsareon the table,the interlinking of tales-or the narrator'sinterpretation of the cardslaid down-is incredibly complex and subtle' through the mphs of Oedipus, a history of all human consciousness Parsifd, Faust,Hamlet and so on, and a history of Calvino's career as a novelist,sincethe pilgrims' tales repeatedlyallude to Calvino's earlier fiction. TTfrCatle of Crossed is Destiniss an ambitious, "difficult" book, though judg shon, and one'sfirst inclination may be to maketop-of-the-head rnnts:"overly arnbitious,""annoyingly complex," "lacking in sentimentl' Like Kafka-or Chaucer-Cdvino makesplodding comedy of our scholasticneed to explain things. Like those writers, he usesa mostly squinty,insecure narratorwho's foreversearching answers, out in getting wrong ones,or raisingintellectualobstacles his own path. Such comedy inevitably slows the pace. Again, one may feel that Calvino'sreviewof his own careerasa writer is a touch self-regarding, evencoy.(Tolstoywould neverhavestoopedto sucha thing.) Or, thinking of the emotional power of books like Tbe Baron in tbe Tiees, one may complain Tbe Castleof CroswdDestinies lacking in warmth. is Those objections-and others-may haveat leastsome ralidity, but to registerthem, even in the timid way I've done, is to feel oneself squeaking a mouse.Cranky, self-conscious, like confusingand confused, Tlte Castle Crossed of Destinies a shamelessly is original work of an. Not a hugework, but elegant,beautiful in the way mathematicproofs can

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be beautiful, and beautiful in the sense that it is the careful sntemenr of an anist we have learned to rrusr. All Calvino's philosophy is here,subtly reassessed' idea of existhe tence as an act of will confirmed by lora (Tbe NoneristctttKnigbt), the tr4gicomic mutud dependence reasonand sensatio (Tbe Watcbn), of n Cdvino's usual fascination with chance,probability and will and his theory of ralue (mainly worked out n Tfu Ctwm Viscwnt, Cosmicotnics and t z'ero). What comesthrough mo$ movingly, perheps,is Calvino's lore for the chance universewe are stuck with. It comes through in the physicd appearance the book-the eleganrbinding, dust jacket of and tyPe designand the publisher'sreproductions,in actual sizeand full color, of fifteenth-cenrury taror cards. But Calvino's celebration of things as they are comesthrough still more durably in the centrd dlegorical images,the talesand the structure of the whole. The placewhere the pilgrims meer-our world-is perhapsa castlefallen on hard dmes, becoming a mere inn, perhaps a mvern doing splendidly, becoming casde.The meeting of minds " and heans we dl hunger for, as pilgrims, is impeded by difficultieslanguageand interpretation, our differences background(adrantures of in the woods), and the infuriating fact that no pilgrirn's story is entirely unique: w need each other's cards,yet the cardsnever carry exactly the same meaning twice. ("Each of us," Cdvino remarks elsewhere, "is a billion-to-one shot.") But despitethe problems,the pilgrims tell their tales,each mixing his destiny with the other's desdny and thus (as helping to errolve the universeevolvedin Cdvino's sciencefictions) a totd providence, so to speak-an enlloping work of an. An is a centrd theme here. Like the unirrcrse, is panly brute subit stances random combination. Studyngthe cardson the table,wishing in to tell his own story dear to him simply becauseit is his own, the narrator complains that he has lost his story in the storiesof others. Thinking toward despair,he remarks:"Perhapsthe moment hascome to admit that only tarot No. I honestly depictswhat I hara succeeded in beingr a juggler, a conjurer, who arrangeson a stand at a fafua cenain number of objectsand, shifting them, connectingthem, interchanging them, achievesa cenain number of effects." But through a fiction he learns that his deterministic philosophy is wrong. The tale of St. Georye and the Dragon showshim that "the dragon is not only that the enemy,the outsider, the other, but is us, a pan of ourselves

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moments,make us our we rnustjudge."An cannot preserve passing live forever,but it can help us to live well. Cdvino has rnadehis narrator both writer and reader(interpreter both creatorand victim of creation. In the memphor of the cards), of the process an as concrete of rhe cardshe has exactlydescribed philosophy,how we searchthe world for clues as a Wpsy searches the cards,interpretingby meansof our own storiesand a few unsure conventions. Finally, he claiffrs,the searchis moral and potentitlly traglc.Despitethe permutationstale by tale, w alwayslearn the same by and or taleof man:w celebrate cleanse we die, destroyed our betters. with "the legitimateheir of the throne to So it was,according the cards, . usurpedby Macbeth. His [chariotf advances. .and finally of Scotland 'gin Macbeth is forced to se/: I to be aweary of Tbe Sun, and wish the syntaxo' Tlte Worldwere now undone, that the playing cardswere shuffled,the folio's pages, of the mirror-shards the disasterl' Like a true work of an, Calvino's Tbe Castle Crwsed Destinies takes of great risks-anificiality, eclecticism,self-absorption,ponderousness, triviality (what, yet another interpretation of the world's great myths?)-and, despiteits risks,wins hands down.

Daniel Martin

INCE PUBLIcATIoN Tun FnrrucuLTnu. or

tcnant's Woman (1969'),and cenainly since Tbe Ebony Tinrer(t97+), it has seemedthat John Fowles is the only novelisr now writing in English whose works are likely to stand as literary classics-the only writer in English who has the power, range, knowledge,and wisdom of a Tolstoy or James.He is a master stylist, we've known since Tbe (1963), and he hasthe tdent, much underestimated Colhctor thesedays, for telling suspenseful, interestingsrories. Storytelling-the rigorous attention to plot that characterized the nineteenth<entury noral and that characteizsd,also,Tb Ftncb Linunant\ Womaa,Fowles'ssuperbfictiond explorationof the philosophicd background and moral implications of the nineteenth<enrurynoral-is not prized by some of our seriouswriters because their rather roo in easy,too fashionablecommitment to existentidistnotions of human freedom, they underestimate force of the pasr.If it were rrue that the we are free to changeour ways and that human hisrory can ac any rnoment take an abrupt, unpredictableturn for the berter or worse, then we might take seriouslythose writers who ignore the pim or play literary gameswith it, as do E. L. Doaorow in Fagtime,Nicholas Meyer in his two books about Sherlock Holmes and famous men, and John Banh in Tbe Sot-Weed Faaor.

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tells a half-truth. It is true that we must make But existentialism choices,changeour lives; but it is not true that we can ignore the inenid power of all that has brought us to where we are. This is a rn themeJohn Fowleshastreatedbefore,especially TbeMagus (1966') and TtteFrmcb Lieutmant'sWomau it is the central dramatic problem best book so far. Here, as in his new novel, Daniel Martia, Forvles's the in all his work, Fowlesexplores problem panly by andysis of the waysin which the arts-especiallythe an of fiction-can limit or liberate (that is, our lives)and panly by brilliant close our emotionsand ideas andysis of lifelike human beings. plapvright and Daniel Manin, is a successful The centralcharacter, scripnvriterwho feelsthat he has lost touch with his past, his movie "real" self. When the novel opens, he has been divorced for some to years,hasdrifted firrm one casualarrangement another, living always in the presenr.Daniel Manin's buried past centersin one incident, time when he madelove to his bestfriend'sfiancie,Jane, the long-argo sisterof his own fiancie, Nell. The moment was real, a true act of love. All that followed hasbeen false,a bad marriagebetween Daniel and Nell, ending in dirtorce;oo unhappy "good" marriage between Jane and Daniel's bestfriend, Anthony, who is a practicingCatholic, a philosopher,and an Oxford don. lied in subtle ways about Through the intenaning yearsdl four harre but tellsAnthony what happened, doesnot admit the situation. Jane the truth that she was and is in love with Daniel. Anthony guesses her true feelings,but doesnot admit to anyone,least of dl himself, makes Daniel's that he is hun. Nell, who has only her suspicions, behaviorin their increasingly unhappy maskof silencea pafternfor her marriage' she tries to talk, at first, and tries to help Daniel with his work, but graduallywithdraws into icy silences and convention. As for Daniel himsell he clumsily distortsthe truth in a smgeplay,making himself the enemy of the other three. In response, Anthony writes a coldly analpical letter leadingsyllogisticrlly to the conclusion that he and Jane must break off dl relationswith Daniel. The e$rangement, notice, comesas a result of two misuses thought's age-old of (the will to love devices: truth-seeking untemperedby compassion an that prods and clari{iesimagination-Dan's play) and truth-seeking (Anthony's cold-bloodedanalby philosophyuntempered compassion ysis of the facts).

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Then, dying of cancer,in hopesof atoning and correcing history the philosopher forces a reconciliation and chargesDaniel with the almost impossiblejob of resurrectingJane's true, buried self-as well as Daniel's own buried sell the self that should have marriedJane. Having won Daniel's promise, Anthony sealsit in a way tragically fitting for a Christian who believes ritual acts,benevolent in coercion, and miracles.He nails the promiseto the undterable past,giving up not only his life but, accordingto his beliefs, perhapsthe afterlife as well by committing suicide.The re$ is the novel, Daniel'sgadud discovery that he does indeed loveJane, though they disagree almost on everything from politics to art-a discovery that brings him back tcr life-and Jane's even more painful, equally miraculousresurrection. Fowles'sno\tel is about more than the search a ca$ of beautifully of renderedindividuals for an authentic past and future. As Daniel and out where their liveswent wrong, so rhe novelasa whole Janesearch seeksan understandingof where our whole Westerncivilization wenr wrong and how we who carry the burden of history cen redeemour sge,find a future wofth living. As individuals can fotg.t or deny their beginnins, so humanity as a whole can forget its Eden, sliding into the persuasion-now popular with novelistsand philosophers-that from the stan the universehas been a dung heap.Fowlesshowsthat both philosophersand writers are engaged the sameeffon: serious in writing about reality aimed at preserving what is of wonh in human life. The true novelist, like the true philosopher, useswords as tools, not plaphings. If both sons of thinker use symbolism,it is the symbolism that risesout of life itself, not the symbolism imposedby the dogmatist who knows in advancewhar he will say. Fowles nails the false novelistsof our age who feel guilty about presentingthe cautiously optimistic view of life mo$ of us live by in spiteof our fashionablygloomy language. nails them panly in He Dan Manin's reflections on the state of the modern novel, It had becomeoffensive,in an intellectudly privilegedcaste, to suggest publicly that anything might turn out well in this world. Even when things-largely because the privilegeof well, one dared not say so did in private actuality turn out anistic"lly. It was like somenew versionof the Midas touch, with despair taking the place of gold. This despairmight

DANIEL MARTIN/

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or pessimism, springfrom a genuinemetaphysical sornedmes gpih, or empathywith the lessfonunate. But far more often it came from a kind of statisticalsensitivity (and so crossed since in a period of intense a border into market research), few and universd increasein self-awareness, could be happy rvith their lot. as A profoundly moral man, assensitive anyoneelseto human suffering, Daniel Manin decideshe will tell in the novel he means to write-the novel we are reading-the truth: "To hell with cultural fashion: ro hell with elitist guilt: to hell with existentid nausa;and aboveall, to hell with the imaginedthat does not say,not only in but behind the images,the reall' of DanielMartin is a masterpiece symbolically charyedrealism:e\er/ symbol rises,or is made to seemto rise, out of the story. This is true evenof those symbols that would seemin another writer's work to On be mosrobviously message-laden. that crucid long-agodty when Jane and Daniel made love, the emotions that led to their act were charyedpanly by their discorrerywhile out punting with other Oxford the students,of a drowned woman. That she represents "drowned" Janeof the novel, and the lost Daniel aswell, is obvious; but the vividnessof the scene, preciseobservationof details(both externaland the internd), transmutesthe allegory.Snipped-outquotation can only hint at the effect, Mark kicks off his shoes and climbs down into the reeds, partsthem, then takesa cautiousstepforward. His leg sinks. He feelsfor footing fanher out. Daniel looks round. Jane is standing now in the long Sass, watching from fony yards away. Andrew walls rcward him, holding out the flask. Daniel shakes head. The reeds his closebehind Mark, half-masking him, as he sinks above his knees. Daniel smresat a tuft of purple hyssopon the bank. Two shimmering blue demoiselle dnagonflies with ink-stained wings fluner o\rerthe flowers,then drift away.Somewherefanher up the cut a moorhen croaks. All he can seeno\Mis little interstitial glimpsesof Mark's blue shin between the densegreenstemsthat have closedbehind his passage; susurrus,the squelches the and splashes.

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Besidehim Andrew murmurs, "Bet you a fiver she'sa rart. Ou,t gallant American allies againl' Then he says,"Mark?" 'Roger. I've found it." But Mark saysnothing more. He seems spendan inexto plicable time hidden there in the reeds,silent; occasionally a reed-head bendssideways. the end he comesheavily back, In then clambersup on the grass, wet to the loins, his feet cased in black mud, a stenchof sagnancy;and somethingsweerer in the air, hideous. He grimacesat the rwo orhers, glances back toward where Jane is, speaksin a low voice. 'She's beendeadsometime. Stockinground her neck. Her hair's full of maggotsl' He reaches down and rearsoff a handful of grassand brushesthe worst of the mud eway. Incredibly, everyvivid detail hereworks symbolicdly, asdoesnearly every detail in Fowles'shuge novel. Mark, representative the World of War II serviceman's vdues, will all but vanishfrom the novel and historical consciousness he vanishesin the reeds.The young Andrew, as who will marry Nell after her divorce from Daniel, holds out conventional comfons (the flask and a joking snobb.ry that doesnot express, we will later learn, his real feelings as an aristocrat,carrying the inescapableburden of his class). Jane, whose psychologicd arre$ will apprcach psychosis, stands"in the long grass.. . forty yards away:'behind the others. Daniel, who will for a long dme evade life's seriousness "looks round" about him, noticing bright by surfaceaestheticism, " surfaces,the call of a bird. By the end of Daniel Martin, the daring of Fowles'ssymbolism will become downright ewesom:& fdse and shoddy resurrectionof history's buried life in the raisingof a temple that would otherwise perish behind the Aswan Dam (the dam itself a symbol here, a rnasterpiece of technology that, like the atom bomb, threatensthe civrlization it servesand at the sametime preventstotal war, since an Israeli bomb on the Asvan Dam would destroy most of Cairo and shut down oD an modern Egyptian civil rz:rtion); accidentalassembl4ge, a Nile tourof ing boat, of vividly individualized representatives Western history's dternative "empires"-British, French, American, East Europeanfellahin, the detriwhile on the banksstandimpoverishedand diseased tus of ancient Egyp,' or, most stunning of all, the terrible desen

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desolationof ancientPdmyra. "What an extraordinary placel' Jane Dan commerts:"End of theworldi'But they arenot quite right. says. Fowles writes' aura It was the weather,they decided;it took all the serene our of classicdantiquity, reducedit to its constituent Parts, true death. . . and the contra$ of the goneness, its lostness, reality with the promise of the osln: Palmyra, with dl its pools,gleamingmarble,sunlit gardens, of connotarions shaded the placewhere sybariticRome married the languorousOrient. and but in psychological The "weather" not only in a literal sense as philosophical senses well' bad ernotion and bad philosophy have antiquiryto "its constituentpansJ'Janeand Daniel-modern reduced humanity-have lost the ability to seelife whole. Like Rome and the and emotion, opposingprinciples Orient, like maleand female,reason miraculously,in the waste of Palmyra, in a sense, musr marry. And Jane and Daniel do. At the end of the novel, looking at a self-ponrait of Rembrandt as an old man, Dan sees,and Fowlesspellsout, the secret:No trae witbout will, n0 ttae will witbout calnpassion.Itis through cnmpassion culture, through the ans' Sopings of history that we learn to seewho we are,where we are,where we can go and cannot go. Without will, the anist's-or any other person's-consciousdeterminadon to love and to save(the impulse stirred in Dan by his philosopher friend's And we coercedpromiseand self-sacrifice), cannot rise to compassion. "subjects" without real and deep love for his without compassion, (the peoplehe knows and, by ortension,dl human beinp), no artistno person-can summon the will to make true art or a true life. He will be satisfied,instead,with cynical jokes and too easy,dire soluabout individuals and history such dons, like those in shallowernorrels asJohn Banh's TbeEnd of tbeRnod.ln Daniel Martin, Fowlesdefines what an requires, what life requires.It is the fint line, and the implied last line, of the novel: "Whole sight; or all the rest is desolation."

The Silmarillion

I HE powER AND BEAury oF J.R.R. Tor-kien's T'beLord of tbt Ringsguarantees advance imponance and in the interest of Tbe Silmarillion, his account of dl rhat happenedearlier in his imagtnary kingdomsof towers, dwarfs, elresand men. The longer we loolc at it, the more impressiveTbeLord of tbe Ringsbecomes;and the more we seeof Tolkien'sother work, the more miraculousir seems that the powers should hare granted him that grear trilogy. He ws, in many ways, on ordinary man. As a scholar,he was a good, not a great, medievalist.His famous essey, "Beowulf, the Monstersand the Critics," standsout mainly because lacksrhe pedantic it stuffinesscornmon in this field and becauseit gaveeerly suppon ro a way of readingBetutulf thac more rigorous criricswere already pursuing to their profit. His edition of Sir Gawain and tbe C'rem Knigbt wils a good, trustwonhy edition, not brilliant-curiously weak when it comes to interpretation-and his modernizationsof that poem and also of Pcarl and Sir Orfeowere loaded with forced inversions,false rhyrnesand silly archaisms like "eke" and "ere." Tolkien'sorigind storylike "The Adventuresof Tom Bombabil;' were even worse, Poems, yet Tbe l-ord of tbc Ringslooms already as one of the truly great works of the human spirit, glving luster to its lessawesome still miraculous but satellites, Tbe Hobbit and now Tbc Silmarillion.

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Tolkien'snew book, edited by his Oxford medievalistson Chris' topher,is a legendcollectionof which the long tale "The Silmarillion 'Ainulindalel' tnrk r up the main paft. The collectionbeginswith the to a creationmyth, proceeds the "Valaquenta," an elven account of the Powers(Valar and Maiar), then to "The Silmarillion," and finally 'Akallabeth" and a shon legendbridgingthis the to rwo shon pieces, collection and Tltel-ord of tbe Rings,entitled "Of the Rings of Power and the Third Agel' it work than the Ring trilogy because lacks lf TbeHobbit is a lesser the the rrilogy's high seriousness, collection that makesup Tbe Sr/much of it conminsonly below the tril oW because marillioa stands that high seriousosS; is, here Tolkien caresmore about the meaning of and coherence his m)rrh than he does about these glories of the imagisticbrilliance, powerfully imagined trilogy: rich characterization, of and detailedsense place,and thrilling advenrure.Not that those are qualities entirelylackinghere.The centrd tale, "The Silmarillion"characters, though not the others-has a wealth of vivid and interesting by Tolkien's devil figures, and dl the talesare lifted abovethe ordinary Melkor, later cdled Morgoth, his great dragon Glaurung, and Mordmost interest, hereharre Sauron.Numercuscharacters goth'ssuccessor fate, strugglingagainst they work under some dark dways because a but destinyand trappingthemselves; none of them smokes pipe, none wearsa vesr,and though eachimponant characterhas his fascinating of quirks, the compression the narrativeand the fiercethematic focus give lblkien no room to developand explore those quirks as he does in the trilogy. is Character at the hean of the Ring trilogy' the individud's roluntary The subjectof "The service good or evil within an unfatedunirrerse. of is older, more heroicr the effec on individuals of the Silmarillion" struggle wo greatforces,the divine order and rebelliousindividualism of that flows through Morgoth. Standingin the cross{ireof these two forces,dwarfs,elvesand men barely have room to move and, often, that hound Their rows become curses no dignity but their defiance. them to the grave,and often the only payment for their suffering is the facr thar-soaring up into the clashing music of good and evil in the universe-they live on in the song of their exploits.Music is the centralsymbol and the total myth of "The Silmarillioni'a symbol The double with interchangeable lt$t (music'sprojection). that becomes

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symbol is introducedat once in the creationmph, 'Ainulindalel' The Father of All, Ihivatar, givesa theme ro rhe Powers(the Ainur) and saysto them, "Of the theme that I have declaredro you, I will now that ye make in harmony together a Great Music. And since I have kindled you with the Flame Imperishable fiife and willf ,ye shdl show fonh your powersin adorningthis theme, eachwith his own thoughts and devices,if he will. But I will sit and hearken,and be glad rhat through you grear beauty has been wakened into songl' Melkor, Tolkien's hcifer figure, of course makestrouble, trying to untune the cosmicjazz, and a bamleof the musics,reminiscent of Walt Disney's Fantasia,develops. After Melkor's first wrong nores, Tolkien writes,

Then Ilfivatar arose,and the Ainur perceived that he smiled; and he lifted up his left hand, and a new theme beganarnid the storffi, like and yet unlike to the former theme, and it gathered power and had new beaury. But the discord of Melkor rose in uproar and conrended with it, and again there was a war of sound more violent than before, until many of the Ainur were dismayed. Then again, Ilfivatar arose, and the Ainur perceivedthat his countenancewas sterr; and he lifted up his right hand, and behold! a third theme grew amid the confusion,and it wasunlike the others. For it seemedat first soft and sweet, a rnererippling of gende sounds in delicetemelodies;but it could not be quenched, and it took to itself power and profundiry. And it seemed at last that there were two musics prcgressingat one time before the seatof llfivatar, and they were utterly at variance. The one was deep and wide and beautiful, but slow and sorrow, from which its beauty blended with immeasurable chiefly came.The other had now achieved unity of its own; a and it had but it was loud, and vain, and endlesslyrepeated; limle harmony, but rather a clamorous unison as of many to trumpets braying upon a few notes. And it essayed drown the other music by the violence of his voice, but it seemed that its most triumphant notes were taken by the other and woven into its own solemn pattern.

rHE STTMARILLION 143 /

into the Void and thereshowsthern Now llivatar takesrhe Powers the visibleprojectionof the contendingmusics'The world in all its and confusion-joy and sorrow peaceand war, beauty and ugliness, the Great Dethe evolvingagonyrecallhistory.That history down to struction,is "The Silmarillionl' I As the passageshavequoted aboveshould make clear,Tolkien's vision in this book is a curious blend of things modern and things What is modern is for the most pan the tawdriestof the medieval. sinceTolkien'svision transformsand remodern-not that one cares, though his work may havehad deemsit. Walt Disney is everywhere, lessinfluenceon Tolkien than did that of equally childlike anists,such Tolkien'sl*guqg. is the salnephony PrinceValiant asAubrey Beardsley. languageof the worst Everyman ffanslations and modernizatiorlsthingslike, "Death you haveearnedwith thesewords; and death you should tind suddenly,had I not sworn an oath in haste;of which I mortal, who in the realm of Morgoth haslearnt to repenr,baseborn asidedl such as creepin secret his spiesand thrallsl'But one pushes the objections,because fact is that Tolkien's vision is philosophicdly and morally powerful, and if someof the fabric in which he clothes he the vision is bargain-basement, has greatly elevatedit by his art. prinWhat is medievalin lblkien's vision is his set of orgunrzing In the ciples,his symbolism and his pattern of legendsand events. work of Boethius and the scholasticphilosophers,as in Dante and and Chaucer, musicd harmony is the first principle of cosmicbalance, will-is the of the melody of individuals-the expression individual standardfigure for the play of free will within the overall designof This concordof will and overdl designwas simultaneously Providence. in expressed, medievalthought, in terms of light: the foundation of "music" was the orderly tuning of the spheres. Other lights-lights borrowedfrom the cosmicoriginds-came to be imponant in exegeticd writings and, of course,in medievalpoetry' famous jewelsor works in gold and silverwere regularlysymbolic of the order that testsindividual will, tempting man (or elf) toward greed and selfishness-the and, insteadof sharingit, keep wish to own the beautyof the universe jewels, now lost, it in a box. Hencelblkien's "Silmarilsl'the splendid which led to the fall of elvesand men and to the Great Destruction. As he borrows the organizingprinciples and symbolsof medieval of legends charTolkien borrows the standard poersand philosophers,

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acterstricked by fate, characters damned by their o\iln best(or worst) intentions, characters who found proper atonement.His characters are of courseneq but their problemsare standard, There archetypal. is Feanor,the greatanificerwho makesthe Silmarils-borrowing light from the original shiningtrees-then wrongly laysclaim to the jewels and becomesa great betrayer,putting a curseon all his race.There are the immonals who fall in love with monals, and vice versa;the accidentallyincestuouslovers who in flight from destiny find their destiny;and so on. In all thesestoriesthere are splendidmomen$, lurninousdescriptions the kind that enrich the Ring trilogy, momen$ of of tenderness, though rarely rnomentsof humor. But in "The Silmarillion" what is most moving is not the individual legends but the total vision, the eccenuicheroismof Tolkien'saftempt. What Tolkien lacksthat his medievalmodel possessed serene Chrisis Tolkien's tian confidence. Despitethe affirmation of his creationlegend, again universeis neversafelike Chaucer's.The Providentialplan seems Tolkien, and againto hang by r threadabovebomomless of disaster. pits to in other words, hastakenon the incredibletaskof seeking rejuvenate the medievalChristian way of seeingand feeling,although-as all his of legendsreiterate-we can no longer seeclearly (the songs the elves are now all but forgotten, as was the First Age in the Ring trilogy) and our main feeling is now tragic dread. Strange man! Strangemind! Why would anyone do it, we keep askingaswe read.Why createa whole Christian-likereligion,a whole new creation myth to set besidethose of the Greeks,the Jews, the Why write a rnythic histoA, L Bible?NeverNorthmen and the rest? he theless, has tried to do just that, and apparendy-so Christopher enterprise more of this mad-in-the-best-sense Tolkien tells us-we harre of languages ancienttimes,theologi yet to corn: ruminationson the cal meditations,more stories. An, of course,is a way of thinking, a way of mining reality.In the Ring rrilogy, Tolkien went after reality through philosophy-laden In adventure. "The Silmarillionl'for bener or worse,he hassought to mine deeper.

TheStories ofJohnCbeeuer

OF THE CONTEMPOD J OHN CHEEVER, EAN rary American short story has just brought out, by way of proof, ^ and generouscollecrion of sixty-one storiesspanningthree decades and resPonses, prefty much the completerangeof human situations to from the eanh-shatrering the mundane.Thou$ *te of thesestories of aredistinctlyproducts their time-the son of thing one wisheswere plantedin time capsules-not one can be calleddated. This is partly craftsmanship, panly an effect of Cheever'suna resultof perfected warreringeye for beauty, elegance,and accuracy. of Though Cheeveris self-disparaging his early work, the bookwhich is arranged chronologicdly-offers magnificentstoriesin all periods of Cheever'scareer,whether early ("The Summer Farmer," "Clancy in the Towerof Babel"), middle ("The Bella Lingua," "The Wrysons") or late ("The Angel of the Bridge, "The Swimmer," and "The World of Apples," among others).Like all collectionsof shon the stories, book is unevenand isn't meant to be readcoverto coverperhapsno book of storiesthis large and variousis. Cenain sections, of like the ShadyHill stories suburbanlife in the middle, createa slump for the readerwhen read end to end, but standasgemsof workmanship when read alone.

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Cheeverwrites in the prefaceto the collection: "The constants that I look for in this sometimesdated paraphernalia a love of light are and a determination to trace somemord chain of being. Cdvin played no pan at dl in my religious education,but his presence seemed to abide in the barns of my childhood and to have left me with some undue bitterness." This love of light leadsto momentsof glorious transformations, as when in "The Angel of the Bridg." a middle-aged man is miraculously cured of his middle-aged terrors; magcal visionsas in the famouslast line of "The Country Husband": "Then it is dark; it is a night where kings in golden suits ride elephants over the mountainsl'But at least as often Cheever's"undue bitterness"rendersus powerful and grim scenes ararice,broken promises,bad fonune, love gone bad, and of (to quote one story title) the sorrows of gin. Cheeverseems ways mo$ at home when invening our accustomed of looking at the world, continudly doing battle with our favorite notions of the happy housekeeper, dodng grandmother.(Paradoxthe ically, the reversdsthemselves may become predictable.)"Clancy in the Tower of Babel" is perhapsthe most cheerful story in the book, and it emerges, course,from a morassof bigotry poverty, and conof fusion. Similarly, Cheever'srecent novel Fabonn achievedglorious afwithin the cheerless environment firmations and hairbreadthescapes of a $ate prison. In many of the stories in the collection, the prerniseis a htppy, stable suburbanworld, and Cheever'sinversionsshow a dark vision of things. But he is at his best,I think, when he combinesthe comic and the tragic, the hopeful and the despairing,as when the narrator criesout in "The Death ofJustina": "How can e peoplewho do not lorc, and who will sound mean to understanddeath hope to understand the alarm?" Cheever'sinsistent presentationof an alarming mixture of the dark and the light is beyond mere rhetoric, beyond mere technique-it is deliberate,in fact philosophical. Fiction is an and an is the triumph over chaos (no less) and we can accomplishthis only by the most vigilant exercise more swiftly than we of choice,but in a world that changes can perceivethere is dways the danger that our powersof

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selectionwill be mistakenand that the vision we servewill death but come ro norhing. We admire decencyand despise a night and of eventhe mountainsseemto shift in the space the perhaps exhibitionistat the corner of Chestnutand Elm is srreets more significantthan the lovely woman with a bar of sunlight in her hair, putting a fresh pieceof cuttlebonein the nightingale'scage. of are srories redistic in the bestsense the word, anchorCheever's nailing the readerto the page ing the dreamin the concreteexample, by scene scene. by with ruthlessaffention to detail, character character, somethingrecognizable But within his own mode-generally speaking, diversity.Some of the story"-there is considerable as "a New Yorker "well-madeboxesl'Otherssptirwl.There aredistinctly are stories tight, in for experiments, instance the abrupt authorial interpostmodernist 'A "crot" format of "Three Boy in Romel' the so-called ruption in in undermining self-appraisal "CharactersThat Will Stories."Cheever's a Not Appear" is nonerheless witty self-parodyin which a desperate author, Royden Blake, becomesthe alter ego for Cheever. divide his work into of We can, for reasons convenience, four periods.First there were the bitter moral anecdotes-he musr havewritten a hundred-that proved that most of our deedsare sinful. This was followed, as you will remember, by nearly a decadeof snobbismin which he never wrote of who had less than sixty-five thousand dollars a characters year. . .When he had finishedwith snobbism,he made the error I have mentioned in Item 4 ("explicit descriptionsof sexualcommerce"), and then moved on to his romantic period . . . He was quite sick at the time, and his incompetence seemedto be increasing. career Fonunately,typicdly, it is a grosssimplificationof Cheever's as writer. He has reacheda staturewhere he must be reckonedwith as one of the major figures in contemporaryAmerican letters.Both his novelsand storieshavebeen potent enough to causeone distracted woman to cry out at Breadloafthis year,"Isn't he the man who gave

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suburbb a bad reputation?"Though it hasbeenin his power ro do so, he has done a greatded more. This collectionof storiesoughr ro be seen and will be seen,I think, as a celebrarorymilestone in a grear writer's career.Like all perfectthings, thesestoriesoughr to be taken in srnall doses. They are meant to be apponionedover a period of days and months, for they represent nearly ^generarion anistic striving. of

Liues Dubin's

ERNANO MNLAMUD'S NEW NOVEL DLIBIN,S

it expected would be, a major Liaes, yearsin the writing, is, aseveryone work, comic, philosophicd, and poetic; a book no readerof either seriousliteratureor books of prurient interestwill want to miss. The subjectis "middle-agecrisisl' William B. Dubin, biographer, suddenlywish to be circus hascometo that time of life when surgeons fall in love with younger women. Except for clowns, and husbands the ending, on which more later, the plot is so familiar it needsno struggle.But this is not summar/: extromaritd relations,psychological to sey that Mdamud has written a commonplace,predictablebook. has Dubin's Lirses the samefundamentalplot as all those other books like because, dl significantwriters, Malamud is interestedin what ercryin. one elsehis age,and of his Ag., is interested The differenceis that Malamud develops subject with brilliance and almost Melvillean the doggedness, leavingno philosophicalor psychologicdstone unturned. setting,or existsto serveplot, character, Nothing in Dubin's Liaes alone' every detail serves doubly, triply. Sooner or later philosophy dmost everythingone might think of to sayabout spiritud or physicd idendty-one's ovynand that of others-Malamud finds someconctte, dramatic way to say.Dubin is not just any man in middle-agedlife a explorerof other people'slives crisisbut a biographer, professional

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(he haswritten on Thoreau, Twain, etc.,and is now at work on D. H. lawrence, a man aspassionate confusedasWilliam Dubin). Dubin and falls in love with not just any more-or-less beautiful young woman but one desperately trying to find herself,discorerwho she "isl' Dubin's father was a lifelong "waiter" in both soseS; mother, after the his early death (truncated biography) of Dubin's brother, was a schizoid madwoman. Though Dubin is in a crisisof search-for-rhe-self, self the he has appearedto be has to some exrent defined and wrecked his two children (whose natures he strugglesin vain to understand). The novel'ssymbolic richness dl but inexhaustible. is Like Einstein's bent universe,circling endlessly its self and possessirrg cenreron no and like Dubin's life, meditations,and mistakes-Dubin's daily walks in pursuit of hedth, youth, adventure, and Thoreauvianoneness with nature are circular; Mdamud comparesthe walks to the movemenr of an often-playedrecord on a rurntable. (In the final scene,music by one of Dubin's subjects, Mozan, everlasting spokesman youth, of is on the recordplayer.)All of the biographies Dubin readsand writes are carefully chosen to throw light (and dazzlingquotations) on the central identity question. Needlessto say,the namesof Malamud's characters,like everythingelse,work symbolically.For instance:WillI-am (Dubin's pun) B. ("be") Dubin ("ich bist Du-bin," Dubin quips). It should also be needlessto say, I imagine, rhat on one level-not the most profound-Dubin's Liaes,likePiauresof Fidclnan anddmost everynhingMdamud has written since, is an exploration of an and the artist. Trying to summarizethe "ideas" in a novel like Dubin's Liues would be madness,they fly up like panridgs,and, more imponant, they are novelisticideas,urgently exploredbut neverfully resolved,usually because they can't be. The end of the novel is ambiguous,unsettled. Dubin is faintly toying with living three dayseachweek with his mistress, four with his wife (we strongly doubt that he will do it; he'll who has suggo on as he is, getting away with things); his mistress, gestedthe idea, calls out her window as Dubin runs toward home, "Don't kid yourself!" What she probably meansis, "You love me more than you love her"; but we know he loves both and neither, and, more imponant, we are reminded that it is Dubin's nature to kid himselfi for all his will and intellect, he's a man dmost infallibly wrong-at times, in fact, a swine. As Dubin runs home in thesefinal

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and hasevery right lines, the man who redly lovesDubin's mistress, to be loved in return, standsspyingfrom the trees, watching other people'sliveslike a biographer(RogerFosteris his name,foster child from behind a double phallus, "a of the universe, peekinghelplessly long-boughed, two-trunked silrar maple" [bou$ed and bowedf.) Dubin, running home-completing the usualcircleof his walk-is like a conqueringhero,but his victory is comic, evenslightly repelleot:"Dubin ran up the moonlit road, holding his hdf-stiffened phallusin his hand, for his wife with lovel' Some love!But Dubin panly knows it. Asked "I if by his mistress he loveshis wife, he has answered, love her lifel' though he knows better, If he's a hero as well as a fool it's because, he refuses let go of the delusionthat a man can live multiple lives. to Early in rhe novel Mdamud writes, "Dubin in his hean of heans mourns Dubin." Now at the end, Dubin in his life-greedcelebrates Dubin' I am because you were. One might perhapsdo worse. No living American writes better than Malamud at his best, and much of Dubin's Liuesis Malamud at his best. We get in this novel not only masterful realistic scenes but also some of the finest dream anyvhere sequences, scenes mistaken perception,and mad scenes of in recentfiction. Early in the norel, Dubin looks out with pleasure and sees wife unexpectedly his dancingbelow him on the lawn. (She "Hap-pee!" he hearsher cry up once studieddance,he remembers.) "Wonderful!" he shoutsback.It turns out shehad a beeinside to him. her blouse and was yelling to him for help. L,ater,in wintenime, a man, a totd stranger,mysteriouslyjoins Dubin on his walk, and for no clearreason, walks closeto Dubin, sometimes bumping his elbow. The man will not telk, and Dubin, somewhatbaffled, decides put to up with it. When birds fly over, the man raisesan imaginary gun and says"Bang bangl' After a while, two crows fly orrer,the man drops to one knee with a grunt and raiseshis arms as though sighting up a gun barrel, and roars "Boom boom." Mdamud continues: To Dubin's astonishmentone of the black birds wavered in flight and plummeted to the ground. The strangerlet out a hoarseshout and plunged into the white field to retrieve the crow. Holding it up for Dubin to see,he pressed dead the bird to his chest and awkwardly ran, kicking up snow',diagondly acrossthe field in the direction he had corne.

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Can a crow have a hean atmck? One of us is mad, the biographerthought. I think it should be added that no one in America writes worse than Malamud at his worst. Not too much needbe madeof this, perhaps. V.ry seriousnovelists(Tolstoy, Melville) can afford to make mistakes not permitted to novelistsof the secondrank, that is, masrers of elegantstyle and constructionbut no deeplybooming thought. One typicd Malamud mistake is easily forgirable. He frequendy abandons rrerisimilitudeand psychologicdcredibility because caresmore about he ideas than about how people really talk. Dubin can spin out off-thecuff lectures(mostly to his mistress) elegantand bookish, so logicd, so tightly constructed,to the point, that Dr. Johnsonhimself, if he could hear them in real life, would fdl on his rear end in astonishment.No serious reader will much object. When the argument is interesting, reality be damned. Other Malamud mistakesare lessexcusable. Though he can write like a mi$ter, he can dso turn off his ear and write (speakingof a cat): "It was a longbodied lithe dmost lynx-like mde, with an upright head and twitching taill' One section of the novel-a brief slump in the middle-is written in an arch, coy superlitenry style reminiscent of the early style of Malamud's neighbor and Benningon colleague the to Nicholas Delbanco. (Delbanco,after passing disease Mdamud, got better.) Dubin's wife frequendy tdks pure early-Delbancosgu: 'And I feel that in her death I am diminishedl' None of Mdamud's charactersdares to speak such ordinary American as "I don't know many"; they say,prissyand fancy, "I know few,' The omniscientnarnrtor doesthe same,especidlywhen he gas on the weather.One winces and hurries past. Ever sinceJoyce,mannerismhasbeen the leaky ralrre in the heart of our seriousfiction, but Mdarnud's panicular mannered style suggesrs characterfault, like Dubin, he kids himself. a that no one who dares It oughr to be said in Malamud's defense as much as Mdamud does can exped to move as surely * the stylist who keeps watching his feet. The imagination behind Dubin's Liaes is, like Smnley Elkin's, awesorn,downright eagerto take risks. We ger one crazily origind sceneafter another: fifty-nine-year-oldDubin peeking in through his mistress'swindow, a man terrified to neardog; Dubin, having slipped madnessby dop, fighting off his mistress's

L DrJErN'S MS

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blizzard, wanderingin a magnificentlyrealized off his circle,helplessly a mile from home but closeto death;old Dubin in a tree while an engry farmer shootsblindly into the night, hean set on ending his biography.The norcl is rich and intelligent, entenainingon many lerals. Dubin is in cenain ways courageous, Because me Yet ir leaves uneasy. also becauseDubin tries hard to be honest, though he can't be, Though he Malamud seems admire him more than he deseryes. to trearsDubin as e comic hero, a deluded man, one keepssuspecting that Malarnud is solidly on Dubin's side, not loving him though he laughsat him, but instead,winking and leering at the audience,faking ironic detachmentas he sneaksWilliam Dubin onto the pedestd, a mord sex-hero,Falstaffwith a face-lift, so that ercryone will think he's Prince Hal.

Sophie's Choice

V Y H E N H I S I 9 79 N N W Y O N K T I U E S B O O K Review Pito oz Sophie's Choice wascbosen be reprinud iz Critical to Essays William Styron (Casciato West,eds,,1982), on and Iohn Gardner requexedtbat tbefollm,t"g statertmt praede tbe origtnal tert. Book reviews are necessarilywritten under pressure;rt rnosr one has a matter of days to figure out what one thinks and feels about a book that may have,like Sopbie's Cboic4taken yearsto write. After this review,I receiveda good ded of angry mail from Polish Americans, which makesme sorry | was not more careful to show my sympathy with the Polish and my large dependenceon Mr. Styron's carefully documented and immensely sympathetic account. But whar I regret most of dl was my review's disserviceto Styron himself. Though I recognizedthe power and beauty of Sophie's Cboice,l did not guess,at the time I wrote, the novel's staying power. Sceneafter scenecomesback now, long after I last readthe book, with astonishing vividness-perhaps the most obvious marlc of a masterpiece.I think the reasonis not solely that one of the norrel'simponant subjects is the holocaust. V.ry few writers have been able to ded with the redhot subject without in the end being burnt up by it. In rerrospect I would sayStyron succeeded where many failed, and, more than that,

tt+

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he that among the few who succeed standsdone-if one does not diariesor memoirs-as a writer who could fully dramacounr personal tize the horror, the complexity,and something at least aPProaching the full historicaland emorionalmeaningof the thing. He found the connectionsbetweenthe vasthisrcricalhorror and the psychologicd in equivalenrs ordi nary life, nor to mention the eerie connection berweenwhat happenedin Germany and what happensin thesedivided United States.But as I was saying, it is not just this subject matter memorable. His descriptionsof Brooklyn Cboice that makesSopbie's life and sceneryhave a vividnessjust as uncanny, and his andysis of (any young writer's, not just Stingo's), the young wrirer's anxieties ro saynothing of his psychologic"llyorigind and convincingandysis of Nathan and Sophie, make one look at people-and oneself-in a new way. I regret,roo, rhat I did not mention the novel's humor. I suppose I was overawedby the horror; but the fact is that one of the reasons is Cboice that, like Shakespeare so Styron succeeded well in Sopbie's (I think the comparison is not too grand), Styron knows how to cut of awuyfrom the darkness his materid, so that when he turns to it force. again it strikes with increasing Another of my regretsis that I read the book with a somewhat bigotedYankeeeye.I will saythe inevitable'Some of my best friends I are Southerners.Nevenheless, reactedwith disbelief and distasteto some extremely Southern material-for instanceSdngo reading the Bible with an old black woman. If Styron had been faking the scene, I would havebeen right. But I am now convincedhe was not; he was of simply reponing real experience a kind foreign to me, and, given embarrassing. Though none of my best friends my own Yankeereserve, are ancient Greeks, I am much fairer to Homer (who had some aery odd opinions) than I was to my fellow American and contemporary. What makesthe matter worse is that the sceneis in fact not only authenticbut symbolicallycrucial.Rightly understood,it negates my criticism that the "rnoral" of the novel is inadequate,the idea that all those peopledied so that Stingo might becomea novelist.(I should mention that I write this without the review in front of m, and I'm not sure I voiced this objection. I remember thinking, at the time I wrote, that Sopbie's was faulty in the way Wallace Stegner's Cboice masterpiece,Big RockCandyMwntain, was faulty, explaining eway

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tragedy as a thing of value to the writer. I hope I decidednot ro say this, in the end, sincein Styron'scaseat leasr, wrong. But whether ir's or not I said it, other reviewersdid. I hope they will join me in apologizing for the mistake.) I'm not sorry to have pointed out that Sopbie's Cboice rransmutes the old "Southern Crothic" to a new, universalgothic, and I'm nor sorry to have claimed that the Southern Gorhic is an inherently inferior form. But I would like to take this opportunity ro say that the generd implicadons of my remarks were ill-considered.What I suggested,I'm sure, was that, in following the gothic formula, Sopbie's Cboice a castlebuilt on sand.What I now think i.sthis, Most grear was Arnerican an is an elevation of trash. New Orleans tailgate funeral iu, was (or so I think on this panicular Friday) aestheticdlymediocre stuff, but out of it came the high an of Ellington, Gershwin and the re$. Out of trash films, including Disney at his wor$, came writers ranging from William Gass and Ishmael Reed to (forgve the selfcongratulation)myself. Styron did not simply usethe gothic formulae, he transmuted them. What is wrong with the gothics is not wrong with Sopbie\ Cboice. When Dostoyevsky published Crime and Punish mcnt (I think it was), somebody imponant-I forget who-made a long trip to him (I think) to tell him, "You are the saviorof dl Russia!" After Sopbie's CboicaI wish I had said, insteadof what I did say,or ar leastin addition to what I did say,"You arethesaviorof all America!"

J u tv 3 , l 9 8 l Tbemiginalurt of tberwieut folloutst

Early in William Styron's new novel a characternamed Nathan landau tells the narrator, an aspiringyoung Southernwriter, "l admire your courage, kid. . . setting out to write sornethingelse about the South." And l-andau adds a moment later, "you're at the end of t traditionl' The aspiringwriter is a vinudly undisguised William Styron at twenty-rwo (we get dlusions, from the now mature narrator, to his earlier fiction, easily recognizableas Lie Doutn in Darkness, Tbe Ing Marcb, SetThis Houseon Fire and Tbe Confesions Nat Tilrner); of and what l.andau saysto the young Styron is clearly very much on the mature Styron's mind as he works out the immensegothic labyrinth that is the weighty, passionatenovel we are reading now.

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in is Cboice a courageous, someways masterlybook, a book Sophie3 that the plot-even the douvery itrrd to reviewfor the simplereason ble enrendrein the title-cannot be given away.Cenain things can effect,The considerable withour roo much harming the norrel's be sai,C Landau,a brilliant, tragically srory rreatsrwo doomedlovers,Nathan a mad New York Jew,and Sophie Zawistowska, beautiful Polish survivor of Auschwitz,and their intellectualand emotional entraPment, for better or worse, of the novelist-narrator. Thematically,the noral treatsthe familiar (which is not to saytrivial) Styron subjea, rhe narureof evil in the individual and in all of human' in ity. Brooding guilr is everywhere' the narrator'sstory of how, when his mother was dying of cancerand could not take care of herself, he once wenr on a joy ride with a friend, failed to stoke up the fire in his mother's room and, when he returned,found her half-frozen, teerh chatrering,shonly after which cati$trophe-whether or not as that the money a result of it-she died; in the narrator's awareness he lives on as he writes his first novel comes directly from the sale slave,a boy who, having been fdsely accusedof of sixteen-year-old a accosting Southernyounglady, was sent into a kind of slaveryfinv survive;in the memoriesof the novel'swonderful complex heroine, Sophie,a Carholic turned atheistand a woriran who, for love of her son, made inept attemptsat collaboratingwith the German SS; in the drug addiction and occasiond fiendish violence of the gentle, humorous,inrelligentand humane-but also mad-Nathan Landau. friends;in the storiesof the narIn the storiesof Sophie'sResistance rator's father and his friends, and so on. lies The norcl's courage panly in this, After all the attacls on Stytotr, of especiallyafter Tbe Confessions Nat Turner.which some blacks and liberals(including mysel0 found offensivehere and there, we get in the Cboice sameold Styron, boldly and unmercifully setting Sopbie's (or lapses his narrator's)into anti-Semitism,anti' down his occasional feminismand so fonh, baring his che$ to whateverknivesit may posevenbeggingfor it. Those who wish to can easily prove sibly desenre, anti-Polish,antihim anri-black,anti-white,anti-Southern,anti-Yankee, Semitic, anti-Christian,anti-German, anti-American,anti-Irish-the him; the worst that can list could go on and on. No bigotry escapes be said of humanity Styron claimsfor himself,wringing his hands, tearing his hair, wailing to all the congregationMea Culpat (Only in , faultless.) their taste in music are he and his characters

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Such dl-inclusive, self-confessed sinfulness should absolvea man, and in a waf, of course,it does;no readerof Sopbie's can Cboice doubt that Styron has put immense energy into trying to understandand ded justly with the evils in American history and the Europeanholocaust,to say nothing of the evil (aswell as the good) in his characters. Yet for all the civilized and, in the best sense, Christian decencyof Styron s emotions when he's watchinghimself,the rabid streakis always ready to leap our and take command. One examplemust suf{ice:After the double suicideof Nathan and Sophie at the end of the novel, the narrator, trying ro get to their bodies,finds himself blocked by a police cordon. Styron'sobservation is that "everlnvhere stood clots of thuggish policemen chewing gum and neghgentlyswatting their thick behindsl' He adds,"l arguedwith -a choleric ugly lrishman-assening my righr to one of these cops enter. . I'The scene crowdedwith thesepiggishpolicemen, is dso "a clusterof wormy-looking police reponetr"; not one of them is ponrayed astimidly deceot;none of them can be seenas,merely,confused children in grown-up bodies. Styron is far more just in his treatmentof the Southern racid bigot Senator Bilbo, or Sophie's viciously antiSemitic, woman-enslaving father, Professor ZbigniewBieganski, e\n or the master of Auschwitz, Rudolph Hess. My point-and I labor it because seems me imponant-is this, it to justice and compassion,the desperate Styron's struggle to get to the bottom of even the most terrible, most baffling evils-the holocausr, above all-and to come back a just and loving man are impressive, dmost awesome, we preciselybecause know by his slipsthat they are not natural to him but earned.When he forgetsrhe ided he setsfor hirnself, as he doeswith the cops,with a Unitarian minister we meet later, with the McGraw-Hill orguilzation men we meet in the first chapter, and as he does in numerous other places,he showsus how seriousthis novel is as not merely a story of other people'stroubles, but a pieceof anguishedProtestantsoul-searching, affempt to seize an all the evil in the world-in his own hean first-crush it, and create a planet fit for God and rnan. In a moving passage near the end of the novel, Styron admitsthat he has not succeeded, quite, in doing what he setout to do. He writes (recdling his earlier dream): "Smrrsfu! I will undmnnd Awcbwita. This wils a bravestaternent,but innocendy absurd.No one will everunder-

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smnd Auschwitz. What I might hara set down with more accuracy life I would have been, Someday will write aboutSopbie's and deatb,and nil is nwsr ertinguisbed btlp dmtonstratehou absolute tbereby from tbe about the holocaust world." Though no one will deny that writing terms-"Sophie's life and death"-*ty and its aftermarhin personal thing one can do to wring at leastsome fragmentarysense be the best our of thesenumbing times, I wonder if Styron's scded-down goal 'Absolute evill'What is not as innocendyabsurdasthe earliergoal. a chaosof medievd phantomsnestlesin those words! Like absolute in good, a conceptabandoned Styron'svision as in much of modern Christianity, absoluteevil is the stuff of which witch cults, country sermonsand gothic tdes are made. As I said at the ourset,Styron is very consciousof being one of the lasr to work a dying literary tradition-in effect, the Southern Crothic,the vein mined by, among many others, Walker Percy,Roben PennWarren and, posibly, William Faulkner.(In my opinion, Faulkner hastoo much hurnor, e\n ioy, to belong.)Styron makesa point, in of Cboice, naming his influencesJfhomas Wolfe, Faulkner, Sophie's Roben PennWarren, etc.-and claims,in Nathan landau's voice,that he Cboice doesfar more than that, he hassurmountedthem. ln Sopbie's and down to the lastdetail,the con\rentions implicit metaHe transfers, asit was handledby Roben physicof the Southern Gothic-especidly Penn Warren-ro the world at lr.g.. It is no longer just the South mordly tonured, ridden with madmen, idiots that is grandly decayed, it and weaklings,socially enfeebledby incest and other perversions; is the world. websof guilt The requisitemadmanis Nathan landau; the requisite the American Nonh from Auschwitz and reachour trward the present racid-taint theme, Styron and South. For slaveryand the necessary (besides America)Poland,occupiedfor centuriesfirst by one chooses cruel master,then another,pitifully devotedto both German culture and genaically so mixed that blond Polish and Nazi-styleanti-Semitism, from the death campsby being slippedinto the children can be saved Aryan kbensborn, or New Youth Program. The Sortthern Gothic murdernuslyhot and musr hara vaguelysymbolicweather-if possible, muggy (Brooklyn in the summer will do fine)-and some crazy old YettaZimmerman'shuge old apartmenthouse, house-styron chooses entirely painted,from end to end, in Army-surpluspink. Doom must

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hangover everphing, ominously,mysteriouslyforewarnedthroughout the novel;and of coursethere arespecial requirements styleand plot. of Styron is, of course,a masterstylist;but notice the precisely gothic quality of the following passage, which I've chosenby openingat random. Note the intricacyof the sentences, ironic useof jarring imthe ages, biblical hints (the Professor's sly hiss),the inclinationto choose objectsthat are old, "authentic" and likely to spell doom; note rhe fondness suspense rhythms that seemto pant. Sophie's for and father, the Professor,I ought to explain, having long ago written a Polish tract arguing that Jews should be exterminated,is now trying to get an audience with some-any-bureaucrat amongthe occupying German forces, hoping to curry favor. Styron writes' Loathing her father now, loathing his lackey-her husband-almost asmuch, Sophiewould slip by their murmuring shapes the househallway asthe Professor, in milored suavely in his frock coat, his glamorous grayinglocks beautifully barberedand fragrant of Kiilnisclntasstr, preparedto sally fonh on his morning supplicatoryrounds.But he must not have washedhis scalp.She recalledthe dandruff on his splendid and hope. shoulders.His murrnuringscombined fretfulness His voice had an odd hiss. Surely today, even though the Governor General had refusedto seehim the day beforesurely today (especirllywith his exquisitecommandof German) he would be greetedcordially by the headof the Einwith satzgruppe Sicherbeitzpolizei, whom he had an entree der in the form of a letter from a mutud friend in Erfurt (a sociologist, a leading Nazi theoreticianon the Jewishproblem), by and who could not fail to be funher impressed thesecreden(on tials, thesehonorary degrees authentic parchment)from Heidelberg and l-eipzig,this bound volume of collectedessays oo. published in Mainz, Die Polniscbe ludmfrage,etc. and s;,), Surely today. . . [The ellipsisis Styron's.l The horhouse quality of the style-the scent of overripeblack as orchids-seemsto be thoroughly appropriate, suitedto roning Europe as to the decayingOld South. The only question I would raiseis the Heisenberg Doesthe instrument vision-in this case, transferred s' of Southern Gothic form--seriouslyalter the thing seen?

soPHrE's cHoICE /

16l

But even more than style and setting,the glory of the Southern C'othic is plot. We mu$ get surprise after surprise, revelation after than the last.(Unaroidrerclation,eachmore shockingand astonishing I to ably, but nonetheless my great annoyance, harrealreadySven away We do not know till near the end of the novel that our one surprise: belovedNathan landau is a maniac.)Insofar as plot is concerned, is Cboice a thriller of the highestorder, dl the more thrilling Sopbie's we for the fact that the dark, gloomy secrets are uneanhing one by like lies and terrible misunderstandings a hand one-soning through ne$-are not iust the groping for a golden nugget in a rattlesnake's secrers some cruzySouthern family but may be authentic secrets of of history and our own human oatur:why peopledid what they did at Auschwitz-people on e\ry side-why often the Polish undergnound hated the Jewish underground, on which their lirtes sometimes depended;how the Catholic, ProtestantandJewish souls intenangle in love and hate, and can, under just the right conditions, kill. Cboicqas I hope I havedready made clear, is a splendidly Sopbie's written, thrilling book, a philosophicalnovel on the most imponant subjectof the twentieth cenrury. If it is not, for me, a hands-down literary masterpiece, reasonis that, in transferringthe form of the the Southern Gothic to this vastly largersubject,Styron hasbeen unable to get rid of or e\n noticeablytone down thosequalities-some superficial, some deep-in the Southern Gothic that have always made Yankees squirm. Judgingat leastby its literary tradition, the South hasalwaysbeen an intenselyemotiond and, in a queerway, idealisticplace-emotiond and idedistic in waysnot very common in, say,Vermont or New York Stateor, an) ilay, upsmte.I would neverclaim that Yankeesare more just and reasonable than Southefflrs; I would say we hide our evil in a different style. Though we may secretlycry our heans out at a poem like, say,James Dickey's "Celebration," we wince at novelsin which characters alwaysgroaning, alwayslistening in a painful joy are to classicdmusic,dways tdking poetry-much of it having to do with terminal disease. And we blush at passages the following, like I don't recdl preciselywhen, during Sophie'sdescription of thosehappenings beganto hear [myselfI whispr, "Oh [Il God, oh rny Godi' But I did seemto be aware,during the

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time of the telling of her story. . . that thosewords which had commenced in pious Presbperian entreaty became finally By meaningless. which I mean that the "Oh God" or "Oh 'Jesus Christ" that were whisperedagain rny God" or even and againwere asempty as any idiot's dreamof God, or the idea that there could be such a Thing. Which is not to deny that the story that follows this gothic introduction is not terribly moving and shocking. and Cboice con' In shon, though I am profoundly movedby Sopbie's sider the novel an immensely imponant work, I am not persuaded by it. Styron's vision may havehumor in it-he tells us about Nathan's hilarious jokes,none of which turn out to be funny on the page-but if so, nor an ounce of that humor is in the novel. Perhapsit may be aryuedthat, in a book about American guilt and the holocaust,humor would be out of place.But it seemsto me that humor is central to our humanity, even our decency.It cannot be replaced,as it is in music or (a major concern in the novel) Sopbfa's Cboia, by great classical sex. If anything, classicdmusic leadsin exactlythe wrong direction' the It poinrs ro that ided Edenic world that thosemastermusicians, Poles and the Germans, thought in their insanity they might create here on eanh by getting rid of a few million "defectivesl' I'm not, C'od knows, againstBach or Beethoven; but they need to be taken unobtainwith a grain of sdt, expressirg,asthey do, a setof standards (exceptin music) for poor silly, grotesque humanity; they point able our heans toward an inevitable failure that may lead us to murder, of groaning and self-flagellation the Southern suicide or the helplesb C'othic novel.

View A S[rriter's

Fiction American
A

of Contemporary

.(lT LEAsr FoRWnsrERN clvlLlzATIoN, oR at leastfor the American part of it, the hean of good fiction is always that we are all in needof a credibleverreligious.In generalit seems orJudeobeings-or at leastJudeo-Christian sion of what is for human Christian-Muslimhuman beinp-the only emotionally satisfing story us, a srory that convinces at leastfor the moment, that, as Reynolds ir, "history is the will of ajust god that knows mel' I would Pricepurs nor insistthat the religiousimpulseof an requiresGod as its foundaeral' I hope tion. We areliving in somethingcalled"the post-Christian to that phraseis not supposed mean that we haveseenthrough Christianity and have returned to everynhingpaganexcept the happiness. I hope it meansinsteadthat we are now in a position to do, if we will, what the very bestJews, Christians,and Muslims have always done, but do it without neryously consulting God at e\ry tttrn. I hope it meanswe can accept God's statement-made gleefully, we are told in the Thlmud-"My sonshave defeatedme! My sons have defeated me!" In other words, I hope it meansthat the central ralues of our religiouslygroundedcivilization no longer needdependon subde arguments whether or not C'od existsand has reddish-blondhair. on The centrd tenet of all our great religions-Zeus-worship, Yahweh worship,Jesus worship, and so on-is, as the Taoistssay,"so simple

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that a Fool, if he were to hear it, would laugh aloudl' That centrd tenet is this' we believethat some things are physicdly and spiritually hedthy for human beings,asindividuds and asgrcups, and other things are not. The rest is ritual and fine distinction. Ritud is the business of organizedreligion, ffid as anists and critics we can take it or leave it. Fine distinctions in what is good or bad for us are, I will argue, the business art. Religion and philosophy are of course notorious of for trying to get into the anist's act-the act of finding and dramaticdly enforcing (or re-enforcing)values-but both are notoriously bad at it. Religions make up codes,which have a way of sounding fine until religion A meetsreligion B. Philosophymakesup, among other fictions, theories of behavior that sound {ine until someone like Raskolnikov-or Melville's tragically misguided Captain Vere-tries to act on them. categories It is possibleto formulete some useful generalizations, which may help us put the jurnble and confusionof modern American fiction in some order. But most people would agree, I think, with never redly work, Anthony Hecht's obsenation that cridcal categories each literary work they are merely helpful for the moment, because expectationsraised offers a unique experience-x flow of sensations, or and satisfied denied,a sliceof the mind's life that cannot be equated what with any other slice. The good readernever knows in advance he wants from literatur. We apprcecha work aswe approachsom@ne aquiver,prepared with whom we may fall in love, with all our sensors armed againstbetrayd by the emotional and intellectual for surprises, help in an asin love, categories touchsronesof our past. Nevenheless, boundariesbreak down, in if only because, seeingour neat, ordered we learn new facts about the jungle they meant to make orderly. let us try to find, then, some more or less useful categories. What I take to be the mainline opinion of uitics, the opinion of, for insrance,Ihab Hassan,holds that contemporary American fiction has two broad morments,counting, of course,only "serious" writers. We hart the "innorratir" or "orperimental" or "post-modern" writers, people like John Banh, Dondd Banhelme, Roben Coover, Thomas Pynchor, Mark Helprin, William Gaddis,John Hawkes, and, say, William Gass,and a secondgroup identified with modernism and the American liberal tradition, mainly Jewish writers like Saul Bellow, Anhur Miller, Bernard Mdamud, and Norman Mailer, but alsolibenals

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to wirh other al(es grind, amongthem American blacks,feminists,and for kindnessto animals,like Peter S. Beagle. spokesmen with the one I Anorher mainline opinion, one loosely connected the havejust mentioned,holdsthat, with someexceptions, non-liberal they writersof two kinds,thosewho whine because tradition includes and thosewho whine feel themselves victimsof an absurduniverse, the absurd,they are pretty weird themnot because only is the universe tend to write what is cdled innovaBoth, asmight be expected, selves. tive fiction. Having no faith in or love for "realityJ' including what they take to be the real tradition of fiction, they mock or abandon fiction's old forms, play tricks on the reader,who, after all, must be or seenaspart of the hostileuniverse asone more irrational, unloving creep,like the writer. Needless say,both of thesemainline opinions havea good deal to of rruth in them. A great many American writers-though perhaps none I would invite to a pafty-do considerthemselves pitiful victims, if not persondly horrible, then surroundedby horrible people in a -a brilliant technician, horrible universe.Think of William Gaddis the perhaps bestnow at work in America-who hasvinually no good to say of anyoneor anything exceptyoungJR, his "heroi' who in Think of Thomas Pynchon, the process IR is utterly destroyed. of perhapsthe dullest writer now living though he might have been JonathanSwift if he'd had to write in longhand. Yet the rubrics "victimism," "experimentationl'and "liberalism" need overhaulif they are adequatelyto explain what is going on in American fiction. In HmdersontbePain King, Saul Bellow, a liberal, wrote "experimental" fiction. Except in his first two, quite good novels-Tba Floating Opera and End of tbe Poad-Iohn Banh is an innovative writer, and yet his novelsare filled with exuberantaffirmation-all of them, by the way, wrong. Roben Coover, forever mincing or elseobscenelychuckling about how nothing can be known, is a closet fascist.He deniesthe possibilityof getting at truth, then ramshome his own fierceopinions. You may dready seewhere I am leadingyou: to rrview of the movementsin American fiction asprimarily religiousmanifestations one of kind or another. kt me not move to that directly, however,but first with what I take to be nonsense dispense categories'"innorrative,""experimentdl' and "post-modernl' E*qnhirg we write is an experiment. Only if the experimentfails do we call the work experimentd. We

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do not call Proust'senormousnovel experimental, orJoyce's(llysses, or Homer's lliad and Odyssey, though all thesewere brand-newforms in their days. As for "innovation," it seemsto me that mo$ so-cdled innovative fiction is simply a turnin g aweyfrom America's dominant mode in the early twentieth century a mode EdgarPoedespised, redism-a sudden new interest,on the pan of American writers in the late fonies and fifties-just after the SecondWorld War-in Japanese and Europeanfiction and in the fiction of earlierperiods,from Homer and the ancient Jews forward. Almost to a man, those who claim they write "innovadve,""experimental," or "post-rnodern" fiction aredesperately aftemptingto emulate the voice of Old Europeans-who, as far as I can make our, are doing everynhingin their power to imitate the silly Americans.(The mo$ popularnovelin France lastyear-Racine'sFrance! this Baudelaire's France!-was a soap-operasagaabout a fanrily in New Orleans.)We are not post-modern,if post-modernism means,aslhab Hassan thinks, "indifferent to the truth," and modernism means"concernedabout finding and communicating truth." We are all of us zealots, both the redists among us and the fabulists,but our essentidfenor expresses itself in a rariety of ways, and those ways are what I will cdl the movemen$ in contemporLry American fiction, that is-ler us say it plainly, simply-the movementsin our modern American fiction. Though mo$ of the writers I plan to mention would dislike my cdling them religious, American writers now er work fall into five main groups,(l) religiousliberalsand liberal agnostics (often indistin(2) guishable); onhodox or trrrubled-onhodoxChristiffis; (3) Chrisrians who havelost their fairh and cannot standit; (4) diabolism; heretics. (J) just enough detail to show you the usefulness let me sketch in of the systern.First a few more historicalreminders,America was settled, in the first move of setdement,by people in flight from religiouspersecution, peoplewho quickly turned persecutors themselves, driving the Quakers to a separatesute, burning witches, and so fonh. In later wavesCatholics came,andJews.Exceptascheaplabor, rhey were nor exacdy met with open arms. For those Americans who wanted no religion at all, nearly the only live option was ro head our Westhencethe odd phenomenonof the Bible Belt (largelyhard-shell Baptist) and beyond it, exceptfor the Mormons, nothin g-a passel freeof thinking, atheist, or agnosticcowboys and a few odd rrappers,here

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(For all their distoftions, and there a Jesuit or Methodist preacher. our cowboy picturesstill reflectthis phenomenon.)Meanwhile back East,the more liberal religionswere spawninganother breedof freeand thinkers-:franscendentdists Unitariansof a cenain queersort: people like Emerson,Thoreau, Walter Whitman (as he preferredto be called),and mad JonesV.ry. From Emersonto Saul Bellow the line runs straight.The ReformJew is only barely aJew,asthe Thanscendenin tdist is only barely a Christian.He believes ethicsand civilization, When he writes he uses plot, charand clearcommunication. tradition acter,and setting,and he'sfairly true to all of them, to prove-in case if He does not believe, you anyoneshould doubt-that he's serious. in presshim, in art. He believes using art to facilitatethought about imponant issues. Though a kind of realist,he abandonsrealism the moment his character somethingto say that he would not, in red has life, say,or the minute his action'sinevitabledevelopmentbeginsto sociologicd,or political subject. pushhim awayfrom his philosophical, He makesuseof the I narrator,to glve himself room to sayever;thing he pleases, and sometimeshe abandonsthe redist pretenseentirely, asBellow doesin Hmdmon (thought to be shockinglynew work when it appeared), asStanleyElkin doesin all his bools, especially or Searcbu liberal writer's artdSeizures, Bad Man, and TbeFrarcbiser. A Mostly the urge to communicatekeepshim fairly realistic,even journalistic, as Norman Mailer is in his best work:Tbe Nakedand tbeDead,a novel, and Armies of tbe Nigbt, a journalistic work. When he shifts to the advance-guard style, asMailer did feebly and clumsily in An American Dream and more successfully W Are We in Vietnam?, loses he in credibility with serious-minded Walt Whitman, readers. Except for the liberal tradition hasproducedno greatwriters, certainly no great recentwriters, though Malamud frequently comesclose.To a man, they makelumpy, misshapen fictions,fictions soon dated,fictions that dronelike the lectures Unitarianssubstitute sermons, for fictions which, in two words, are insufficiently alen. Bad writers in this crowd show the fault most clearly, E. t. Doctorow, for instance,who in Ragtime suddenlyabandons probabilityso that a characer-a young man totally in control of his penis-may come lurching from a closetto spray a lady with his semen,which fallsover her, Doctorow says, like "ticker("ticker-tape and mpe and bullets:' To take a cheapshot at capitalism bullets" turning women into objects),Doctorow abandonswhatever

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insight an honest following of action might haveled him to. Bellow will do the same at the drop of, for instance,rhe name Eisenhower. Let them stumble into their farroritecrank area,and they twitch and go into their tirade like Tolstoyin his fierce,find days.In Malamudespecidlythe trght, early work of Mdamud-we dmo$ neverseethis, but the fact remainsthat for all those writers, or almost all, message is far more imponant than form; they tend nor ro careaboutColeridge's dictum that "Nothing can permanentlyplease that doesnor contain in itself the reason*hy it is as it is and nor otherwisel' If we admire the liberals,we admire them rnore for their goodness than for rheir art; and too often, asin Doctorow, eventhe goodness panly illusory. is SaulBellow is patendy and annoyindy ^mde chauvinirtptg. Doaorow lies about history to make his ethicdly liberd points. Tiaditiondly in America, onhodox Christiansare of two kindsthosewho believethe Christian message sdvation and damnarion on and belierre mankind can eventuallyreachhearcn,and thosewho belierre Christianity is right but are convinced, as Hawthorne and Melville were, that the world, in its refusalto follow the rules, is doomed. Hawthorne was of coursesomewhatmore hopeful than wasMelville, especially Melville's last books. in It is Christianity-hellfire ProtestantChristianiry-not the rerrible state of the world, that makesthe idea of apocalypse imponant so in modern American fiction; and it is Christianity of a genrler sort that grves such imponance to the idea of resurrection, physicalor spiritud. Hawthorne, Poe, and Twain were all resurrectionmen. (Jwain, after the death of his daughter,turned black-heanedand sorrowful and thus becamefountainheadof another movemenrin our fiction.) And we still have, of course,our resurrection men. (Tbe Resurrection was the dtle of my own first published noral, which I intended as a debatewith Mr. Tolstoy.I was young then, and inclinedtoward the persuasion that entropy is dl.) Ellison belongswith rhis camp,asdoes, most notably and most recently, John Cheever.All of his novelsend in resurrection,but in the last two this idea-and alsothe oven Christianity of the idea-are impossibleto miss. In Bulla Park Nailles saves son from death by crucifxion, helped his by t miracle; in Falcorur,Cheever'snewe$ novel as of this wriring, the centrd character,Farregut,escapes from prison by becoming,for all practicd purposes,a corpse.An even more thrilling resurrection

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brilliant first novel, Faitband comesat the end of Charles Johnson's tbeGoodTbing. A beautiful black girl, Faith, after atragic life which her leaves a ghastlyphysicd monster,burned and blinded but tragically a wise, becomes "swamp Woman" or witch, and the horrible old who formerlyhad rhat job turnsinto an innocentand beautiful crearure ofJethro Furber at the end of younggirl. Or thereis the resurrection I'uck. work so far, Omensetter's William Gass'smost impressive As I havesaid,not all our contemporaryAmerican onhodox ChrisCharles tiansareasoptimisticasJohn Cheever, Johnson,and William Most arein Melville'sendof the tent,writingof evil asWilliam Gass. mankind(but in against satires Gaddisdoesin /R, writing traditional as aPocalypse Thomas Pynchon odd, modern form), and preaching through murky symbolism, doesin &aaity't Rninbou.or slyly revealing blurredsynand and half-litcharacters situations, splendidly uncerrain, (as in Tbe Confidence-Man') we'd and rax, that the Devil has arrived betrerwake up and payattention,the main subjectin John Hawkes. evilslurking in Hawkes'sTbe Cannibal,Tbe Think of the mysterious and so fonh. llawkes, Trig, Blood Oranges, Beetk-ltg, of Tbe Lime a I might mention,is asexperimental writer as you are likely to find; as but the originsof his experiment, of Melville's, are clear,among and gloomy medithosegrotesque other things,Christiannightmares, gothic fiction, CharlesWilliams, and scary evalplays,Pilgrim'sProgress, and murderers.He is, like his imitator bad moviesabout gangsters realistwhose baseof actuality is the nightmares William Palmer,a we have in sleep. Roben Cooverwould of coursebe extremelyannoyedat my calling and I certainlywon't call him a good Christian,but him a Christian, rant-filledhater-of-Baptistsit is a facr,I think, that like that benighted, Harry Crews, Coover at his worst works and-almost-everybody-else Baptist.(There are,of course, fundamentalist exactlylike the rneanest reasonand makesa point Cooverdistrusts good and subtleBaptists.) as of the fact-tiresome and wrongheaded any bigoted deacon;he insiststhat you take his side,love what he loves,hate what he hates, and he is certainthat the modern world is in for it. Some of his ficAssociation tion is more or lessstraightforward:Tlte UniaersalBaseball (a and his ftgrz af tbe Brunists superbbook, the basisof his high reputaand tion). Most is his work is "experimenml"-as is Pricksongs Descants. Christiangone But in eithermode,he is the Americanfundamentalist

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wrong. He has all the old emotions, but he no longer believes the text, and that annoys him. In his plays he makessneeringfun, goes out of his way to talk diny, like a schoolboy or an anally fxated adult, and reveds-as thesewriters so often do-an almost obsessive fascination with the character he is forever ofJesus.In the storiesand novels dickering with form (neamess another pan of anal fxation), as if is imagining that maybeif he is cleverenough, God will like him. Occasionally, as in Tbe Origin of the Bnrnists-a brilliant book in spite of everything I've said-he achieves power of a greatcountry sermon. the exOther American writers popular just now are more successfully Christian. If one feelsthat Coover may one d^y Fu. up the struggle and join his church brethren, one does not feel that about Dondd Banhelme, John Banh, or-after Ommsmn's huk-William Gass.All love of thesewriters have,in common with Coover,the ex-Christian's of bathroom humor and fifth-grader irreverence. Jewish-American writers treat sexand the elimination of bodily wastesin eway entirely Christians different from both practicing(or more-or-less-practicing) and lapsedChristians.We get, on one hand, the straightforwardstatements of Malamud and Bellow, or on the other hand, the comic and of traditional wailing exaggerations Philip Roth and StanleyElkin. For extent,Banhelme,suchthingsarediny Banh and Gassffid, to a lesser and wonderfully exciting-sin! Like American Catholic girls at drivebreathless but are terrified when beggedto ins, they get themselves produce. They do produce,of course,theseAmerican writers, because franknessabout sex and elirnination seemsto them a proof of matuwhich is to say, Europe. rity, as we see it in New *r1brk, Christiansis their of A more imponant characteristic the apostate whining, whimpering, or bravely smiling misery.Banh, though by evenin his earliernovels,about narure a cheerful man, tdks endlessly, of the meaninglessness life. No one believesfor a moment that he French exwhat he says,it's merely fashionable profoundly believes on istentidist bullshit; ne\rertheless, he prattlesabout suicideand how it rnakesno differenceone way or the other. A paganGreek would stare in bafflement. "Who caresif life has meaning?"he would say. "Stop nameringand play your flutel' Banhelme'sfictions are all one touching, frequently tiresad confusion, often very funny, sometirnes becausewe suspectas we read that we've heard all this better some Banhelme said before,by SamuelBeckett.If we readon, it is because

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Enough on nicely;but no one reads through many stories. turns phrases is enough. The trouble, of eourse,is that the apostateChristians-all of them "innovetive," as they like to say themselves-havea boring worldview.Like Melville's CaptainAhab they think only of themselras fritterthe and rheir obsession, rumor of C'od'sdeath.Their endless elephandneimitation of ing around with style-for exampleBanh's Factor-is self-indulgence, writing in TbeSot-Weed eighteenth-century that is, astongrus would say,"frigidityi' rgreater concernwith showstyleoff ing themselves than with their subjectmaner. Self-regarding the wrirer's intrusive,winking and leeringpersonality-is more imporor rant to thesewriters than fictiond character thought. Indeed,they as character, Gassdoes philosophically often abandonthe concept of tn Fiaion and tbeFigurcsof Life andpractic"lly in such works as Willie Wrfe,where the narrator,that is the wife, it t ttgltage. Masvrs' I-orusome These writers may also, as Gassdoes (or claims he does), abandon the idea that fiction is a,w^y of thinking. But let me turn now from the aposute Christian to my last two categories, diabolistsand heretics. Of these,I meanto sayalmo$ nothing. By diabolistsI meanwriters who claim to love deafi and evil-a claim that, outsidethe Marquis de Sade,alwaysturns out to be false,as it is for William Burroughs, whose attackson order turn out to be a plea for freedomsdenied by Christian and capitdist society.In Tbe TicketTbat a tight-sphinctered Exploded-rnyfarorite of Burrought'r books, a nortelabout how human that by understanding civilization is all a ghastlyaccident-we discover the accident,knowing its principles,we can perhapsredeemit, or at just as the very least can transform it within our olvn personalities "l gaze the dark, on the Blake transforrns world in his splendididea, my mills; I shake head;they rnrnish"-an ideathat helpedtriger Satanic my own shon novel Grmdel. And by heredcs-my last category-l mean such writers asJohn Updike, religiousmen whose ideasof religion I dislike. Updike's mesof againand again,is a twisted versionof the message his church, sage, us; neo-orthodoxPresbyterianisrn: Christ hassaved nothing is wrong; so come to bed with me. At the end of Updike'sA Montb of Sundays, the central characterfornicates with God him(her)self. Such are the red and significant movements,it seemsto tD, in contemporaryAmerican fiction. One can dways slicethe pie in some

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other waf, and the system offer is not intendedto be neat.One might I put Coover with the flat-out apostates-hewould probably preferirand so would William Gaddis and Thomas Pynchon. kt them go where they please-the boundariesare, God knows, vagueenough. Yet the centrd principle behind this way of looking at our modern American writers seems me correct: vrlin their self-assenive to agnosticism or atheism, Arnerican writers are influenced by religion in a way only a few Englishmenstill are, and only a very few educated Frenchmen.Politiciansin America prateon endlessly about Democracy and God, and the votersseemto like it: if they didn't, rhe politicians would stop. In America religion is still, I think, rhe chief intellectual and emotional influenceon writers, because openly believeit in we all its archaicoddity, or because serves our substitutefor class, it as or because believe religiousclaim and needit, or because we the we've lost our ability to believeit and are secredyor openly mad as hell. Like Mark Twain toward the end.

So-calledexperimental fiction hasthus its special though not exclusira popularity amongwriters of two kinds,on the one hand, the whole spe$rum of writers I have called Christian apostates; the other, on what I harre calledChristianonhodox writers, or in somecases troubled Christian onhodox writers, like John Hawkes and, say,myself. The two Soups of writers, Christian and apostate, often lumped togefier ff by critics and reviewers, much to the advantage the onhodox, who of could otherwise be scorned, in educatedcircles-especially in New York and, I suspect, rnostof Europe-as superstitious medievd barbarians, which we probably are. The perspicacious can make out a world of difference,needless eye to say, between the experimentalfictions of a Christian apostateand the work of a plain old-fashioned Christian,whether a troubled Christian, like GeorgeHerben orJohn Donne, or a Christianfull of blind confidence,likeJohn Milton. The two kinds of writers-and still other kinds, such ashun Jewishliberalslike Philip Roth-use their methods for different ends, and even when they use the samedevices-as (to borrow an image from William Gass)we may use a carrot either for food or as the nosefor our snowman-they usethoseidenticd devices in dissimilar ways.

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closer Iwould like to look now at the meaningofit all in somewhat detail-firsq the meaningof the rise of American experimental fiction, then the meaningof cenain experimentaldevicesin various writers' work, focusingon just a few fictions, thus offering some touchstones for dealingwith those devicesand with other devicesyou will find I to be similar. From this discussion will move to brief and general than experimentsare more successful remarkson why some of the others, what vinue or utility we may claim for the better and worse writers, and what ralue we may place,tentadrcly at least,on the Amerthat ican experimentd movementasa whole. kt me admit in advance Thus, when I attack from, more or less,insidethe movement. I speak the "new" ficdon, I attack selectively-perhapssometimeswithout knowing I do so-not with the intention of tearing out the weed but only with the intention of pruning it a little. One thing that is likely to strike the readerof the "new fiction" is what I would call its "spectaculartechnique." I mean the phrase as a term of approval,in much contemporaryAmerican fiction virtuosity is one of the things that keep us reading.But I dso mean the phraseliterally, asa descriptionof techniquethat catchesand may even distractthe reader's ye,in other words, rightly or wrongly obtrusive technique.The obtrusion may show itself in various forms, for instancethe blaancy of the fiction's "irreality," to use Borges'sword, as in the storiesand norrels Nabokov,Kosinski,Hawkes, Pynchon, of Banhelme,or, sometimes, Gardner;in Albee's plays, or Stoppard's; 'A and in Coo\r's playsand stories,for example Pedestrian Accident," may show of which I will be speaking little later. The obtrusiveness a itself in the form of so-calledmetafictionaldevicesinsisting on the reader'sawareness the pageas physicd object-the book as book. of For insance,John Banh, in Cbimffa, hasa geniewho in the end turns into the book the readeris reading,and tn Giles has Goat-Bay a librarian who, ^t ^ splendidcrucial moment, is readinga book which tells of the event in which she is participating,which is the reasonshe can savethe day. Other writers draw attention to the work as object in other ways,for example useof cut-outs,questionsand answers the for the reader,or odd typography,as in Gass's brilliant though annoying WiUieMasters'I-onesome or, say,Molinaro's even more annoying Wife "Chiaroscuro' A Ti'eatmentof Light and Shadel' Again, writers have returned to the use of illustration-a notabie feature in all my work

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(a feature suppressed England and in most translations),in Kun in Vonnegut'sBreakfast Champions, of and in someof the storiesofJohn Updike, for example"Under the MicroscopeJ'The most obviousof all obtrusive devices, course, are those involving point of view or of "voice." To theselast I will return in a momenr. But first let me remind you of a fact not always borne in mind by critics' though the various experimentalwriters I havementioned have a great deal in common, may even be said to sharea common theory, or possiblytwo or three rivd theories(not that such theories need to be conscious), that we may describe so American new writers as a "school" or as a "group of schools,"it is for the rnost pan not true that they got their ideasfrom eachother. I don't mean that there was no exchange influence. They publishedtogether in the same of little magazines with the same New York and later, in some cases, editors, the only oneswho would take them. But what they had most in common was their cultural and educational backgroundin the forties and fifties. I myself have spent the pasttwenty yearsteachingand writing books about medievalliterature.What could be more naturd When I began for a child of Walt Disney and the SaturdaycartoonsP to insistthat my novelsbe illustrated,I had no ideathat other writers could do the same.When I turned to myth (Ctrmdel and to the inter) penetration of reality and dream (TbeSunligbtDalogws), I was thinking not of John Hawkes but of what Pinucbio had led me to, of Beautulf and the work of Chaucer,Mal aA, and Dante. And when I beganto use what I like to call lexicographicalblisters-archaic words, words made up from Latin or Greek, and so on-I wasthinkingof the quirky texturesof old paintings,the cranky rocabularyof later Middle English vrs;I had no idea thac Ken Keseywould do the same.At the lowa Writers' Workshop, where, like Flannery O'Connor and everybody else,I'd gone to study my trade, I'd arrivedtoo late and so encountered not the great white company of earlier days but Freudian novelist M"Serite Young, sodbusterRoben O'Bowen, and wooden dlegorists like Calvin Kentfield, writers of the sort who, to set us yawning, divide entitled Eanh, Air, their books about life in the N"ry into sections Fire, and Water, then arrangethe plot to fit traditional platitudesabout the titles. I quit the writers' workshop and went up the hill to take classes ltalian, Greek, and Latin, to John McGdliard's Old English in class,where peoplestill cared about stories,still found books exciting,

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though what they talked of in classwas endingsand conjunctions, as opndvesand bilabial$, and language cultural and epistemological frame. It rvasthat rhat I studied,not contemporaryliterary theory. on The point is, I workedout my theory on my own, choosing my most other and I'm convinced I'd accept, own arnongthe influences An moramentdid the same. odd bit of evidence wrirersin this so-cdled I in supponof that opinion is the following: because wassickto death wrote, shortly after graduateschool, a book called Tbe of realisffi,I Formsof Fiaion-working in collaboration with a friend in the college was an anthology, where I mught, Irnnis Dunl ap.TbeFormsof Fictiot? of anthology.Insteadof collecting realisticstories,as bur a new kind in rhosedayseverybodyelsedid, we collectedand definedthe various older proseforms-yarn, sketch,fable, tale, and, barely nodding to convenrion,shon storiesand novellas.The Formsof Fiainn, we were book. But almost the samemonth it sure,would be a revolutionary waspublished, youngwriter of fiction namedGeorgeP.Elliot, whose a 'Among the Dangs" is one of the few great fabulist shon story innovativefiction, George P. among the early so-called achievemenrs Elliot, whom I did not know then and who did not know me (though aplay which, knowing nothing about conhe oncesenrmy magazine I GeorgeP. Elliot publisheda book called remporaryrhearer, rejected), of Tbe Tryptt Fiaion. We had written, for all practical purposes,the Elliot samebook. Both, I might mention, were widely adopted.C'eorge at little magazine also,by the way, becameeditor of an experimental MSS, was discoveringWilliam abour the sametime my magazine, Gass, Joyce Carol Oates,and numerous others. fiction ws, in the middle and late fifties(if not earlier), Experimental an idea whose time had come. It may have come out of the world of of situation,the disorientation modern life, the Americansense reality "absurdityof daily life" of which we hear so the misplaced, alleged inclined New York City intellectuals, much frorn European-oriented to to pay especidlycloseamention New York City writers with a similar orientation,or to midwestern Jewishwriters like Herb Gold, Philip Rorh, and Al lrbowitz, not to mention Saul Bellow, for whom the European holocaust had far more tragic immediacythan anphing that in happened their lifetimesin Cleveland,St. louis, or Chicago.It is on of rrue, we may sayin defense the critical commonplace disorienetc., that someof the new writers, suchas Hawkes tation, absurdity,

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and Vonnegut,when not yet in their twenties,had seenwar and its aftermath, and before that had seenthe Great Depression, and that a few of the older innorrators-Howard Nemerov, Andrew Lple, and, I would have to add, sincehe has one foot solidly in the innovative ,Jotrlp, Saul Bellow-a few of those older innovatorsmay indeed be describedas distressed not shatteredidealists,brokenheanedor inif dignant liberals who abandonedconventional ficrion for the same reasons did Beckett and Cdvino. But such writers were clearly the as exception in America. World War II and all it signifiedproduced a flood of redistic or realistic-symbolic novelists, peopletoo intenr upon bearing strong angry witness to the horrors they'd seenro rake rime messingaround with form or aestheticepistemology.Tbe Naked and tbeDeadis a wanime sodbuster through and through, rff in its emotion and reportedexperience, astechnicdly old-hat asa dimesrore but card for Mother's D"y. And so it is with the rest-JamesJones,Joe Heller, Edward kwis Wallant, Mordecai Richler, William Eastlake, C'ore Vidal, VanceBourjaily,JamesC'ould Cozzens, Herman Woukthe list goeson and on, and not another Saul Bellow, Howard Nemerov, or Andrew Lple in the pack. Later Mailer would turn fabulist,when a new generadonhad shown him how. later Philip Roth,John Updike, and John Cheeverwould abandontheir crisp, Nat Yorker style, their symbol-ladenverisimilitude. But then, right then-while the writers in New York were witnessing with almost journalisticdirectness-far off in the plainsof lllinois, Western Iowa, and Missouri-homes, respectively, Accmt magazine, of Rniru, and Pmpeaioe-and dso down in the agrarianChristian South, rich in magazineslike Seutanee Peuieu|and also over in the pastures of Ohio, where the SouthernerJohn Crowe Ransom had hrs Kmyon Reaiew-in those country outposts the bomb was being constructed that would blow up the realistconvendons.The South-Edgar Allan Poe'sSouth-was the centerof the literary rerolution' one might call it ke's revenge. After the political debacleat louisiana StateUniversity, Austin Warren fled to lowa, where he taught and sharedan office with the Utah ex-Mormon cowboy Jarvis Thurston, who became Ray founder of Perspectiae the St. louis Renaissance. B. West was and in lowa, founder of the Western Fwiru; the appdlingly well-readReni Wellek was in and out; alsothere was the mediewalist John McGalliard, another Southerner, rebel and breakawayfrom the Cleanth Brooks

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and Roben PennWarren New Critical team that had popularizedthe Fic' close readingof fiction like Jean Safford's and, in Understanding up Poe's "The Fall of the tion-a vastly influendd textbook-held House of Usher" as an exampleof how not to write. or Thesewere nor agonized anryJewish liberds, but philosophers, peoplewho looked and political consenatirres moderates, aesthericians, out at World War II from the safety of the American Heanland, looked out thoughtfully, with deepconcern but little panic, deplored Niezsche'sthoughr nor like peoplewho havelost familiesto the ovens They but only asgood Christiangentlemenand concernedobservers. imponed for their mtgazines-andin their bookswrote about-Europeanfiction, and like Faulkner,when they thought about the demise of Europeancivilization, they thought, at the sametime, about the they crumbling tradirionsof rhe South. If they wrote with passion, making availablethe thoughts of warwrore ar comfortableold desks, torn Eumpe, but thinking of disaster-asdoesFaulknerin all his Snopes srories,or Roben Penn Warren n All tbe King's Men-in terms of case,sexual hanky-pankyand family disruption or, in Flem Snopes's As irnpotence. Alfred Kazin hasremarked,they could seeFlem Snopes making it to the Mansion; they didn't think about the White House. Enter the nexr generation,the generationallegedto be concerned in with "rhe AmericanNightmarel' What happened the war was not roo fully reponed in the BataaiaDaily Nals. As far as I could tell, by way of lowell Thorras, we'd won splendidly,as was right. I was person"lly miserable-my girlfriend lived a thousand miles Lwayand I had pimples.My father wasalwaysgrumbling aboutJosephMcCanhy, but it wasrrue that the Unions were ruining the country; thank God we had a man we could trust in the White House, Eisenhower;and despitethe besteffons of the Democra$, the farm was making money. the I went to collegeand thus evaded Korean war. There, for the first rime, I heardin detail about the holocaust,which made me readwith interest-though to some extent the passionwas Christian passionate charitableaffectationand maybecuriosity-the norals of Mdraux, Gide, Proust, and Camus, the philosophy of Nietzsche,Kierkegaard,and Sanre. It was very exciting.Also, I was now only two hundred miles from where my grlfriend lived, and since the farm was doing well, I had a motorcycle. Someonepointed out, to my wonderment and ioy,that there wes "meaning" in Edgar Allan Poe. I encountered

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Moravia, Kafka, and late Tolstoy.I saw Europeanmovieswhere sometimes, for a secondor two, they would let you seerhe girl's naked breasts. sent storiesto the SaturdayEaming Post; I they were rejected. I kept being beaten there by Salingerand Vonnegut, but I was roo young, too innocent to understand. Like young writers all overAmerica, though I didn't know it, I beganto drift toward queer writing, like that of Flannery O'Connor and Eudora Welty or William Faulkner at his wildest, or like that, of course,of the Europeans. through All the heanland young writers were doing likewise,many of them guided by the Southern intellectuals the little magazines mentioned. and I've While I was copying out pagesby hand, for typographicoddity, Bill Gasswas cutting holes in his pagesand Bob Coover, who is always the crazy one,ws cutting, editing, and shuf{lingin the styleof a filmeditor. @urroughswas doing the same,but Coover didn't know ir.) Something was in the air, a common dissatisfaction-bothamong younger and among older American writers-with what was called conventional fiction. Some iN yet undiscovered new theory of fiction's methods and purposeswas strugglingto be born. We fooled around, tried things, chopped, pasted, drew pictures,read fairy nles. Hunting. Now that the fumbling search more or lessover,at leastfor some is of us, now that we can look aroundand notice,panly in delight,panly in embarrassment, were that dl over America writers like ourselves doing the samething-we can beginto aniculatewhat we were doing. I hope it's clear that I am sayingall this for a reason. Experimental fiction, as we may call it for convenience, was not an intellectual movementbut a phenomenon:its theory was not worked out in advance,programmatically,or if it was, was worked out independently by ^ raft of people,somewiser,somelesswise. And so the common devices the experimenters of must be considered solutionsto basic as aesthetic and impulses-or else,perhaps, symptoms a of as questions widespreaddisease. I think we can seethis if we consideronesuchsolutionor symptom, obtrusivetechnique,or ratherone form of obtrusive namely, technique, the new writer's fondnessfor tricks with point of view and voice. As Philip Stevick and others havepointed out, one distinguishing featureof the new fiction, if we contrastit with the old-that is, with the fiction of such typicd writers asJean Smffordor CarsonMcCullers a quaner of a century ago-is the new writer's rejection the realist's of

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idea that as a writer he ought to effacehimself, "sit like C'od in the eorner of the tmirerse pansg his nails," asJo)*e ssid{an opinlen he The new writers, at least most of the time, himself soon abandoned). will havenone of it. They are forevercdling noisy anention to them' selves,clambering dl over you, bawling for affection like Spanish Harlem ghetto kids being grvena nice hedthy summer in the terrifyof ing stillness New Hampshireor Vermont. I'm awarethat you know dready what I mean, but let me give you some examples. John Banh in "Lifi*StoryJ' about a writer trying to write, writes: Another $ory about a writer writing a story! Another regressus in infinitum! Who doesn'tpreferan that at leastovenly imiThat doesn't tetes something other than its own processes? continu"lly proclaim "Don't forget I'm an anifice!"? That takesfor granted its mimetic nature insteadof asseningit in Though order (not so slyly after all) to deny it, or vice-versa) his his critics sympatheticand otherwise described own work in as evant-garde, his hean of heans he disliked literature of charor an experimentd, self-despising, orertly metaphysical acter,like SamuelBeckett's,Marian Cutler's,JorgeBorges's. of The logical fantasies kwis Carroll pleasedhim lessthan subdy sentimentd romances, straighdorwardales of adrantune, eln denselycircumstantialredism like Tolstoy's.His farorite contemporary authorsweneJohnUpdike, GeorgesSimenon, Nicole Riboud. He had no use for the theater of absurdity, for "black humor," for allegory in any form, for apocdyptic preachmentsrneretriciously tricked out in dramatic garb.

later in the samestory Banh

The reader!You, dogged,uninsultable,print-orientedbastard, it's you I'm addressing, who else,from insidethis monstrous fiction. You've readme this far, then? Even this far?For what discreditablemotirre? In many of his fictions-Cbtmcra, for example-Banh includeshimRon Sukenickdoesthe same.In dl Sukenick'snorcls, self asa chanacter. Up, Out, and 98.6, the central characteris himself or self-confessed

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projections himself,as it is in his superbshon srory,"Whar's Your of Storyl" In this last, the narrative shoors straight from the wrirer's consciousness-at-the moment to the page he is writing-or anyrilay that's the fictional pretense. The srory openswith a descripdon which turns out to be not of the actualscene, the usualsense, of rwo in but paintingsthe narrator is looking at; rhen he looks ar a mirror (I think), then at what can be seenfrom his window, all of rhesepresenred as indivisiblereality,the domain of the narrator'splayingconsciousness. The narrator,that is, Sukenick,looks at his writing desk,remembers a conversation, thinks about writing, hearswhat might be a gunshot outside, imagines being visited by an assassin. Pictures,real world, memory, fantasy-all have the same immediacy.His srory closes' The dropletsrain from the eaves. The shadowof a cloud dims the snow dazzle.George WashinSon crosses the Delaware on the walls. I sit at my desk, making this up, and keep an eye on the road, wairing for a car ro come cruising around the curve,a shiny blackCadillac,an enorrnous four-doorsedan. A gunshot echoesthrough rhe distance. They'll be back. Against that d^y prepare. You sit at your desk, you look down ar the slum. You begin to undersrand how it works. Or you drown in ir. People are on your sideor they're not. You makeconracts, compare notes.It helpsyou to breathe.Irt's nor suffocate your in own experience. They'll be back, are alredy here,alwayswirh me. A gunshot echoesthrough the disrance.The gypsy wakes, if he's still alive, facesthe lion, and picks up his lute. Stan with immediatesituation. One sceneafter another, disparate, opailue, absolutelyconcrere. Later, a fable,a gloss, beginsto develop,abstractions appear. End with illuminating formulation. Simple direct urrerance. A gunshot echoesthrough the disrance. They'll be back, are dready here, alwayswith us. "The communicationof our experience others is the to elemental act of civilization I' They're corning for you. What's your story?

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playedwith tricks In my own fiction I haveon variousoccasions just of point of view and voicemuch like thosein the pass4ges quoted. 'John Napper TtteKing's Indian collection containsa true'life story SailingThrough the Universel' in which the central characteris or wasJohn Gardner,and in the "The King's lndian" itself,that is, the to-or, rather,straightone canfind numerousallusions featurednovella, narretor(myself) behind the fictional narraof-the revelations across and one will of coursealso find a rors (myselfin rwo projections), than John Banh's-about good dealof talk-I hope more interesting (at a deviceI believed the time) that I'd gotten from the writer writing, Homer, Apollonius,and Chaucer.I dso at one time included myself novel Nickr,l amongthe castin anotherbook of mine, the mock-realistic during the time I worked on that novel-between the hlountain.But agesof nineteenand fony-the devicebecametoo common (it was it. also inherentlyarch)so I suppressed The deviceis also central in an epic-lengthpoem I wrote, lasonand Medeiu begun in 1963, pubthe lishedren yearslater.There I used,or maybemisused, traditional observer epic narratorin someratherodd ways.Beginningasa passive {inds himself roughly he of the srory,or dream-vision, occasionally hauled into it for real, as here, In horror I felt myself/ falling to the mud, my spectacles hooked/ by one ear. I squealedlike dangling,precariously a rat incinerated,/ my mind all terror, my left hand clutching right hand/ stretchingto snatchsome hold at my spectacles, gtant/ in front of me. I fell, on the back of the sweatwashed sank deepin the mud; the maniacal/ crowd came on, stePping on my legs,batteringmy ribs./ On the back of my left hand, blurry as a cloud, fell a scarletdrop of blood. "Dear goddess!"I whimpered. I'd surely gone mad! It was/ no dream,surely,this fanglingpain! A foot sank,blind/ on the four fingersof my thin right hand and buried them;/ thick yellow water swirled where they'd been,then reddenedwith blood./ My mind grew befuddled.My vision was awash./ Then hands seizedrn, painfully jerked me uPward, at the sametime/ heavingback at the crowd. I gavemyself uP to My rescuer the stranger,/ clinging still to my spectacles. with his one free arm like a shouted,/ struck at the crowd

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;:T:,1::*&:h:;'

i,ffi'tr'

adoo ;heragged rwav d

Why, we ask, are those obtrusirre narratorsso popular with the new writers?I will sugge$three main reasons, none of them the first that springsto mind, egomania.First, I would arguethat, consciously or not, the new writer feels-or rather some new writers feel-that rhis obtrusive techniquealigns him with classical, romanric tradition, nor the romantic being a tradition he dislikes,or anywayfeels himself obliged to shun evenwhen (asBanh sayshe doesin one of the passages I've quoted)he likes it better than the kind of thing he's doing. Second, point-of-view or voice obtrusiveness provideshim with instant access a centralconcern in nearly dl modern ficrion, aesthetic to epistemology, the askingof the question "How doesthe anisr know whar he thinks he knows?" And third, when the writer has abandoned authenticatingrealism,or verisimilitude,the self-effacing narrator becomesnot only useless bryrg. but a noisomeencumbrance, hydrolike foils in a country of levitators. Begin with the impulse toward the classicd. kslie Fiedler has claimed-and mo$ critics agreewith him-that the developmenr of fiction sincethe eighteenthcentury showsan increasing concernwith "inwardness,"an increasingfascinationwith the "minute-by-minute content of consciousnessl' reflects, its broadevolutionof techand in "the transition from the objective,social,and public orientanique, tion of the classical world to the subjective, individudist, and privare orientation of the life and literature of the last two hundred years" (Inte and Deatbin tbeAmnican NneL Clevelandand New York, 1962, p. 176).Jte David Bellamy glosses Fiedler'sidea as follows, To put it another waf, in raditional fiction, we meet "characters" who are looking out-at society, manners,plots; in the early twentieth-century novel of consciousness modernist or (or shon fiction, w are insidea character characters) looking out. In the world of the contemporarysuperfictionist, are we (or characters) mo$ frequently insidea character looking out. In or theseinner phantasms projectedoutward, and in a are sometimesfrightening sometimescomic reversal, outside the "reality" beginsto look more and more like a mirror of the inner landscape-there is so linle difference betweenthe two.

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on thesis the deralopmentof the norreldown to modern The general dmes is no doubt right; but when we come to the new fiction several facts should Su. us pause.It is again and again to ancient and more rnodelsthat the new writers turn. Banh hasfor years recentclassical of been studying the Indian Ocean Story,not to mention the Tlnusand and One Nigbafrom which he drawsCbimsra.His first notably "innoFattm, is written in imitation of eighteenthradve" norI, TbeSot-Weed satiricd humor (humor assuming cenrurystyle,with eighteenth-century a societal standardof taste, the basisof satire), and his tone-there and everywhere-eran more imponant, his theme in each work-is invariably one appropriateto an old-fashionedEnlightenment rationhe Goat-Boy alist, though he is not quite that, as we will see.ln Giles rrearsinnocenceand education,for the most pan public education, though the Banh hero- LnyBanh hero-must first discoverhis identity, in this caseby the social act of fatheringa child, before he can philosopherswould savehis community. (Most eighteenth-cenrury mainly of the right and proper relationln agree.) Cbimerahespeaks not ship betweenthe sexes, simply what relationship he hopesto find now his wife, but the relationshipthat ought Rosenberg, with Sally to obtain betweenmale and femde human beingsin an ordered sociay. Ordered societyis for that reasonmade the secondarytheme' social for disordermust be corrected the winning of the Medusa;Bellerophon musr learn that romantic heroism,"individualisrn," is impossible.He does all the things done by heroesin books and becomes,only, the perfect imitation of a hero. The genie of the tale, the writer of the the srory now becomes book, the reader'sinstrument of instruction' The book's fall in Maryland, Banh's binhplace and the location of his presenruniversitypost,Johns Hopkins, is one last aftirmation of the writer's proper function, not romantic individualist and howler, but servanrof his proper community. This is a far cry from Gide's rD use of myth tn Tbesie, existentid perversionof the Theseusstory where all that martersin the end-or dl that redly matters, despite Icanrs'slofty, unintelligiblebabblingsand Oedipus'swoe-is Theseus's affirmation, " I'Ai ttica!" technlquein "What's Your Story?" At first glanceRonaldSukenick's may seema funher stepin the withdrawd inward. But the fascination in this fiction with "the minute-by-minutecontent of consciousness" has an explicit socialand moral purpose.Sukenick dramatizes-that

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is, delineates through presented events-the significance thinking of and writing, and ends, like the teacherand neo-rarionalist is (as he are many of thesewriters), with a "gloss,"ashe says,tn "illuminating formulationi' namely,"the communicationof our experience orhers ro is the elementalact of civilizationl'We may grant the ironic undercutting in the polysyllabics-"illuminaring formulation." Bur the irony is Pan one of a one-two punch. All but the fainre$ rrace of irony vanishes when he throws punch two in his final lines, "They're coming for you. What's your story?" I can't easilytell you how my own obtrusivenarrarorworks in lason and Medeia,a poem of several thousandlines, bur obviously in retelling a classical myth, thus joining the company of Banh, Hawkes, Updike (in his best book, Tbe Cmtaur), and all those others,one of my intere$swas in trying to understand-imaginatively, from insideour civilization'sarchetypaland probably oldest myth of male and female,darkness and sunlight, reasonand intuition-nor ro impose by wit and raw power my own romantic vision on a grumpy universe but to understand those mysteries centuriesof my relatives havefound, or imaginedthey've found, in the visionsand revisions Apollonius of and Euripides. This is not to say that we who write the so-called new fiction are truly rationdists,that we havefound the longsoughr formula for rurning back time and can standbeforeyou ascompleteeighteenth-century rnen, innocent of nineteenth-and early twendeth-centuryindividualist affirmationsand disillusionments. Once you've discovered atoffis,discoveredthat the universehas more holes in it than motes, you can neveragainlean on an innocent wall. But whereasfiction in the fonies and fifties wasoverloaded with worries about suchthings,most fiction today takesthe hedthy view-though a view that can easilybe carried too far-that wringing one's fingers and exclaiming "What is real?" is a dresomething to do; betterto get on with our civilizedand civilizing business, merely registeringour knowledg. that our knowledg. may be fauhy by parody of the old uneasiness. redity, redity Dream becornes becomes dream.The endlessly repeated business, evenwhen shrugged ofl can still have interest,even moral implications. Our poems may changeour lives,dent our hats,smashour fingers,and our lives may change-for better or worse-our poems.John Napper, the wise old 'John anist of my story Napper SailingThrough the Universel'knows

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one imponanr rruth out of this, nothing existsfor sure, and reaches we make it; don't sit staringat the abyss,then. Make! undl in Mad Queenlouisa understands another It's what my character at wa/: strikeout for good, bring the witch to repentance, leastinsofar what's good-bearing carefullyin mind, asI wrote asyou understand in one of rhe louisa stories,that "she [Queen l.ouisal** insaneand could neverknow anythingfor sure,and perhapsthe whole story was taking place in a hotel in Philadelphial' But obtrusive point of view or voice is of course not always, in the new fiction, a meansof acknowledging "redity" problem and then we wish simply to shrugoff the quesit. dismissing If in somemoods tion "What is the artist'sauthority for this story?"-the questionthat Andrei Biely Connad, StephenCrane,andWilliam Faulkner, put Joseph in thoseelaborateexperiments point and Vladimir Nabokov through to from the lying authorial omniscience such "strateof view, rerreats ges" asthe unreliablenarrator,the communal roice, narrationthrough (as of centers consciousness in TbeSoundand tbeFury), and successive (asin Ada)-if in some moods we're innarrative ediredand re-edited clinedto shrugoff all that, in otherswe still find the questioninteresting, though few thesedaysthink it alarming.Writers do feel the age-old narrator desireof anis$ ro tell "the truthl' Whereasthe self-effacing pretty much wastruthful by definition and con\rention,to be accepted as we acceprthe rules of whist, the obtrusive narrator is somebody for and available questioning. (or something),thereforenon-omniscient raisesquestionsat once, His plump and dl too noticeableexistence like a $ranger in the bedroom, and if the questionsare not at once shruggedoff they become inescapablyPaft of the fiction. epistemology-the of The new fiction aboundsin studies aesthetic an and morality, evenan and religious relation of an and its subject, (as As faithfulness in Cynthia Ozick's Bloodsbed). we might expectof thesematters philosopher,William Gasshas addressed a professional Kid]' t ntghtmaresearch superbnorre[a"The Pedersen h repeatedly. his of for a murderer is pursuedbecause a story impelled past the point of no rerurn by boastsand myths, and crowned by the narrator's that whatever affirm atron/observation moral and aesthetic simultaneous it may mean, he hasplayedhis pan, fulfilled, if you like, hrs beot-his Lruk, a man who livesby thought Ommsetter's boastor word. In Gass's Furber-a man out of touch with what we call and language, Jethro

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"real life"-comes into conflict with a man, Ornensetter, who hasnor yet risenout of life into reflection.Through Omensetter, Furber reaches the connectionhe needs, reaches fact sdvation,though Omenserrer in is not so lucky. In theseworks the narration is not exactlyobrrusive, though the writing is so brilliantly,eanhily poeticthat it tendsin that direction. I can see,in fact, only a degreeof difference betweenGass's style here and the self-regarding style of Banh's Sot-Weed Fattor,where we are mercilesslychained to the pace of eighteenth-century prose. Willie h{,asurs'Lonesomt Wtfe, narratedby Language itsell is quite another maffer. Here Gassattacla the problem of languqge knowledg. and mo$ directly,teasingmany of the samequestions teases his essays, he in especiallythose in the first and founh sectionsof his Flaion and tbe Figures Ltfu I think no one will deny that philosophicdly at least, of Willie Masters'is a minor mesterpiece. may evenbe a masterpiece It by t cenain set of aesthetic criteria-intelligence,orderly arrangement, and so forth. But for me, at least,the answerto the questionin the title-"WilI he Master?"-is "who cares?" perhaps, or more emphatically, "\[e-not without real characters and hopefully a limle love interest to give oomph to all those academicmetaphorsof sex and post-coitaldepressionl'Bur I digress. The obtrusive narrator, when used as a springboard seriousor to even mock-seriousdiscussion knowledg. and art, works one way of when kept insidethe story'sdramo,s in Sukenick's story or the passage I've quoted from lason and Medeia,another way when set in opposition to the fiction'sdramaticelements, in Banh's "Life-Story' where as the writer's academicasides the reader,and so on, contrastwith to his dramatizedrelationshipwith his family, or againin Banh's famous story "Lost in the Funhousel'where authorial asides fictional techon nique interrupt a beautifully and irnaginatively rendered story of three people going to a Funhouse,a pair of loversand the girl's younger brother. In one case,of course,the philosophicalquestionsrise out of drarna. In the other, they are meant to be a pan of the drama, in playing the role of discourse a debateor would-bedramaticstruggle between discourseand storytelling.In "Lost in the Funhouse" the method no doubt works, at leastfor readers willing to put up with it. The two lovers enjoy the Funhouseand each other, being fond in both the new and old sense-not very bright. The youngerbrother, much more intelligentbut scornfulof what he hasneverexperienced,

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are-the thingsthat make backinto wherethe control-levers wanders the Funhousework-and beginsto play with them. He enioys the So machinery, and never emerges. it can be, Banh is saying, with an knowledg. and experience, and life. Neither the lovers,mired in nor the boy, cleverbut disdainful,has the truth, though sensarion, can give the loversamusement,evenheighten the boy, pulling levers, in their pleasure eachother. So the artist,thinking about fiction'stechniques,can makewonder{ulfictions,may evenbe of usein the world; love, he is "lost." The message-or dis' but if techniquesupplants covery-is one to which Banh comesrepeatedly'true an is loving, social.Or to put it another way, art's road to community-oriented, knowledg. is through the hean. Techniqueis useful-indispensable, though manyof the rulesfor writing fiction in Banh's asides perhaps, are ruleshis srory hasdisobeyed-but techniquefor its own sake,or for the sakeof the anist's personalamusementand self-expression, is empty nattering. Banh'sopinion in this mafteris not one held unirarstlly by American writers of new fiction, though I, for one, agreewith it. Some would say,as doesGassin America or Raymond Queneau in France,that technique is the only reality we have, that is, that languageshapes is the language to changethe world. In the reality we see:to change some examples,showing how gives of Fiaion and tbeFigures Life Gass of by alteringthe grammarand syntCI( a descriptionwe changeour philologists This is of coursea familiar fact to professional experience. we seethe world differently like Quenesu:when we think in German To than when we think in French,or Greek, or Chinese. know this, Gasswould sa/, is to know that we haveno sure knowledg. to comor municate,hencefiction lies if it claims it has usefulness relevance in the world. A fictional work is sirnply one more object, exacdyas valuable a bird or tree.We can enjoy it, but we cannot live by it. as argumentis that if I make a bomb acThe familiar answerto Gass's cordingto an expert'sdirectionsI can trust it to explode.In cenain sincenitroglycerine,black powder, the respects answer that evades issue, of and copperwire, etc.,are verbalsignifiers a very simpleorder; but notion, in let us not worry that matter here.What is interesting Gass's even though finally we may agreeit's inadequate,is that it puts us realistnarratornever with words that the self-effacing into a relationship thought of or, if he thought of it, would be hard put to make useof.

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Whereasthe self-effacing narrator quietly, unobtrusivelyputs the wine on the table, seatsthe guests, and startsthe conversation, confidently describingthe world fact by fact, telling lies without knowing it, the man who thinks of language a shaperof redities is like the "pure" as mathematicianwho worls difficult equarionson the rwenry-fifth dimension, a dimension which, so far i$ we know, does nor exisr.The linguisticshaperneither lies nor tells the truth, he merely makes$rucures never before known and of possibleinteresr,evenperhapsbeauty,like an elegantmathematicd proof which has no application.There are, of course,writers who actudly do this, though their readership, understandably,is not wide. William Gasshimself seemsro have done it in On BeingBlue, a book I arn unableto get inro. William Burroughs does it-but also other things as well-in the various NoaaErpress books. If some writers find such things interestingto do, and readers after them find them interestingto look ar, we can have,as generous people, ro seriousobjeaion; the world now containsa few more roys. But the idea that languageshapesnew realities is of course more interestingthan I admit in what I've so far said.Some marhematical investigationsdo have applications, helping us ro figure our how tdl flagpoles are, or how many appleswe can ger for fifty cenrs.Among nearly all people, blindnesshas been thoughr a curse.To rhe ancient Greelts it was often thought a blessing,like the probably apocryphat blind Homer, the sightless learn to seewirh their tongues.New uses of languageand of what we may as well call the metalanguage ficof tion's conventionsmay,like algebra lead us ro insighrinto how things s, are or, at very least, how they are not. Fiction groundedon verisimilitudearguesthe readerinto believing what he's told by loading him down with facts he can'r ger our of. It namesDetroit's streets and imponant and unimportanr landmarks, it speaks blacksand of Catholic Polish girls named Wanda, whose of fathersand older brotherswork at "Ford's," it mentionsoff-handthar Windsor, Ontario, lies to the south. The narrator of all this keepshis dignity, like one of those English bankerswho wears black so we'll know he's dependable; and he narrates American standard in English, or in some third- or first-personrarianr insmndy recognizable sincere; as he puts setting,character, and action {irst and avoidspurple prose.But for the namator of the tale, fable, or yarn, oD the other hand, forms which depend not on verisimilitudebut on the willing suspension of

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disbelieffor the moment, or on the reader'sindifferenceto the fiction's truth-no sucJrrestrictions apply, nothing mafters except that the narrator be, in somebody'sjudgment, interesting. someworld he can get inrolved inEveryonelovesmake-belierre, fiction, the infernal yet ominously the disrantplanet worlds of science ofJohn Hawkes,nightmareworlds of ambiguous sunlit dream-worlds emotion and elusivemeaning, like the world in Rudolph Wurlitzer's story "Quake l' fairy-tale worlds, also the familiar familid South of as ideaof language an infiction. The metafictionist's redist-symbolic for shapingredity, a fictional redity we may comParewith $rument to whar actudly seems happenin our lives-a fictional constructwhich thereforemay provea sourceof knowledg., like hyperbolic geometry withour which we could never harc reachedMars with our probethe metafictionist'sidea of languageas instnrment of discovery is And yet there is somethingpatthe old traditiond idea of language. program.A metaficendy wrongwith somepan of the metafictionist's tion works if it is of interest to somebody-anybody. The problem is the somebody. At a conservative estimate,90 percent of the so-callednew fiction not is soporific.Ron Sukenick'snovelsare publishedby smdl presses, because-brilliant asthey may be at certhe New York Establishment, tain moments-they're boring. Thry haveno plots, no real characters, no theffi, nothing to follow but the play of Sukenick'si*tsnation, one damn thing after another. In his full-length novels,though they do have plot, John Banh is equally dull. In his two longer novels, weirdness, few a Pynchon works like laughinggas-a little fascinating huk has plot, characters, guffaws,then Morpheus. Gass'sOmmsetter's and a fine thematic profluence, but in the central section-the one that makesit innovative-a section in which Jethro Furber babbles, and metdanguage, dramatizingfor us his lack playing with language of connectionwith " real lifei' our response mainly, after a while, is what turns us off is the characterof the a snore. In dl thesecases writer, his self-indulgence-the same thing that turns us off in the somewhatlessinnorative Bellow (Humboldt'sGtfr and Henog) when he dropshis fiction and lets his centralcharacterlecture us asthe Devil is said to lecture-for all eternity-in Hell. We snore for the same reasonwhen Updike begins on fornication or the joyt of the blow job. Somebodymay be interested,but the somebody,we haw to assent,

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is a damn fool. He likeswhat ought not to be liked, stern old Tolstoy would say-and did say,speakingof Maupassanr. It's the samemistake,but a different form of it, that ruins the fiction of Bob Coover. In 'A Pedestrian Accident" the centrd character has been run over by truck and lies in the street,paralyzedand dying. " The trucker is self-defensive and indifferent to the lot of the dying man, Paul. An old slut who once rented him a room appears, dong with a gawking, callous crowd, and finding that Paul cannot speak to contradict her, tells an outrageousstory of her sexud pleasures with him. Three authority fipres-a policeman, aphysician, and a priestwho turns out to be a bum waiting for Paul to die so that he can steal Paul's clothes-add to his misery playingfamiliar slapstick movie roles, none of them in this case funny, not e\En "black<omicl' like the humor of Beckett, but merely cruel and ouffageous,stirring the rcaderto anger. Eventually the crowd leaves, victirn, o dog rain falls on our miserable takes a bite of him and runs LwLy.Paul, 8o ex-Christian,knows it all rneans nothing, and since Paul's voice is the only one treated with sympathy and respeff in the story we are invited to agree. Indeed, a godless,ugly universeis a given in the story an absolute,somehow revealedpremisewe are expectedto share,since to doubt it would be stupidity. The story ends' For an instantthe eanh upendedagain,and Paulfound himself hung on the street, a, mrget for the millions of raindrops somebodyout in the night wasthrowing at him. There'snobody out there, he reminded himself, and that set the eanh right again.The beggarspat. Paul shieldedhis eyesfrom the rain with his lids. He thought he heardother dop. How much longer mu$ this go onP he wondered. How much longer? Note that the upendingof the eanh, so that "Paul found himself hung on the street,"setsup a crucifxion irnage-here a mocking one. Note the angry irony in the phrase"that set the world right againl' Note the emotion-charged, intellectual confusion in the equation of the beggar'sspit and the rain, since the latter has been said to come from "nobodyl' Read the story and you will seethat in its verbose derrelopment-for instanceits endless repetitionsof the slapstickmovie clichi "Now stop that," a comic devicedrawn fronr Jack Benny and

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Bud Abbott, here appliedro the splutteringpolicemanwho cannot srop the old slur's ugly story-Coover's story is tiresome.Read the story and you will see also-here as so often in Gass'sfiction-the (I bedroomand bathroommaterials refuseto cdl them "humor") function not like the fans cur by medievd devils in a mystery or the scatoloW inJonathan Swift but only aspuerile impudenceor anal fxation. Somebody may be amused,somebodymay think dl this fashionable bullshir ro be highly intelligent,but if so, somebody,we must assert, is badly mistaken. We are in need, obviously,of some son of more or lesseffective criteria for what is authenticallyinteresting,and what is not. In this good fiction, traditional or exregard,let me simply grvesuggestions, intellectually and ernotionally perimenral,is fiction the experienced, immediately or eventudly, asintelligent and marurereaderrecognizes, tasteful.It doesnor bully the reader,as Coover's fiction so often does, though ir may playfully pretendto bully him, as Banh doesin "LifeStoryl' In redistic fiction we call this bullying "sentimentalityi' the practiceof demandingemotional effect without providing sufficient StanleyElkin regularlyoffendsin this waf, for instance dramaticcause. tde of in the faked,moralisticconclusions the pharmacist's n TbeDick William and or Shout "The Bail Bondsman" rn Searcbes Seizures. Gibson Kid" and slipsinto the sameerror in "The Pedersen Gasssometimes "ln rhe Hean of the Hean of the Country!' C'ood fiction, traditiond or experimentd,is emodonally honest.That is a point too often lost sight of by critics who imaginethey must look at the new fiction in a wholly new wef, as if Banhelme's having run an an gall.ry and having picked up, for fiction, some of the concernsof the younger visud artists(parody,the incorporation of trash culture, and the fracturing or upendingof conventionalways of seeingand representing), in or as if Banh's use of discourse the developmentof his fictions, honesty obsolete.Coleridge'sclaim has not ceased made emotional that doesnot contain to hold, that "Nothing can permanentlyplease why it is asit is and not otherwisel' It is of course in itself the reason of rrue that new an of any kind requiressome measures sophisticaeven,initially, ^shon stint in the perhaps tion and open-mindedness, English Depanment of some graduateschool; and it is of course also bent on true that in the capitalistworld-or in anti-capitdist societies innortation must proving they can do anything the capitalistsdo-true

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forever compete with what Anthony Hechr has called, complaining of an all-too-cornmontendencyin contemporarypoetA,"fraudulent and adventitiousnoveltyJ'In fact, frequently-as in the work ofJohn Banh and William Gass-the real,hing and the shoddy imitation appear together. But for all the tedious writing it has produced,for all the intelleaud and emotiond cheatingit hassheltered and evencelebrated, for all its availability as a tool to people whose highestallegiance is to fashion, for all its rnrlnerabilityto misconstructionby well-meaning, serious-minded critics, it seemsto me that the so-called new fiction has opened a door that has been left closedroo long. In America, no real mastershave steppedthrough it sincePoe and Melville. The new fiction meansno harm to the genteeltradition. It offers an alternative to the endlesslyrepetitive,wearisomely sensitive well-dressed cousin to the sodbuster-or, rather,gven its willingness rry anphing, ro it offers-in potential, at least-a thousand alternatives, of which all must standor fall, finally, on the groundsthat rhey do or do nor do the real work of an.

American experimentalfiction after World War II came nor our of the horrors of the war, at least not directly, as an expression of disorientation and the collapseof values,those terrible recognitions that produced the great wave of witnessing,transplantedsodbusters like Tbe Nakedand tbe Dead.It came, instead,as the end-productof an attempt,largely by SouthernAmerican intellectuals and their students in the Arnerican heanland, to understandthose horrors, and their American implications,while keepingthem at arm'slength.Experimental fiction originally came,that is, not frorn radicalbut from thought and feeling. Putting the matter oversimplybut conservative not altogether falsely,we might say that, flinching from Auschwitz photographs,diaries, and depopulated shoes, suits, and spectacles, Southern American intellectudsturned their eyesto Europeanphilosophy books and to Eunrpeanfiction-the worls of Kafka, Gide, Proust, of Vittorini, and many more-fictions that had presaged collapse the what we'd thought to be Europe'svalues,and saw in such booksthoseSouthern intellectuals-parallels betweenEurope'ssituationand that of the American South. ForJew, they said in effect,read Negro; and for industrialGermany,readambitious,unprincipledFlem Snopes

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had camefrom authenthis the yankeeNonh. What passion movement and ric concernabout the moral issues about the survivalof Southern did intellectuals make a seriouseffon attitudes.Southern arisrocratic in ro seetheir culture honestly,and many were successful this effon, though that fact was not alwaysobviousto Nonherners. They were, culture and the and had beensincethe AmericanCivil War, a defeated William Faulkner, John Cnowe victimsof enormousculturalprejudice. Ransom,Allen Tate, even Flannery O'Connor, Carson McCullers, Caroline C,ordon,KatherineAnne Porter,and Eudora Welty, however for were scrutinrzed slipsinto bigotry their self-examination, courageous and rebelliousness, every slip, real or imagined unreconsrrucred and (if many were real, far more were imagined),was Pouncedupon by to liberd Nonhernerseager placeblame.Southernfiction becamemore than it had ever been before, gothic and rnore Christian-allegorical in emPhasized, terms sa/, Southernwriters increasingly which is to the hypocrisy, even yarn hyperbole, of comic-book or Southwestern of madness Southernlife-a real element,but by no meansthe only Southernthinkersand critics-oldreal element,in their experience. in fashioned essayists modern dress-became increasinglyabstract, exceptfor those like RussellKirk, who and metaphysical, aesthetic, outrageouspositions,esPecially in violenr reactiontook increasingly and cultirtation, their intelligence of on race.Both asa means assening and as a meansof ending hostile criticism, Southern writers became while Southern criticism-mainly at subrleand arcane, increasingly Criticism-becarne increasitglyformalthis time the fully erolrad New regularlyarguing,in Nonhrop Fry.'s words, istic and morally evasive, that "no work is betterthan another by vinue of what it saysl' Hence the difficult, experimentdstyle in the books of William Faulkner,and his famousambivdence,as in Quentin Compson'scry "I don't hate the Southl'As I've said,it was this moral concern,this recognition of the Europeanparallel,and this rntlnerabilityto hostilecriticism that with the translationand publicafascination led to the little-magazine tion of Europe'snewer,odder writers and to the willingnessof Christo tian Southern intellectuals entertainthe opinions of existentialists, even nihilists. The Southern intellectualclimate, which soon spread nonh and wesr, favored sophisticationand a muting of emotion, especiallythe emotion of religious conviction-favored a fiction of like grotesques, that of EudoraWelty or FlanneryO'Connor, whose

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"good" people, such as "the Misfit" in 'A Crood Man Is Hard to Find;' seemat first glanceto be the worst people;and the sameclimate fartoredmlnh, dream, or "fabulation," as Roben Scholescdls it-fiction like that of Andrew Lple or, if one may draw the obviouspardlel, that of Jorge Borges,writing in fascistArgentina though his favorite Poet, he says,is Walt Whitman. Hypotheticd redities-dream worlds, mphic worlds-can be usedto givecorrer the wrirer's rnordity. They to can dso, of course,allow the storyteller to keeptalking when he has nothing to say, nothing he believesin. As I have suggested above,a good way to look ar conremporary American fiction is to study it in terms of the various religious,or non-, or anti-religiousemotions it expresses. are perhapsnow in We a position to understandthat sugge$iona litde more clearly.First we havethe liberd tradition. It rnay be eitherJewishor Christian,racirlly white or black (or, of course, anphing else).In generalit produces realistic or "conventiond" fiction, for the simple reasonthat it has imponant information to communicateand wants the largest possible audience.Hence the realism of post-World War II novels-Mailer, Wouk, and so fonh-and the realismof Vietnam norrels Jones, Cozzens, like the early works of Tim O'Brien. When this strain in our fiction usesinnovativemethods, asdoesEllison in Inaisible Man or Bellow in HmderconandHumboldt'sGtft (alsoin other books to a lesser extent), the innovation is never so extreme as to scareLwaythe audience,it flarors the message, enriching and deepeningit or, as rn Humboldt's Gif , cartooning it a little; it never in any way obscuresit. Second,w havewhat I calledonhodox or troubled-onhodoxChristian fiction; I would have added,exceptthat it would havemuddied the waters,that we might dso include here thoseJewishwriters, like I. B. Singer,whose main subjectis the comfoning and explanatory valueof their religion. kt us now include them-Philip Roth when he was young as in Goodbye, Columbus; Cynthia Ozick; Sol Yurick; an and many others. These writers, speakingto a narrower audience, write either "conventional" or "experiaudienceof the conrrened,may mentd" fiction. It's the subject,and not the form, that's imponant. shapeJohn Hawkes writes obscure books-mysterious landscaps, characters, the plom of our nightshifting plots strangelytwisted, like we rnares; feel lost in an absurd,mad universeexceptthat sometimes we are pulled up short, gven hints of direction, by some traditional

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Christianimageor idea-the slainlamb in the story "The Traveller;' Noththe equationof will and a tiny crackin a dam tn TbeBeetle-ltg. ing could show more clearly the religiouslysecurewriter's freedom than Mark knowing his position in advance, ro wrire as he pleases, tales, non-realistic in of Helprin'sA Doae the East, which old-fashioned fictions,and modern realismsit comfonnineteenth-cenrury realistic ably side by side. We have,third, apostareChristians-that is, Christianswho have Jews turned againsttheir religion-and we may as well add aposmte Philip Rorh in his more recentwork. Whether and liberals-for example we call Roben Coover an aposmtewho proteststoo much, hence a mysteriouslyfull of hatred or closethell-firepreacher, a flat-out aposmte for the Fatherhe claimsdoesnot exist,he belongsin this current in of our fiction, or elseswims along closeby. Sometirnes, course,as he in "The Elevator," simply avoidsall meaning,as does,he thinks, the universe. And finally we havediabolistsand heretics.We have no full-time though both Burroughsand Nabokov play at it. In Ada, diabolists, but with a note of authority, Nabokov claims-through a character institutions-hospitalsfor epilepdcs, greatcharitable that all of America's Mocking things and so on-were originally foundedaswhorehouses. knows ro be decentand eveneffectivelygood, and praisingthings he the core his fiction is always thou$ not good, is a Nabokov specialty, "t of in moral. If his shockinggangsterism trifling mattersis sometimes ^ vdue, deflating false piety, the diabolicd impulse is nonetheless would chooseit except tiresomooe; I cannot imagine why anyone as exhibitionism. heretic in America, I've said, is John Updike. The only significant thesethings in order to Preand slightly expanded I've summarized pare the way for my point on moral fiction. My purpose is to argue that, exceptfor fictions which work strictly as toys-if such things are really possible-and except for fictions we value for their power of as expressions honestthough neurotic emotion and wrongheaded our opinion, good fiaion is moral. It reinforces bestimpulsesand undermines our remptationtoward that which is unhedthy for individuals or It and society. may be either conventional experimental,and it may come from a personwho, in his private life, claims to be Chrisdan, atheist,or anythingelse.It holds up visions Muslim,Jewish,agnostic,

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of the possible, helpsus to evduateour acts,consewes-fair-mindedly and compassionately-all that is good in our culture, and seeks exto punge what is bad. It may do all this comicdly, ,mgcally, or in any other way; but to be truly moral, it must do what it does fairly well. How can fiction be moral?I do not mean that it must be designed to preach somedoctrine.To *y modern Protestant soul, fair-minded, just reasoning; charitable,and empatheticdebateis moral, strenuously compulsion, eventhat of a compelling hell-firesermon, is not. It may be the casethat cenain of the Biblical storiesareliterdly true (I doubt it), and that our belief in or cowering submissionto the storieshas something to do with narrativetechnique,narnelywith direct and unvarnishedpresentation what the speaker of knows to be so, since,like he resurrected, has perJohn besidethe lake the day Jesusappeared, it. sonally experienced This is a good argumentfor brevity in sodbuster fiction about the horrors of war or the glory of family land, and good advice for peoplewishitg to communicate realor imagined experiences in like those of Castaneda Mexico; but it seems me to havenothing to what really is true, not just credible. to do with reachingor expressing It seerns me that long fiction ir by nature descriptiraand analpical, to not evangelicd,though good descriptionand analysismay incline us toward convrrsion. Shon forms can, conceirably,conrren,if their energy is sufficient. I can conceiveof being turned into a Buddhist by series " of immensely intelligent and moving poemsor fables,or possiblyby of a plry. But the end of Anna Karmina, though it givesme a sense what it might be like to be a devout Christian-as do the works of Lloyd C. Douglas, Tlte GrecnLigbt, Tbe Robe,and so on-not even turns me to religion exceptinsofar asI'm Tolstoy's book successfully a convert in need of reinforcement. Though fiction often, if not invariably, risesfrom some form of religious ernotion-the urge to celebrate, ritualize,justify, or judge,or else(as in Coover) the urge to cry out when one finds oneselfin the wilderness-good fiction has,essendally, nothing to do with evangelism. It has to do with living well in this world, both alone and in society, conflicts a condition which may or may not include C'od. It describes and effectsof human attitudes, compulsions,modes of thought and action-in a word, vdues. It may be conventionalor experimental, depending upon the nature of the valuesstudiedand the anist's techone of nical predispositions: speaks the declineof a family in one way,

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over moral behavior in another. the tyranny of literary conventions It givesus tentative as opposed to obligatory myths. I.et me spell out what I IrI&Il: The effect of the best an is to humanizeby offering descriptions positivemodels.A moral fiction, then, shouldPresent of just behavior, This soft of fiction com' process. modelsof creative usefulexamples, which through a process its municates moral meaning,its willingness, and rigorous mode of is in total-and in specific ways-an honest in thought, an investigation concreterather than abstractphilosophy, qualificabut one which, at the sametime-and here is the essential the negativeexemplar. tion-offers a culture the positiverather than if anathematizes, you will, works which This, of course,expunges, modeswhich confirm unconand sentimental easy, srereotypic, presenr Suchworls may be moralistic and sidered prejudices falserighteousness. that theseworks may be so moral, in the sense but nor necessarily controlsoff disthat the argumentscrupulously doctrinallypatrerned covery and the possibility of change. A work of moral fiction is alwaysvitd, "open," in that it probes The distinction is, preratherthan conformsand proves. and examines integrity, and aesthetic cisely,berween stylized,evenlovely,propaganda but lies in method. The former is not a process, and the difference the latter is a systemthrough an affirmaa confirmation of systrrr; tion of process. then, is not merelythe provinceof the writer The "creative"aspect, during the act of fictionalization,"closed" when the text is completed but, in a broaderand red waf, a panicito the author'ssatisfaction, patory right of the reader in the act of discovery. beA fiction which is moral depends upon this multiple-dialogue tween author, text, and reader.A fiction which is not moral, in the sense that I am using the term, definitely and purposely does not. Realan creates m)ths a societycan live insteadof die by, and clearly all modern societyis in needof suchmyths. What I claim is that such mphs are not merehopeful fairy tdes but the product of careful and disciplined thought. They are not built of rant and melodrama,the or stock-in-trade the sodbusters the apocaiypticbawlers,such as of William GaddisandThomas Pynchor; oot built of moaning,whining, games,either the leering,or the playing of sophisticated sniggering, verbalgamesof William Gassor the icy symbolic gamesof Updike,

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the posturing pastoringwhereby the sheeplook up and are not fed. What I claim is that moral m)rth burns away all that is desiccated, clears polluted streans, castsnets toward the futur; that working at art is a moral ect; that a work of an is a moral example; and that fdse art can be known for what it is if one remembers rules.The the black abyssstirs a certain fascination,or we would not pay so many writers so much money to keep staring at it. But the black abyssis merely life as it is or as it soon may become,and staring at it does to nothing but confirrn that it is there. It seems me time that anists start taking that fact as pretty thoroughly established.

Bellefleur
D

IS t-, ellefleur THE MOST AMBITIOUS BOOK TO so far from that alarmingphenomenon come JoyceCarol Oates.Howneeded,that she is everone may carp,the novel is proof, if Lnyseems rs one of rhe greatwriters of our time. Belleflertr the symbolic sutrtlrtotion of all this novelisthasbeendoing for twenty-someyears,a magnificent pieceof daring, a tour de force of imagination and intellect. Miss Oatesmakesa heroic attempt to transmutethe ln Betteflenr shape-shifters, inherently goofy tradition of the gothic (ghosts, almost vampiresand all that) into seriousart. If any writer can bring it off the (somewill claim it's dready beendone),JoyceCarol Oatesseems scene utterly convincing writer to do it. One thinks of the astonishing, where StephenPetrie,a child sitting at his in her novel Tbe Assassins and deskin school,hashis terrifying out-of-the ,ody experience, the with the Angel in which Hugh, his anist brother,hashrsbrushes scenes the in business Cbildwold, ominous of Death;one thinks of the psychic the rappingsof tyrannicalspirit in Wonderland, horror-ridden, loveabove world of William Jamesand his circle in Nigbtside; redeemed all one thinks of Sonof tbeMorning, Miss Oates'smagnificentlycon' Nathan Vick.ry. and vincingstudy of a snake-handler miracle-worker, is Whar we learn, readingBelleflear, thatJoyceCarol Oatesis essenexperiences of Shecanwrite persuasively out-of-the-body tially a realist.

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because belierres thern. But shedoesnor really belierain a brutd she in half-wit boy who can turn into a dog, a man who is redly a bear, rampiresor mounain gnomes.(ln one scenemembens the Bellefleur of family come acrosssome gnomes escapedfrom WashinSon lrving, thunderously bowling on a mountain meadow.One of the gnomes ge$ captured and, though his whole raceis inexplicablymean, rurns into a deroted servantof the novel'sheroine,Irah. Why? Who knows? The world is mysrerious.) Miss Oates believesin theselegendarycharacters only as symbols; and the pnrblem is that they are not symbolsof the sameclass those as she has been using for years,the symbols provided by the world as it is viewed when it is viewed (asMiss Oates dways views it) asa Christian Platonist's "vast arrnyof emblemsl' The only redly frightening scenes Bclhllarr ded with red-world atrocities-a boy's stoning of in another boy, for instance,or the murder of a family by a bunch of drunken thugs-and thesescenes fact come nowherenearthe horror in of scenes earlier norals by Miss Oates,such asthe murder of Yronne in in TbeAssassizs. What driras Miss Oates'sliction is her phobias:that is, her fear that normal life may suddenlyturn mon$rous. Abandoning rerisimilitude for a different mode (the willing suspension disbelief of ), shelosesher ability to startleus with suddennightmare.Still, the tale is sometimes thrilling. The opening chapter (strongly recalling that wonderful collection of ghost stories, Nigbtside) prowling spirits, has a weird storm, a glorious scerycastlein the Adirondacks,dl presented in an absolutely masterly,chilling style; but the chapter'scrowning moment comeswhen a frightening,vicious, rat-likething, which none of the frightened occupants can identify, is dlowed out of the rain (screamind into the houseand, when seenin the morning, turns out to be a my$eriously beautiful cat. The transformationstanlesus, catches us completely by surprise(classicOates), fills us with awe and vague dread, prompting the quesdonwe so often askwhen readingher: Wbat in beaacn's namo is tbe uniaene up to nout? I cannot summarize the plot of Bellelleur;for one thing, it's too complex-an awesomeconstruction, in itself a work of genius-and for another, plot surprises pan of the novel's glory. Suffice it to are say that this is the saga of the weird, sometimes immensely rich Bellefleur family over severd generedons,a story focusedmainly on Gideon Bellefleur and his power-mad,somewhatpsychic,\ry beautiful

BELLEFLEUR 201 /

and the wife kah, their three children(one of them extremelypsychic) living and dead,who inhabit the castleand its and relatives, servanrs of environs.k's a story of the world's changeableness, time and eterand soul, pride and physicality versuslove. nity, space, Much asone admiresthe ambition of Belleflnr, the novel is slightly The book has marred by it, It too nodceably labors after greatness. the mosr of the familiar Oatesweaknesss: panting,melodramaticstyle she too often dlows herself; the heavy, heavy symbolism; and occamiscdculationsthat perhapscome from thinking too siond aesrhetic subtly,forgettingthat first of dl a story must be a completelypersuathe sivelie. In Bellelleur, anifice underminesemotional power, makes the book cartoonish. I will girrejust one exarnpleto show what I mean. At the end of Belleflrur,Gideon, the focal character-now so wastedthat people call him "Old Skin and Bones"-crashes his plane and destroyshimself known He and his family estate. doesthis in companywith a personqge womanl' We harre idea*hy shewillingly goes no only as "the Rasche along, knowing his intent-a hard thing to believe.Miss Oates,who makesa point in can createa totally convincingcharacter half a puge, the Rasche woman at dl; Do one, not evenher of not characterizing lover Gideon, knows her first name. I think that Miss Oatesexpects before to her mo$ devotedreaders know that the name hasappeared (for instance,h Tber4ssardru there is a Mamist called Rasche, someor times Raschke,an equally shadowy figur.). As Melville once said, "Somethingfunher may dlow of this Masqueradel'It's an interesting another reminder that sometimesthe fabric of reality rips business, and strangebeingscrawl through; but a catastrophe sceneat the end of a novel is a bad place to sacrificeconvincingness the sakeof for larger meaning. I havementionedalreadythat the novel'sconstructionis complex. I must add that the constructionsometimes forcesthe author into what will seemto some readers unfonunate corners.In the first few chaptersMiss Oatesmentions numeroussmdl details('uarious queer anifacts,includinga drum made of human skin, and numerousodd characters, such as an aunt who nevercomesout by daylight,a mad, saintly hermit and so on). Each of thesedetailswill later get irs fully developed story and some of the detailsset up in the beginningwill lead to stories (motifs) to which the novel will rerurn repeatedly.

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Unhappily, some of thesemotifs or plot strands-whose recurrence is unavoidable once the machinerygersrolling-are somewhatboring. For examplethere is the child Raphael,whose chief-in fact onlyinterestin life is, well, this stupid pond. He srares into it, every few chapters,and seesthere a framed sample of teeming, ever-changing totd reality.(Miss Oates'sdescriptions nature in Belteflcurareasronof ishingly good, but afrer a while a pond is a pond). Or again, there is JedediahBellefleur,one of the recurringrypes in Miss Oates'sfiction, the saindy man who, like Stephenin Tbe Assassins Nathan or in Son of tbe Morning, loses his hold on God. Jedediahis interesting,up to a point, and he's both dramarically and symbolically crucial to the story; but I at least am sorry when, every few chapters,we haveto return to Jedediahand watch him sraring at somethingimprobably called Mount Blanc or strugglingwith his not very interesting demons.("He's nuts, that's alli' we say,and slog on.) In the end Jedediahproveswonh it all. He loseshis sense of holy mission,thus becomingan appropriatefocusof the blind and ragng life force Miss Oates writes about in all her work. Jedediah nothing about the world, nothirg about C'od, but afterhis family's cars to near-extinctionby massacre, is persuaded leavehis mountain and he found the new Bellefleurline. The point is, of course,one made in loving God completely,one cares Sonof tbeMorning and elsewhere. nothing about the world, not even about people, whom one sees, but on the other hand, completely loving rightly, as mere insmnces; (as one'ssoul and becomes doesGideon oneself the world, one loses or in the end) a figure of death. is Whatever irs faults, Bellefleur simply brilliant. What do we ask An interestingstory that it be wonderful to readP of a book excepr view The whole religious-philosophical with profound implications? of Joyce Carol Oatesis here cleanly and dramaticallysmted.She has been saying for years,in book after book (stories,poems,o Play and literary criticism), that the world is Platonic. We are the expression of one life force,but once individuatedwe no longer know it, so that of we recoil in horror from the expression the same force in other living beings."Don't toucbme," Gideon Bellefleur keepssaying,as said YvonnePetriesaid in Tlte Assassins,I-aney tn Cbildwoldanda host we Blinded to our oneness, all besaidelsewhere. of other characrers nonimages vampires, ghosts.We are all unreflectable come assassins,

BELLEFLEUR z}t /

of in mirrors, crearures time, and dme is an illusion; we are all sexual maniacs, lovers engagedin a violent struggl to become totdly on with thosewe lorc (copulation and murder are dl but indistinguishable); we are all crazilyin love with the past-first our own Edenic childhood, strivesto secondthe whole past of the world. So kah, in Belleflcur, reconquerthe whole immenseoriginal Bellefleurestate-and endsup dead,not evenburied, burnt up with the houseafter the plane crash. cupidita* love and rs Bettefleur a medieval allegory of carita t)ersas The versus pride and selfishness. centralsymbol of the noral sel{ishness is change,baffling complexity, mystery.One charactermakes "crazy quilts" in which only shecan seethe pattern.Another hasbeentrying all his life to map the Bellefleurholdings,but everythingkeepschang mountainsshrink. Time is crazy.In ing-rivers changetheir courses, criticism as"sliding time" becomes fact what is known in Shakespeare in a calculatedmadness Belklleur. Chaptersleap backward and forward through the years-and that's the leastof it, Our main dramaticfocus, Bellefleur, b thou$ she'sa minor character, the psychicchild C-'ermaine whom we follow from binh to the egeof four. But in thesametime rhrough wenty or thiny years,and the settingPasses her father passes through somethinglike a thousand years,with hints of a time-span evengrearer.Peopleregul arly get taller or shofter, dependingon . whatever.The holy mountain in the Adirondacksto which Jedediah goesro find God is at first 10,000 feet high but by the end of the novel only 3,000 feet high. JoyceCarol Oateshas dways been, for those who look closely,a noralist, but this is the most openly religiousof her boola-not rehgrous that she arguesany one sectarianpoint of view. Here as in severalof her earlierworks the Angel of Death is an imponant figure, but here is for the first time the Angel of Life (not simply resignation) the winner. In the novel'sfinal chaptersGideon Bellefleur turns his back on himself undl we see starves dl he has been sincebinh, a sensualist; him as a death figure; findly becomeshis family's Angel of Death. But there'sone funher chapter,set far in the past, entitled "The as Angell' WhereasGideon's flight and kamikazeself-destruction he in mysticalmetahis crashes planeinto his ancestralhome are presented phors (the riseinto spiritual air, and so on), the final chapteris utterly An physical. Indian boy,a friend of the family, comestoJedediahon his mountain and tells him to return to the world. With no belief

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in God and no interestin the worldly, Jedediahreturnsto the woman he once loved and becomesthe father of thosewho will figure in this norel, becomesthe instrument of the blind life force that, accidenrally, indifferently, makes everything of value, makeseverynhingbeautiful 'fhanks by the simple vinue of its momentary existence. toJedediah, C'od goes on senselessly humming, discoveringHimself. That is, in Miss Oates's vision, the reasonwe hare to live and the reason life, however dangerous,,can a ioy, once we understand be our situation, Wb are C'od's body. Joyce Carol Oates is a "popular" novelist becauseher stories are (and the suspense nerrr fake' the horror will really come, susPenseful is aswell as, somedmes, triu*ph), because sexscenes sreamy the her are and because when shedescribes placeyou think you're there. pseudoa intellectualsseemto hate that popularity and complain, besides, that she "writes too muchJ' (For pseudo-intellectuals there are alwaysroo many books.) To red intellectualsMiss Oates'swork tendsto be appealing panly because vision is huge, well-informed and sound, and her panly becausethey too like suspense, brilliant descriptionsand sex. Though Belhllnr is not her best book, in my opinion it's a wonderful book all the same.By one two-pagethundersrorm she makesrhe resr of us novelistswonder why we left the farm. How srrangethe play of light and shadow in her gr^veyardsl How splendid the Bellefleurs' decaying rnansion!How convincing and individud the characten areand so many of them! In one psychicmoment, when the not-yet'rwoyear-old Germainecries"Bird-bird-bird!" and points at rhe window before a bird crashesinto it, breaking its neck, we're forced to ask how anyone can possiblywrite such boolcs,suchabsolutelyconvincing scenes,rousing in us, again and again, the familiar Oates effect, the point of all her an' j"yful terror gradually ebbing to\Mardwonder.

Italian Folktales

C A L V I N O ' SF I A n n I f , I L L I A N E - I T A L I A N IfnlO publishedin lt"ly twenty-four yearssgo, to the delight Folktales-was of all ltdians, and hasnow at last been translatedinto English.I canbeenable to comnot sayhow good the transladonis, sinceI harren't versions,but I am told by literary Italian friends that pare the two Stylisticdly, the Englith is everythingwe would expect ir's excellent. in a good translationof sucha masterasCalvino: colloquid but never economical,wry and flexible, and sometimescorny, plain-spoken, like the best authentic folk-speecheverywhere-stunningly lyricd, capableof turning (as at the end of the first tale, "Dauntless Little somber,moving. Even if this impressionof the John") unexpectedly should prorc wrorig, the book is, I think, ranslation'sprobableaccunacy to impossible recommendtoo highly. Every school and public library ought to own it; so should everyParent,and so should erteryreader who lovesstories. Calvino is possiblyltdy's most brilliant living writer. Few European airpons and collegebook' booksto be found in American drugstores, shopshavebeen able to match the appealof such works as Calvino's or t Cosmicontics,?,ero Tbe Noneristmt Knigbt Tbe Baron in tbe Tiees, Citles(prose His lesspopular books, Inoisible and TtteCloam Viscount. of and Tbe Castle CrosedDestinies, poems) Tlte Watcbnand Abn Stmies ,

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are equtlly masterful in their ways. His vivid, delightful, offhandedly learned fantasieshave made him even rnore popular in ltaly and throughout Europe, especi"llyFrance,where he now lives,servingon the editorial staff of the publishing firm Giulio Einaudi Editore. It is in pan Calvino's happy combinadon of tdents-master storyteller, experiencededitor aswell asscholar,critic and sometimeunirrersity lecturer-that makesltalian Folktalesthe superb book it is; and panly, of course, the praisemu$ go to generationsof unlettered old Italian women from every district (the origin of each tale is given), the traditional transmittersand sly revisorsof the tales. Cdvino's long introduction is both an explanationof his method in collecting and editing che fiabe and a classicstatementof the nature and meaning of folktdes or, in the broadestsense fury tales.For two , years,he tells us, he read and soned numerous collections,old and new, bad and good, of Itdian tdes, searchingout the best, hoping to bring together (as he has done) an assortmentrepresenmtive all of pans of ltdy, from Sicily to Tirscany,Venice and somewhat beyond, and representative, too, of dl of the folklorists' standard "types." The difficulties were numerous; I can take time to mention only one of them here. For sundry reasons, Italy neverwent through the kind of rornantic folk rwival most of Europe went through in the nineteenth cenrury-Germany at the time of the Grimm brothers,for instance.While the Germans and after them the French, Swedesand British were diligently hunting down tales and variants,seerching,as Wilhelm Grimm put it, for the broken jewels of the Old Religion "beneath the Christian grassand flowers"-i11 other words, scattered while much of Europe was turning to the folktde in search culturd of roots, borh linguistic and, loosely,magcd-sunny Catholic ltaly reated her tales as simply tales,changingthem, localizing them, combining and recombiningthem more freely than did culruresmore soberlyconcerned about their heritage.One result is that many of the published tales Cdvino had as sourceswere highly conscious,sometimessilly literary elevations folk material,while others werc authentic-sounding of but to the folktales directly traceablenot to Boccaccio's folk sources Decamernnitself. comparison Calvino's job was to "feel out," through a painstaking of variantsand through the power of his own imagrnation,the scanered, broken jewelsnot of the supposed Old Religion but of the authentic

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207

in folk roice and method. He becomes, effect, the most recent rtoice This is not to say that he in the history of each tde's transmission. making them simply the springboard for trea$ the tdes cavdierly, and original works. He adds,deletesor alterswith wonderful reserve, in his notesto the tdes he lets us know what he has done and what happensin the more important variants. for A major consideration, any sucheditor, must be folktale theory: In retellingold storiesshould one bend one's spataclesin the Germanic Or wuf, toward "ancient religion" and national consciousnessP in the way of the "Indianistsl' concernedto find allegoriesabout the sun and moon, the foundations for religious and civil evolutionPOr in of the way of anthropologists,inclined to find representations bloody Or initiadon rites? in the way of the Finnish school, interestedin migmtions and thereforeeverwatchful for types and motifsPOr should one read and revise in the way or weys of the Freudians? Cdvino's answer,for the ltalian tdes at least, is that though some may be useful,the folkde is essentidlysomething of theseapproaches much more basic,more universd and profound. "Folktales are red," he says. Taken all together,they offer, in their oft-repeatedand cona of stantlyvaryingexaminations human vicissitudes, general in explanationof life preserrred the slow ripening of rustic consciences; rhesefolk storiesare the catalogof the potential destinies of men and women, especidly for that stagein life when destiny is formed, i.e., youth, beginningwith binh, which itself often foreshadowsthe futur; then the departure from up, home, srid, frndly, through the trials of gro\Ming the attainment of matu rity and the proof of one's humaniry. . . There mu$ be fidelity to a goal and purity of hean, raluesfundamentd to sdvation and triumph. There must also be beauty, a sign of gracethat can be maskedby the humble, ugly guise of a frog; and aborreall, there must be present the infinite

in g' unirviner eninevervth g em t ::J:tilff: :;;ilf lT; $e

Though the ltalian tdes are all of the standard fifty-some types and have the standardmotifs (only one, according to the late Stith

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Thompson, is unique),they havea personality-or several relatedbut distinct regionalpersondities-all their own. As a group they contrast most sharply,to my mind, with the German and Austriantales,which are among the most powerful to be found in all folklore but are often marred by gratuitouscruelty. All folktale traditionscontain,of course, some cruelty and even,like nature,a fair amount of casualinjusticeunsatisfactory bridesof{handedlykilled by the ensorcelled prince and never atoned for (here in "Serpent King" and "King Crinl' for instance)or the child whose head the father cuts off and takeshome so that enemieswill not know the family'r idendty (as in "The Man Who Robbed the Robbers"). But there is relativelylittle of this in the ltalian tdes. They mention life's cruelty,then hurry on. There is very litde here,to put it another way, of that mdicious pleasure the rnisfonunesof others which in to Nietzscheseemeda standardcomponent of hurnan character. The Italian talesdo not needlessly frightenchildren into dutiful citizenship. They mention il(es but do not dwell on them; they do not gleefully slam the woodbox cover and chop off the innocent child's head. The ltalian talesdiffer from the German in various other waysas well-in their democraticattitudes(on which more later),in their cultural details(princesses but make lasagne), abovedl in their earthiness and realism or, more precisely,their delight in the interplay of the fabulous and the panicularizedreal. Thlesare often set in real towos; witches live in actual houseson actual $ree$. As for the eanhiness, though all folk traditions havesome of that in them, we hardly hear, in the German tales, anything like the following' The wise fool Giuti and his mother are in a tree, below which bandimare dividing their spoils."In a few minutes,GiuFi whispered, 'Wait.' 'l 'What!' 'l 'Marnrna, can't have to.' I have to make water.' 'Go 'No, 'Yes, on wait another minute.' I can't, Mammal you canl and do it, thenl And Giutd did it. When the banditsheardwatercoming 'How eanhdown, they said, about that, it's startingto rain!' " Crerman naughty. inessis in generd lesssimpleand direct, more self-consciously What the ltalian tales do have in common with the best of the German tdes-and with the best tales from Russia,China and so tales,they are extraorfonh-is superbdesign.Often, like the Russian dinarily rich in charactertzation-panly an effect of the considerable length and episodiccomplexityof many of the tales(the structuregives

ITALIAN FOLKTALES 2O9 /

characterroom) and panly an effect of the tellers' specialinterest in the way people are. showsup in odd places-in the Often the brilliant characten?*rtion Itdian specid handlingof the wise-fooltradition in the tdes of Giufi and his Mamma, in the strange,sad tale of the merman Nick Fish, of in the gloriousItalian rrersion the crafty animd who makesher pauper friend the richestman in the kingdom ("Giovannuzzathe Fox") and in the magnificent,solemn final tde in Calvino's collection, the tale 'JumP into My Sackl' of about acceptance old age and death, On the whole, the world of the ltalian tale is gende; its favorite theme is love (both boy-grl lora and family lora). Often the love theme is developedin a style one can only cdl operatic. In "The Canary Prince," a maiden locked in a tower finds meansof drawing t yellowclad princeto her room asa canary.Her stepmotherputs pins on the cushionon the windowsill so that one d^y,when the canary lands, and, when back in human form, lies at death's he's horribly stabbed door, The maidenclimbs down from her tower on knotted sheetsand, cures him, then returns to her tower. lovesick dummy in disguise, that he is, the prince returnsasa canaryto her room, turns back into a man, and pitifully complainsof her cruelty. After much of this, the maiden explainsand all is well. Or takethe wonderful tale called"The Parrrrt:'A cenain merchant's rge"-a phrasealmo$ ascommon as "once daughter"of marri4geable upon a time" in other traditions-is left by her father, who goeson trip. A bad king lusts after her and sendsagentsto knock a business at her door. With gtrlirh curiosity and vitdity shewould gtadly answer, but she has a cleverparrot who's good at stories,like Scheherazade. (The forgotten Muslim influence on the Italian folktale-as on the Spanish-is ercrywhereevident.)Again and again,asthe maiden turns " 'It's a fine storyl said her ear to the knock, the following transpirs: 'Now that woman that it's orrer,I can receive the merchant'sdaughter. 'But it's not quite over,' said the parrot. who claimsto be my aunt: 'There's still somemore to'come.Justlistento this!"' Shelistensand listens,and {inally her father comeshome and the parrot turns into discreetlyin a handsome prince, who has all this time been chastely, love with her. The ltalian tale nevertouches-or wants-the metaphoricbrilliance of the African tales(from the Masai, speakingof a woman to whom

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a lover has just proposed:"She was as still as when a grearrree falls in the jungle") and knows nothing of African mind-breaking paradox. The ltdian folktale hasno traceof the other-worldly softness British of and, especially, Irish folktales-no skimmeringof fairis,"lighter than noonday lightl' Though grrls may be transformedinto applesor pears, and though a roomful of gossamer weavingmay flow our of a walnut, the lulian tdes are too fond of peasant wit, too fond of real-worldcunning (in the Calabrian tales),too fond of the real sky, land and warer of kdy to be anything but heanily realistic.When hungry peoplego our into a cabbage field and pull a very l"tg. cabbage whose roothole is a tunnel Hell, the marvelous to happens almostincidentally'It's the convincing hunger, the people,the field of cabbages that standour in our minds. The Devil himsell in another tale, is as common as din, exceprthat his nose is silver. The Italian tales have none of the splendid enamelwork of the Chinese and Japanese, and also lack the standardexpectationof inhuman patiencefound in Middle Easternand Oriental tales.It is rrue that in one tale a maiden cannot win her love until she'sworn our sevenpairs of iron shoes,seveniron mantlesand seven iron hats, but "King Crini'the tragishe manages all rather quickly. The tale is it comic sagaof a king's son whose misfonune is that he's a pig. The local baker's daughter redeemshim after the pig has killed her two sisters-redeemshim panly because her cleverness, of partly because, $range to say,she loves him. (Presumablyshe loveshim even more when he becomesa handsomeprince.)The weird realismof "King Crin" is typical. Possiblyonly a child who has raisedand loved pigs will understandthe fondnesswith which the baker'sthird daughter rubs the bristlesof her dear husband'sback. Two funher features of lmlian tales require comment. One is their essentialdemocracy (especiallyin the Tirscantales);the other is their high regard for clever,energetic-or occasionallyclever,fat and lazy-women. Just as the ltalian storlnellersare in generd unclearabout the fine distinctionsbetween witches and dragons,giantsand ogres-features borrowed from folktaleselsewhere-the tale-tellers Ttrsc areunof any clear about what, exactly, kings might be. (Florencewas, you will remember,the binhplace of Italian democracyand the Renaissance.)

ITALIANFOLKTATES /

2ll

In Tirscantaleskings look out their windows into the windows of neighbor kinp. lnthefiabe, s h other Europeanfolktales, kings marry pei$anrs;but only in Italy does it seemnot wofth remark. [n most may be morally wonhy makesa point: A peasant the tnaditions marriage of a king. In ltaly, marriageitself, not the fact that the marriage is to ro a king, is the triumph. The only real advantage being a king canyell "Counselors!Counselors!" is that when you're in trouble you and somebodywill come.(An Italian folk-king can hardly lift a finger without his counselors.) In the Sicilian tales-and elsewhere-the tale-tellersoften show who are specialinterestin, as Calvino puts it, "ferninine characters in and enrerprising, courageous, contrastto the traditional conactirre, and the Sicilianwoman asa passive withdrawn creaturel' This cept of is especiallyevident in the tales of one tde-teller, "an illiterate old of seamstress winter woman, Agatuzza Messia,"a " seventy-year-old quilts" in Palermo,whose taleswere written down by the amateur -1916).She on or creates, passes to us, Pitri (1841 folklorist Giuseppe superbly individualized,cleveryoung women in such tales as "The Wife Who Lived on Wind" and "The King of Spain and the English the Milordl'But perhaps most delightfullycleverand yet, in the end, are marureand touchingof the folk heroines the emperor'sdaughter in "serpent King" (from Calabria)and the girl animal of astonishing subtlety,in the end betrayedfor all her pains,"Giovannuzra the Fox" (from Catania, Sicily). the I haveonly beenable to suggest richesin this lttg. collection, left a good ded unmentioned-the tdes of saints and I've necessarily and miracles cometo mind-but I haveperhapssaid enough to esmbwith the best folkmle lish my main point. Calvino's collection stands collectionsanywhere.

Fictionin MSS

L L O F T H E F I C T I O N I N T H I S F I R S TV O L U M E

of the new /VISSis by relativelyunknown writers, someof them previously unpublished, somejust beginningto be noticed.My chiefconcern as fiction editor is to print, nor rhe work of the alreadyfarnousthey have outlets enough-but the work of writers who, in my opinion, promise to be the belovedand admiredwriters of the nexr generation. If sometimein the future I publish fiction by someonewirh an instantly recognizable name, I will do it with reluctance, only because I like the story so much I cannot stand nor to publish it errcnthough doing so meansrobbing spacefrom somelidekno\iln writer who needs and deserves For a magazine there are of course advantages it. and disadvantages a policy like rnine. Including famous writers helps in to sell magazioes; but then, it's not absolutelynecessary that MSS sell like cra;zy. We're not under pressurefrom advenisersor, to tell the truth, anyoneelse.The only $rong pressure feel asfiction editor I is the pressure an ideal: to find and print the kind of fiction I, ss of

a reader, would be pleased come across. ro My msteis of course everyone's, in what followsI would not and not want to be understood trying to bully somereader as into liking what I like. I suspect what I like is premy that rallyliked,though gene I may bewrong;in anycase, includes pretrywide range ficrion it a of

212

FrcrroN IN MSS /

zlt

nothingm principle,though of courseit is true that some and excludes kinds of fiction tend, in generd, not to interestme much. My obiect the kinds of fiction I would like to stumble onto here is to describe in somedentist'soffice or library or on a friend's coffeetable-the kinds of fiction I thereforechoosefor MSS-so that lou, readingthesestories, can undersmndmore clearly how it is that I do such a brilliant job, or (you may decide)make such stupid mistakes. When I was a child-I rnean between, ssl, eight and fifteen-my farorite magaznein the world, and possiblythe only magazneI knew of, was the Satzrda! Eoming Post.(There is still L maguzineby that name, but in my opinion it shouldn't be confusedwith the Sarurday What was wonderful about the Posfwas that it really Eaening Post.l had stories.Plots. Characters.Interestingplacesand occupadons.Some like of the storieswere perhapsa litde low-class, the onesabout Ttrgboat Annie, for instsoc;but some of them were by people like William Faulkner,J. D. Salinger,and Kun Vonnegut. All of them, low'class quality: they were stories.Peoplein them or not, had one dependable set out after things, encountereddifficulties, and either won in the end or lost. I don't say that's the only kind of fiction I like, but for else me it's the main continent of fiction, and everyrthing getsits bearings and directions from that vast solidity. In this kind of fiction-real "story" fiction-what basicallyhappens, I think, is this' the writer se$ off in the reader'smind a vivid and continuous dream, a dream as dive and convincing as any nightmare or or sex-dream dreamthat makesthe dreamerlaugh doud in his sleep. that the writer has provided The fictional dream is aiaid in the sense enough concretedetail to dlow the readerto imagine people, places, and eventswith great clarity. The writer knows and is able to tell exonto his desk,or an elegant actly how a tired lawyer tosses glasses his old madwoman licks jelly off her napkin ^t a pany. In really first-rate storytelling fiction, we seethings more vividly than we seein the room around us when we look up from the book. And the fictional drearn in is continuous the sensethat the writer never distractsus from the we're i-4gt"ingby somegrammaticd mistake,or obvious mistake scene (for instancemaking a congressman shoot an iceof characterization we cream man when everynhing know about life tells us he wouldn't really do it), or somemistakeof mannerism(somecute trick of writing that makesus pay more attention to the writer than to the fictional

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dream), and so on. In storlnelling fiction we seerhings happeningand we understand instantly,usudly without beingtold, why rhey happen as they do. In the fictional dream, as in our dreamsaswe sleep,there is some urgent concern-something thar needs be achierred canto and not be achievedeasily,something wonh achievingin the first place, (Much of the grearest though possibly crazy. fiction we know is about people who've set out to do crarzy things which for some reasonwe ePProve of-Ahab's whde hunt, Raskolnikov's a$emprro beat the law, Achilles' outrageous demand that the universebe fair.) As a writer I think nothing is harder than this kind of story-rhe necessity making everynhing of believable, slippingin all the necessary details without ever being caught ar ir, and, worst of all, finding a story wonh telling in the first place,a story that's not old-har or cheaply predictable or so origind it strikes the readeras goofy. To be wonh telling, a story has to mean, and mean interestingly, either because it takes us mentally where we never were before-ro some stanling new idea or understanding things-or because surprises with of ir us the unexpeaed familiar. All so-called"experimentd fiction" is child's play besidethis-which is not to deny that experimenralfiction can be interesting.The story may be abour ordi nary people and familiar emotions, asisJoannaHiggins's"The Counship of Wido* Sobcek," or it may be utterly strang,asare severdstoriesin this issue-Robena Gupta's "The Cafe de Paris,"Ron Hansen's"Playlendi' G*g Michaelson's "The Dream Steder," and Sigrid Nunez's "The Bird That Ate the Stars"-but whateverits mode it must rewardour fundamental childlike wish for suspense and, in the end, satisfaction Not every story in future issues MSS will be of this kind' but of those that are not will in every casebe fictions that directly play off this-so to speak-norrn. In normal stor)telling, highly self-conscious style can be distracting;but what is a defect in normal sroryrelling can be turned into a vinue in another kind of fiction, in norrnal stor)nelling,outrageous improbability is a defecr,but in another kind of fiction it can be a delight: and in normd storfelling, ^ stupid theme is the death of fiction, but in another kind of story moronic valuespursued by moronic characters rhink of Laurel and Hardy) (I can be a ioy. All this doesn'tsaymuch, I realize,sinceit's mainly abstract. The te$ will be the storieswe print. But I hope I've made at least this

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much clear,thou$ my chief concernis the publication of new writers, rhat is not my only concern.Another, just about equal with the first, is the publication of storiesthat &R, in one way or another-erren if they're tragic-s joy to read.That is the god of all editors,oo doubt. of the differ, it's because personalities editors differ, some If magazines I hope my choicesare in taking pleasure one thing, somein another. the ones you would have made.

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way what writers-that is, writers of fiction-do. They write fiction. But even for writers themselvesit's not easy to say just what that means.We listento the sentence"They write fiction" and nod impatiently, as if the thing were too obvious to need saying,which in a way it is, because all agree,s speakers English,or what "they" we of rneans,and "write" and "fiction." But maybewe nodded too hastily. What do we mean,to $an with the easiest question,by "they"-that ''writers"? is, Most of us are snobs and would be inclined to say at once that with the obvious fact that writers are we need not concernourselves (of of varioussortsransng from, say, John Jakes the Bicentennialseries) and to Kun Vonnegut,to Herman Melville. As wanhos, IRS agents, zebrasare all animds, these dissimilar beinS-Jakes, Vonnegut, and Melville-are dl writers; but though the problem here might arnuse a chimpanzeeor a positivist, it does not seem,to us snobs,wonh attention. The word writers,and the pronoun we substitutefor it, has various rneanings, but the only one we really care about is the one which refers to the classrepresented Melville. The trouble with by judgment lies of coursein the fact that every this hasty, respectable individual writer, evena stern-mindedpersonlike Melville, is different

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peopleat differenttimes.In one mood, or in one crowd, the serious writer writes fairy tales;in anotherhe writes ponderousnovels;in still he another, diny limericks.A greatwriter is not greatbecause never if writes diny limericksbut because, he doeswrite one, he tries to write a very good one. Any writer who's worked in rarious forms can tell you from experience that it dl feelslike writing. Some people may feel that they're "*rlly" wridng when they work on their noralsand iust fooling around when they write bedtimestoriesfor their children;but that can mean only one of rwo things,I think: either that the writer hasa talent for writing novelsand not much talent for writing children'sstories,or elsethat the writer is a self-imponantdonzelwho writes both miserable children'sstories.I would saythat e\renin a gtven novelsand miserable work a writer is many different people.Just at the moment when his novel is most serious-most $renuouslylaboringto capturesomeProin found idea through meticulous andysis of characters action-the would do) that suddenlynotices(asJohnJakes Melvillean heavlnveight the serving-girlin the corner has lowered her bodice a little, trying eye.I don t meanthat our seriouswriter's to catchthe centralcharacter's has wandered;I mean that another side of him, after vigorous mind signaling,hasgotten his attention. Or to put it another way, wanting in to wrire like Tolstoy at his solemnest,he has suddenly discovered himself an urge to write like, say,Henry Fielding. If he givesin to the the impulse,s he may or may not, and pursues romancethe lowered bodice has invited, he may suddenly,at the height of idealisticlove, or the depth of debaucheryfind himself feelinga litde cynicd somehow, or puritanicallypious;or he may find himself distractedby the ferns and flutteroutsidethe window, which lure him to delicateappositions ing rhphms, lyricism for its own sake. writers inside What's happening here,of course,is not that several one writer's headareclubbingeachother for control of the typewriter keys.The true writer's mind is not a jungle but a noble democracy, in which all panies havetheir say,eventhe crazy ones, even the most sanity are imviolenrly passionate, otherwisejustice,balance, because possible.Wanting to write like Tolstoy at his solemnest,the writer finds a pan of himself rising to object to a hint of pompous braying, by unredeemed humor. Swingng toward agrarianbtgotry righteousness Fielding, the writer finds a pan of himself complaining about the

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of like a chess-playing absence highmindedness. Scanningpossibilities computer, weighi"g the rotes of his innumerableselrres, following now this leading roice, now that, the writer-multitude finds out, pageby whole which is his noral. pageand dnaftby dnaft,the saneand passionate Every fine writer haswithin him a John Jakes,a Marquis de Sade, aJamesMichener, a William Gass,a Melville. If his multitude of selves is rich but anarchic,uncontrollable,so that his work bulgesherewith pornography,there with dry philosophy,he is likely to be a "serious" writer but not a very good one. If for one reasonor another his selecwriter. Somewriters tion of selves limited, he is likely to be a lesser is they are limited because they are, simply, not very rich personalities: contain in them no Melville, no Marquis de Sade.Other writers are limited because, they voluntarily disenfranchise though rich in selves, l"tg. segnentsof their inner population to satisfythe whim of some market: they avoid ideas, or sex, or-as in the stock "Neu) Yorker story" -unfashionable emotion. is Writers whose stock of selves limited by simplicity of personality we dismiss-uncharinbly but not unjustly-as stupid. Writers limited by concern about market we dismissas commercial.How do we distinguish these lesserkinds of writers from the serious,even sublime writer who limits himself by the choice of some relativelysimple form-Shakespeare in the sonnets,Hawthorne in his storiesfor childrenPA',d how, we may as well ask in the samebreath, doesthe sim' plicity of a sonnet or children'sstory differ from the simplicity of a porno or mystery thrillerP the If you acceprmy metaphor of the writer asdemocracy, answer obvious.The whole community cannotget seems ro both questions togefier on a porno or the usud emotiondly simplemindedthriller, themselves, at leastso long asthe porno or thriller remain recognizable (Ross consciousand intentiond distonions of human experience. he McDonald is the superior mystery writer he is preciselybecause writing, the usual rules of his form, consistently to refuses abide by On so to speak,better than necessary.) the other hand, the sonnet tde, yarn, sketch,and so on-do story-or the parable, and children's oversimplifyor diston. When the whole community nor of necessity arguesabout war, pollutioo, or enetW, it arguesin one way; when it arguesabout building swing setson the playgrounds,it arguesin to anorher. I think no pan of a writer need be suppressed write

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Webor the juvenilesof Joan Aiken. It is true, of course, Cbarlone's that the children'sstory like the traditiond gothic tale, tends to use but it is not a langu ageinto which lttg. Pans a very specid language; cannot be translated. of our common experience One might put it this wa/: imponant thought is imponant only with thoseat whom it is aimed;nb sensible insofarasit communicates human beinggoeson talking when all of his audiencehaswalked away. Great children'slireraturetalls about the complexity of human ocperience in a way interestingand meaningfulto children; bad children's literature talks about what some mistakenperson imagineschildren careabout. The bad children'swriter writes ashe doeseither because, being of limited persondity, he thinks children care about no more being commercial,he wants to satisfyfor' than he does,or because, mulas made up by fools and statisticians. Great children'swriters, like great writers of any other kind, are complex, multitudinous of self. lb speak only of living American writers, think of the children'sfiction of Nancy Willard, Hilma Wolitzer, or SusanShreve.All of these writers, as it happens-not writers of adult fiction or poetry. For by chance-are also respectable unsatisconrrastthink of Ma,xineKumin or Roald Dahl, occasionally in fying writers both for children and for adults because, each case, one sideof the writer's personality-the angrily righteous-orrrwhelms the democraticbalancewith pious despotism. So much for the "they" in the truism about writers, "They write fictionl' kt me turn to "write." Writing is an action, a different action frorn tdking. The only conin ceivablerei$on for engaging writing is to make somethingrelatirrely permanentwhich one might otherwise forget. That would seemto imply that one thinks there is some val,rein the thing not to be forgorten-either some value alreadyachieved,as in the caseof a good recipe for scdloped pomtoes,or some potential vdu, 8s in the case of a love poem which stinks at the moment but has the right spirit and might get better under revision. Writers of the Melvillean class, they write that is, "serious" writers, write only in the secondsns: works that with luck and devotion may be improved by revision-or, in the end, works that baaebeen so improved, so that we may class such as good recipesfor scalloped them with other human treasures, potatoes.If one looks at the first drafts of even the greatestwriters,

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like Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, one sees that literary an doesnot come flying like Athena, fully formed, from Zeus'shead. Indeed,the firstdraft stupidity of greatwriters is a shocking and comfoning thing to see.What one learnsfrom studying successive draftsis that the writer did not know what he meantto sayuntil he saidit. A typo of "murder" for "mirror" can changethe whole plot of a novel. To put all this another way, what oral storytellersseem to do is figure out cenain pans of the world by telling storiesabout thesepafts, The Greeks,as you know, made much of this. Whereasmost civilizations feared and hated blindness,the Greeks elevatedit, at least as a symbol: the blind man was the man who had to seewith his tongue, understandingthe world by telling of it. What writers do is somewhat different. They figure out the world by mlking about it, then looking at what they've said and changingit. I don't mean, of course,that oral storynellers don't polish and repolish;I only meanto saythat there's a great difference betweenthe power and precisionof the two instruments-a difference i$ great as that between, say,a readingglassand a microscope.Think agarnof Homer. A fair pile of prehomericpoetry survives,all of it fairly good, most of it battle poetry all the battle piecesrelativelyshort, at leastin comparisonwith the lliad. The stan' dard heroic poem beforeHomer's drne probably ran to about the length of one or rwo books of the lliad. It may be true, as tradition says, that Homer was a blind ord poet, like Demodokos,his characterin but the Odyssey; it does not seemlikely. Homer appearedat the very moment when writing was reintroiuced in ancient Greece,and the to complexity of his poems-repeated, cunningly nried references bows, bed looms, Odysseus's and the great phallic pillar which supponsitimageswe're forced to describe,findly, * richly and ingeniouslysymfor bolic-can only be accounted in one of two wa/s: either by theory " that Homer was vastly more intelligent than any other human being who everlired, or by a theory that Homer wrote thingsdown, studied and, like Beethoven, them patienrly and stubbornly,like Beethoven, endlessly,brilliantly revised.

"popular rise astonishing of serious Or think of the sudden,

I arure in the late Middle Ages and early Renaiss&nc;mean the use, of Chaucer,and Shakespeare, sdaciousstories in writers like Boccaccio, serious and philosophically and folktdes asthe baseof psychologically recently been pointed out, time, as has literature. Before Boccaccio's

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writers usedparchment. makea Bible you had to kill three hundred To Books cost a lot, in money and catde-blood.One used parchcows. imponance-religious writiDS, ment only for thinp of the greetest time cathedralplans,the shoppinglistsof kings.Then in Boccaccio's was introduced,so that suddenlyi, was possiblefor Boccaccio paper to write down a diny joke he'd heard,fool around with it a littleor changethe farmer'sdaughterto a nun, for instance, introducecomicdly disparatehigh-classsymbolism-and produce rhe Decamernn. Chaucerdid the sameonly better.We havetwo drafts-by no means all that once existed-of Chaucer'sstory borrowed from Boccaccio, Tioilus and Criseyde. artists, writing has always meant, in effect, For the an of endlessrevising. Now let me turn to the third term in the formula "They write fictionl' What oral storytellerstell and retell we call legends,& tricky word that, if we deriveit from latin, means"that which is read," and if we take it (by falseetymol ogy,a once common one) from AngloSaxon, means-as a result of the softening of g to y-lying. Even in the beginningno one knew what to do with that. The primary meaning of hgd in the Middle Ageswas "a saint'slifel' In anycase, fiairn was from the beginningsomething else;it can only come from the latin and means"somethingshaped, molded,or derdsed]'As ercryone knows, the origns of words don't provemuch; but it seemstrue that we still usefaion in the original sense, not to describesome noble old lie which can be told, with no great loss, in a variety of ways, but to describe specifickind of made-upstory a story we think valua able preciselybecause the way it's shaped.\llbu can tell the legend of or fairy tale of lack and theBeanstalk preffy much Lny way you please, as long as you don't throw out Jack, the giant, the colored beans,or the beanstalk. Jackcan make three trips, or two, or oo; he can trade in the cow (or something)for the colored beanseither on the wry into town or at the fair; and so on. lb tell Faulkner'sAs I Lay Dying, Joyce's"The Deadj' or William Gass's"In the Hean of the Hean of the CountryJ'one hasto usethe writer's exactwords or dl is lost. The essentialdifferencebetween what we think of as "ficrion" and what we think of as "legend" is that, relatively at least, the shaping in fiction coun$ more heavily. In the broadestand perhapsmost imponant sense,fiction can go wrong in two wa/s: it fails as basic legend or it fails in its artifice.

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Most of the fiction one reads-I mean contemporaryfiction, but the samemay be said of fiction done in Dickens'sday, most of it by now ground to dust by dme's selecdvity-is trash. It makesno red aftempt at original and interesting style, and the story it tells is boring. This is simply to say,of course,that if fiction movestoo far from its model, legend, and abandons$ory it fails to satisfyour age-oldexpectations; if it does nor move far enough, telling its story without concernfor What writers do, style, it fails to satisfy other, newer expectations. false canonsof msteor some character if they haven't been misled by defect, is try to make up an interestingstory and tell it in an authendcally interestingway-that is, some way that, howeveroften we may read it, does not turn out to be boring.

The odds againsta writer's achieving a real work of an are astronomical. Most obviously the "they" of our "They write {iction" formula-in other words, the writer's person"lity-may go wrong. Every good writer is many things-x symbolist,a careful *udent of characrer,a person of strong opinions, a lover of pure tale or advenwar ture. In a bad or just ordinary novel, the writer's various selves we read, not one commanding voice with one another. We feel, as in evenrroices sharp and conbut a seriesof iarrrngly different rroices, fusing disagreement. The war of the writer's selvescan result in great fiction only in the caseof an exrraordinarily greatwriter, which is to say,an almost supernaturdly wise man-one who has the rare gift of being ableto seethrough his own soul's trickery.Very few peopleof the kind who often harre make good writers-rather childlike people,aspsychologists pointed our-are wise in life. They becomewise, if they do, by revision-by looking over what they've written down again and again, a hundred dmes,rwo hundred, eachtime in a slightly different mood, with a different model ringing in their ats:one d^y the writer looks over what he'swritten just after spendinga few hours readingTolstoy; his another day he rereads own work just after seeinga play by Samuel movie like TbeSound Beckar, or somesimplemindedbut good-heaned his mother'sfuneral.That Process, of Music, orjust after returning from endless revision and rereading-in different moods, with different models in mind-is the writer's chief hope.

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Or anpvay it is his chief hope if he has known all along what fiction is and has beentrying to write real fiction. I have said that true fiction is, in effect,oral storytelling written down and fxed, perfected by revision.Irt me refine that a little now. What is it that the writer is trying ro achieve-or ought to be-as he endlesslyfiddles with rough draftsP A true work of fiction is a wonderfully simple thing-so simple seriouswriters aroid trying it, feeling they ought that mo$ so-called how to do somethingmore impoftant and ingenious,never guessing incredibly difficult it is. A true work of fiction does all of the fola lowing things, and doesthem elegantly,efficiently' it creates vivid mind; it is implicidy philosophand continuousdreamin the reader's it ical; it fulfills or at least deds with all of the expectations setsup; and it strikesus, in the end, not simply as a thing done but as a shining performance. I will not elaborate in that description much detail. Some if it I've mentioned before,here and there; some of it seemsto me to need a no elaboration.I've said,first, that fiction creates vivid and continumind.Any readerknows at a glancethat ous dream in the reader's that is true, and that if a given work doesnot bring a vivid and continuous dreamto the reader-almost instantly,after firreor six wordsthe fiction is either bad or, what may be the samething, a so-cdled metafiction.One can deriveall the principlesof effectivefiction from the idea that the writer must make his dream vivid and continuous. The dream is not vivid, of course,if too many words are abstract, not concrete,if too many rarbs are passirc, many metaphorsfamiliar too or dull, and Soon; and the dreamis not continuousif some element in the writing distracts the readerfrom the story to thoughts about the stupidity of the writer-his inability to use proper grammar, his loquacity,his deviation into sentimentality,mannerism, or excessive frigidity, and so on. If the student writer can get rid of every one of thosecommon errorswhich regularlyunderminevividness and continua ousness, finite list not difficult to spell out, then that student can consistentlyavoid writing bad fiction. Whether or not he can write great fiction is of courseanother matter, one of genius or the lack of it. When the writer is finally writing true fiction, the best he is capableof, he may well discoverthat he'd better start making some carefully cdculated mistakes,disguisehis insipidity.

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It's the law of the vivid and continuousdream-for it is, I think, something close to an aesthetic law for fiction-that makes writing fiction what I've describedas a "wonderfully simple thingJ' All the writer hasto do is seewith absoluteclarity and vividness,and describe without misake exactlywhat he's seen.That wasFaulkner's genius-to see very clearly. No one forgets his image of the fdling lantern and the fire staning in "shingles for the [ord," or his image of a Negro shanty's din yard, "smooth as an old, worn nickel." What offends in Faulkner, as has often been remarked, is his failure to rraluethat clarity of vision, again and again mucking it up-especidly toward the end-with outrageouslymanneredprose,that is, prosecdculated to obscure the vision and cdl attention to the writer. Joyce did the same.At the end of his life, clear-headedly looking back, he thought "The Dead" the finest thirg he'd elrerdone, and Tolstoy's"How Much l^and Does a Man Need?" the finest work of fiction ever written. It had beenJoycehimsell of course,who madethe claim that the writer should be inconspicuousin his work, like God off in the corner of the universeparing his nails. ln Dublinm and Portrait he'd beentrue to that ideal; from that point on-however greatthe books in cenain ways-Joyce went for mannerism, and the sadtruth is he carried most of nventieth-century ficdon with him. To do the wonderfully simple thing red writers do at their best,one and his situaneedsonly to look clearly and levelly at one'scharacter is, tion. If the writer sees characterclearly,and if the chanacter asdl his will human beingsin fact are, unique in cenain respeas,that character situin inwitably beharre ways no one elsewould beharain that precise ation. It will prove impossibleto write a story which could be equally well playedin a film renion by Roben Redford, Dustin Hoffman, Alan eachand Arkin, Richard Dret'uss, or Frank Sinatra.If the writer sees clearly-ercn the most minor walk-ons-he ercry one of his characters can ne\rerfor a moment slip into clichi. Following actionsand reactions secondby secondthrough a significant chain of erants, keeping. sharp eye out to catch every wince or grin or nryitch, dways checking his imagination against experience(how do misers really behavein the world?), the writer almost cannot help coming up with a drearnwonh following-not a passiradream, of course,but one the readerstruggles a with, judges,tries to second-guess, dream of redity more vivid and keenestmoments of redity itself. powerful than all but the rare$,

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Of course part of what rnakesthis dream so vivid and powerful is that, like our best nightmares,the dream is thematic, or, as I put it earlier,it is implicitly philosophicd. I would say that, at their best, both fiction and philosophy do the same thing, only fiction does it is better-though slower. Philosophy by essence abstract,x sequence of general argument controlled in its profluence by either logic (in old-fashionedsystematicphilosophy)or emotional coherence(in the intuitive philosophiesof, say, Nietzsche and KierkegaarO. We read but what to the argument and it seems flow dong okay, make sense, we ask is, "ls this tnre of my mailman?" or "Do I redly follow the Do I unlike Prussianofficers, I am e courard? Golden Rule because, knoat any good Prussianofficers?" Fiction comes at quesdonsfrom somegsnenal the other end. It tracesor e,rplores argument by examining a panicular casein which the unirrersdcaseseemsimplied; and in place of logic or emotional coherence-the philosopher's stepping stones-fictional argumentis controlled by mimesis' we are persuaded would indeed do exacdy what we are told they that the characters do and say,whether the characters lifelike human beingsor a conare of gress insects given human traits. If the mimesisconvincesus, then the questionwe ask is oppositeto that we ask of philosophicalargument; that is, we ask,"Is this true in gmerdl?" Convinced by Captain Ahab, we want to know if in someway his story the story of a madman, appliesto dl human beings,mad or sane. In great fiction the writer, inching along from panicular to panicular, builds into his work arrows or vectorspointing us toward the general. He does this, we know, in numerousways-by relatinghis paniculars to some symbolic system recalling a familiar set of questionsof values, by playing his plot off rgeinstsome old and familiar plot, 8sJoyce does in Ulysses, by old-fashioned dlegory,by explicit authorial comment, by arrangng that his characters discussthe important issueswithin the story (the method of lblstoy and Dostoyevsky), by some other means. or What happensin great fiction is that, while we ere occupied with the vividnessand convincingness detail-admirin g, for instance,the of fact that Captain Ahab's persond crew is made up of Chinese never before seenon the ship until now, with the first lowering of the longboats-we are alsooccupiedwith the neatness and power of the philosophical argument.When reading great fiction, one never feels that the writer haswanderedfrom the subject.The true writer setsup for

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us some important question, in dramatic form, and exploresit clearmindedly, relendessly. readof Raskolnikov'sinitial indecisionabout We whether or not he hasthe right to commit murder, and we instantly recognizethe universalsignificanceof the question and lean forward tensely,waiting to seewhat will happen. We delight in the panicularsthe fact that he is very nearly caught on the stairs-and we delight simultaneouslyin seeingthe implied universals. in this sense that It's true fiction is implicitly philosophical. I need say nothing about the next standardI've mentioned, that fiction at its best satisfies our expectations.At the end of a mystery we want all the questionsanswered,red herringsexplainedaway,false clues justified, and so on. In a more seriouskind of novel, we want dl important issues dedt with, ro characterleft hiding foreverbehind the tree where the author put him and fotgo, him. It may be that, finishing the novel, we at first imagine that some thread was left untied-for instance,some symbolic idea. Two different characters may harrebeen subtly identified asEden serpents,and aswe finish the norrel we at first cen't seehow the double identification was resolved.Carefully rereading,we discorar that the seemingcontradictionwas indeed resolved,and the belatedsatisfactionof our expectation givespleasure. it But whether the satisfaction immediate or purposelydelayed, must is sooner or later corne. Findly, I've said that in the best fiction we get not just a pieceof work-efficient energythat movessomething-but a "shining performance." We say not just "What a true and good book!" but "What it magnificent writing!" To win our applause, cannot have the fake magnificence of mannerism-flights of purple prose, avant-garde rickery anifice aimed solely at cdling attention to the ani{icer. It mu$ have the true magnificenceof beaudful (somewould prefer to say "interesting") technique:adequateand "inspired"-that is, revised, rerevised,polished to near perfection. We recognizethis at once, I think, in acting. Some actors do a perfectly good job-we are never distractedto the actor behind the characterplayed-while other actors do a brilliant job: w do think of the actor, not as a human being at war with the pan being played,but asan ani$ whose skillscome singrng through the pan, making the charactermore interestingand "real" than we could have hoped or dreamed from a readingof the script.

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What the writers I caremosr about do is take fiction asthe single mosrimponant thing in life afterlife itself-life itself beingboth their raw material and the object of their celebration.They do it not for singularlybeautiful.Fiction is their egobut simplyto makesomething they go not to church religionand comfon: when they aredepressed, or but or psychoanalysis to Salinger Joyce,early Malamud, pans of to or the Bible as book. They write, themselves, Faulkner,Tolstoy, and cynics makethingsequally wonhy of trust-not storiesof creeps of of of of but stories peoplecapable ameasure heroism,capable strong of honestfeelingat leastsomeof the time, capable love and sacriand as fice-capableof all this, and arailable rnodelsfor imitation. Ercrlnhing or rrue writers do, I think, from laboriousplotting on butcherPaPer cardsto laborious revision, draft after draft, they do to rhree-by-five crearecbarafiers-thecenrerand hean of dl true fiction-characters whose powerful existence till who will serve Messiahcomes,characters Imperfect, even in our minds makesa real-lifemessiahunnecessary. of up writers raisethemselves by the techniques childishhuman beings, fiction ro somethingmuch better than eventhe bestof writers are in life' erreryday ordinary monals ffimsmutedfor the moment into apostles.

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I N Y I N GT o F I G U R Eo U T T H E C H I E FI N F L U enceson my work as a writer turns out to be mainly a problem of deciding what not to include. I grew up in a family where literary influencewas everywhere, including under the bridgeon our din road, where I kept my comic books. My father is a memorizerof poetry and scripture,a magnificentperformer in the old recitertradition. (l once did a readingin Rochester, NY., near Batavia,where I grew up. After I'd finished severalpeople remarked that I was a wonderful reader-"though not quite up to your father, of courseJ') did readHe ings of everlnhing from Edgar Guest to Shakespeare The Book and ofJob at the monthly Grangemeetinp, in schools,churches, hospitds. (who'd once beenhis high school While he milked the co\f,rs, mother my English teacher) would read Shakespeare's plays aloud to him from her three-leggedstool behind the gutter, and he would take, yelling from the co\ry'sflank, whatever part he'd decided on that nightMacbeth, King Lnar, Hamlet and so on. My mother was a well-knorvvn perfiormertoo, o(cept that shemainly sang.She had one of thosehoney-sweet Welsh sopranoroicesand sang everynhingfrom anthems to the spirituds she'd learned from an old black woman who took careof her during her childhood in Missouri. Often my mother perfiormedin blackface, with a red bandana, a,

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that shewasn't unless you understand that maysounddistasteful practice belting it out: She kidding; shewasauthentic,flatting, quarter-toning, They frequendyworked together,my mother and father, was amazing. and were known all over westernNew York. Sometimesthey were in plays-my mother often directed-and whereverwe went, riding around in the beat-upfarm truck or just sitting in the kitchen, they sang,alwaysin harmony,like cruzypeople. The housewas full of books, very few of them books that would and asidefrom the Shakespeare Dickens. now be rhought fashionable read aloud a lot-the narrativepoemsof Scott, miles of My parenrs tongfellow, spooky storiesby EdgarAllan Poe' the poemsof Tennyson and Browning, alsorather goofy religiouswriters (l loved them; what did I know?) like Lloyd C. Douglasand some woman whose name love storieswith titles like ,,{ me escapes now, who wrote Jesus-filled Patcbof Blue. My grandmother,who was bedridden through much fond of this religiouslady, and one of my childhood,was especially was to readher thesetender little novels. chores of my more pleasant was alwaysrhe moment the boy shyly touched the girl's The clirna;< hand. I've neverfound qnfhing more sexuallyarousingthan that Jesustouch. I mean it was smut, it nearly made me a filled, long-delayed perven, and not a court in the land could nail her. My favorireaurhors,at leastwhen I was betweenthe agesof eight as and eighteen, were in what might be described the nonrealistictradichoreswhen tion, God, Dickensand Disney.One of my lesspleasant I wasyoung was to readthe Bible from one end to the other. Reading like learning the Bible straightthrough is at least70 percentdiscipline, Latin. But the good pans are, of course,simply amazing.God is an enremely uneranwriter, but when He's good, nobody can touch trim. I learnedto find the good pans easily(somevery sexystuff here too), and both the poetry and the storynelling had a powerful effect on what I think good fiction ought to be! Dickens I ran into when I was in my early teens,when I began to find the Hardy boystiresomeand unconvincing.I nerrer liked realism much, but the irrealismof the two boys having long conversations (l while riding on motorcycles was big on motorcycles myself) was more than I could put up with. Runningacross Dickenswas like finding a secretdoor. I readbook after book, and when I'd finished the last one I remember feelinga kind of horror, s if suddenlythe color

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that when you had gone out of the world; then luckily I discovered had readfirst, you couldn't rememwenr back to one of rhe onesyou ber half of it, you could read it again and find it even better, so life wesn't quite as disappointing as for a moment I'd thought. For me ar that time Disney and Dickens were practictlly indis' tinguishable. Both created wonderful cartoon images,told storiesas direct as fairy tdes, knew the value of broad comedy spiceduP with a little weeping. I have since learnedthat Dickens is occasiondly profound, as Disney never deignsto be; but that was never why I vdued Dickens or have,now, a bust of him in my study to keep me honest. Unconsciously-without everhearingthe term, in fact-l leamedabout symbolism from Dickens and Disney, with the result that I would one should, those redistic writers as nelr learn to appreciate, I suppose things merely m they are. without resonance, who gtu. you life dam witches Dickens'ssymbolism may neverbe very deep-the disguised Uriah Heep and his mother flapping around like and fairy princesses, folderol of A Taleof Two Citiesbuzzards,or dl the self-conscious but in my experience, an) ilay, it spoils you forever for books that never go otboom. There were other imponant influencesduring this period of my life, probably the mosr imponant of which was opera. The Eastman School of Music presentedoperas fairly often (and of course played host ro rra\ling opera companies,including the Met). From Dickens and Disney (not ro mention C'od) it took no adiu$ment to become The plots of most operas(not all, heavenknows) are opera-addicted. gloriously simple-mindedor, to put it more favorably,elementd; the is srage norhing if it is nor e grandcartoon (Wagner'smountainscaPes and gnomes,Mozan's crazies,Humperdinck's angels,the weirdness and clowning that show up everywherefrom "La Bohime" to "The Talesof Hoffmann"). I was by this time playing French horn, and of courseI'd dways been around singing.So I got hooked at oncehence my specialfondnessnow for writing librettos. By the time I reachedcollegemy mstewas, I'm afraid, hopelessly set. PredictablyI was ravishedby Melville-dl those splendidcanoon images,for instanceAhab and the Chinesecoolieshe's kept hidden until the first time he needsto lower awayafter whde-and of course one of the dl-time greatcartoonists, by Mifton, who musr be considered as when Satan

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Puts on swifi wings, and toutardtbe Gatesof Helt Exploresbis solitaryflWt; suntntimes tbe He scourstbe rigbt band clast, snmetimes lefr, witb leael wing tbe Deep, tbm soares Nous sbaaes touring bigb. Up to tbefiery cnncaae (lt's rrue, Milton's a little boring now and then, and Milton teachers often don't valuethe canoonist in him and want to know things about Paradisel-ostthat only some kind of crazy could get seriously intertruth is that estedin; but never mind.) I'm afraid the embarrassing the whole literury tradition openedout, for me, from Disney and his kind. I got caught up in the mighty cartoonsof Homer and Dante (much later Virgil and Apollonius), the lessrealisticeighteenth-and (Fielditg, Smollett, Collins and the rest), norrelists nineteenth-century ('lblstoy, Dostoywsky,Biel)t), and those kinds the glorious mad Russians of poetswho fill one's headwith strange,intensevisions, like Blake, Coleridge and Keats. For me the whole world of literaturewas at this time one of grand carroons.I thought of myself mainly * a chemistry major and took I courses Englishjust for fun. I guess thought literaturwas unserious, in like going to the moviesor playingin a danceband, evenan orchestra. It did not seemro me that one ought to spend one's life on mere Richard like a butterfly or cricket. Beetho\n,Shakespeare, pleasure, Strauss,Conan Doyle might be a delight, but to fritter away one's well, not quite honest. Then I came across life in the ans seemed, the New Criticism. At the first collegeI went to (for two years)I'd read nearly all of I the Modern Library, panly for fun, panly because felt ignorant around wisdom about who could nlk with seeming people my fellow students, they hadn't Camusand Proust,Niazsche and Plato-I soon discorrered redly readwhat they claimedto haveread,they'd just come from the right part of town-but I'd neverin anyserioussense"studied" literwhere one wes examinedon what arure.(I took a couple of courses Carlyle and CardinalNewman said,without much emphasison why or ro whom.) But when I morad to WashinSon Universi,y it St. louis I got a whole new vision of what literature was for-that is, the vision of the New Criticism. Like the fanatic I've alwaysbeen, I fell learnto analyzngfiction, diging out symbolsand structuralsubdeties, ing about "levels" and so on.

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I don t saythis was a foolish activity-in faa I think the New Cridcs were basicallyright: It's much more interesting talk about how litto erature "worl$" than to read biographies the wrirer, which is mainly of what the New Criticism replaced.Working with the famous books by Cleanth Brooks and Roben Penn Warren, I beganro love things in fiction and poetry that I'd neverbefore nodced,things like meaning and design,and, like all my generation,I made the grear discovery that literature is wonhwhile, not a thing to be scornedby seriouspuritans but a thing to be embracedand turned cunningly to advantage. I learned that literature is Good for you, and that writers who are not deeply philosophicd should be scorned.I beganto readredists-rwo of whom, JaneAustenandJamesJoyce, actuallyliked-and I began I to write "serious" fiction; that is, insteadof writing pleasanr jingles or stories I desperatelyhoped would be published in rhe Saturday Eacning Postor maybe Manbunt, I began shyly eyeing rhe Kmyon Reaiew. With a sigh of relief (though I'd enjoyed them in a wa/) I quit math and science and signedup, instead,for courses philosophy in and sociologyand psychology,which I knew would make me a better person and perhapsa famous writer so brilliant and difficult rhat to get through my books you would need a teacher. This period lastedlonger than I careto admit. On the basisof my earnestness and a more or less astonishingmisreadingof Nietzsche (I was convincedthat he was sayingthat only fiction can be truly philosophical)I won a Woodrow Wilson fellowship to the Universiryof Iowa, where I meant to study in the famousWriters' Workshop but soon endedup taking medievallanguages literature,the literature and TlteDiaine CotnC'od had been nudging me toward dl along: Beoatulf, fell and Chaucer. The scales from my eyes.My edy,the Gawain poet works, New Critical compulsion to figure out exactly how everynhing how everynuanceplaysagainsteveryother, had suddenll'an immense field to plow. I continued to read and think about other literature-l went through a Thomas Mann phase,a Henry Jamesphaseand so on-but I found myself spendingmore and more dme trying to figure out medievalworks. It seems me that when I beganworking on medievd literature, to knew little about eventhe in the late'J0s and early'60s, scholars greatestworks in that literature. No one had redly figured out the $ructure of the works of the Gawain poet, not to mention Beoutulf

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or the poetry of Chaucer.Peoplewere still arguing about whether or not Beowulfisa Christian poem; people were still trying to shuffle The usual New Critical method, which around TbeCanterbur!Thles. on is to stareand smreat the work until it comes clear, was useless again and againyou found yourself staring at this material,because somethingthat felt like a symbol or an allusion, or felt that maybe it ought to be some kind of joke but you couldn't seethe humor. lb figureout the poem you had to {igureout the world it camefromprinciples readthe books the poetsknew, try to understandaesthetic One had no choice but to abandonedand forgotten centuriesago. becomea sort of scholar. Literary detectivework is alwaysfun, for a cenain kind of mind at least,but the work I did on medieralliterature,then on later classical literature,was for me the most excitingdetectivework I've everdone or heardof. The thing ws, not only did you solveinteresting puzzles, but when you got them solvedyou found you'd restoredsornething magnificent,a work of an-in the caseof Beousulf Tln Canterbury or Thlcs-supremely beautifuland noble.One uneanhedtricls of the craft that nobody'dknown or usedfor a long, long time-tricks one could turn on one'sown work, makingit differentfrom anybodyelse's and yet not ulzy, not merely novel. I think everywriter wantsto soundlike him- or herself;that's the main reasonone seesso many experimentalnovels. And of course the risk in the pursuit of newness that, in refusingto do what the is so-called tradition does, one ends up doing exactly the same thing everybodyelsetrying to get outsidethe tradition does.For better or worse (l'm no longer much concerned about whether it's better or worse),I joined up with an alternative tradition, one with which I felt almost eerily comfonable. My church-filled childhood delighted in discovering Christianity distantenough-in fact, for all practical a dead enough-to satisfynostalgiawithour stirring embarPurPoses, rassment and annoyance, modern Christianity does.For instance, as when one reads about "ensoulment"in a medievalbook-that is, when one readsarguments precisely on when the soul enrersthe fetus, and the argumentcomesfrom someoneof the thineenth century-one can read with interest;but when one hears a living Christian hotly debatingensoulment, hoping to be able ro suppon abonion without feelingsof guilt, one shrinks awuf,tries to ger lost in the crowd.

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I found in medievalculture and art, in other words, exactlywhat I neededas an instrument for looking at my own time and place.I of coursenever becamefor a moment a medievd Christian believer, but medievalideas and attitudes gave me a, meansof triangulating, a placeto stand.And, needless say,medievalliteraturehad built to into it everythingI'd liked best from the beginning,back in the days (canoon peopleand places), of C'od, Dickens and Disney,of grotesques noble feeling,humor (God was perhapsa little shon on humor) and real storytelling. I said earlier that I'm no longer much concerned about whether the work I've done and am doing is for better or worse.That is not quite as true as I might wish. Egoisticambition is the kind of weed that grows out of dragon'sblood' The more you chop it away the more it flourishes. But it's true that at a cenain point in one'scareer one beginsto face up to one's limitations, and the way to stay sane at sucha moment is to softenone'sstandards little-find good reasons a for approvinglumpy but well-intentionedwork, one'sown and everybody else's. To put all this anothe way,when I think backnow over the influr enceswhich have helped to shapethe way I write, I notice with L as touch of dismaythat they were as much bad influences good ones. I won't criticize C'od (anyway,He's almost certainlybeenmisquoted), but clearly the influence of Dickens and Disney was not all to the Insteadof good. Both of them incline one toward stylized gestures. lookingvery closelyat the world and writing it down, the wayJames Joyce does, brilliantly getting down, say,the way an old man moves his tongue over his gums, or the way a beautiful woman playswith her bracelets, writer like ffi, seducedby canoon vision, tendsto a pattern and againfor the samegesturalgimmicks,a consistent go agarn of caricature(comparethe way doors in Dostoyevskyareforeverfly' ing open or slamming). I look over my fiction of twenty yearsand seeit asone long frenzy a words like mnely andgrntesque,disproporof tics-endlessly repeated tionate number of peoplewith wooden fingersand a drearypenchant for frowning thoughdully or daning their eyesaround like maniacs. I seem incapableof writing a story in which peopledo not babble they're sayingthings I want to get philosophically,not really because babblingis one of the waysI habituallygive said but because earnest

cARrooNS /

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overweight,twitching canoon creations. vitality ro my shon-legged, needlessro say, frorn artists like Dickens end Disney I get ry/ And morbid habit of trying to rnakethe readerfall into tender weeping. The whole New Critical periodI went through, and the scholarly concern me, I think, into an excessive period rhat followed it, betrayed are and stories more that novels the case It's with significance. probably or if, interesting in some sense another,they mean something.But it hasbegunto dawn on me that-in fiction, as in all the arts-a little meaninggoesa long way.I think what chiefly made me notice this Until about five yearsogo, writing students. is the work of my creative writing, only medievalliteratureand now and I nevertaught creative then a little Greek. When I beganto look hard and often at student in that writing, I soon discovered one of the main mistakes their writing they've takentoo many English think (probablybecause is that students to that fiction is supposed tell us things-instruct literaturecourses) uS, improve uS, show us. they'reright, but only in a subtleand mysterious In a sense course of symbolicdly neatdetailin a story When one hasanalyzedevery sense. like "Death in Venice" or "Disorder and Early Sorrow"-when one hasaccountedfor every verbalrepetition, every pattern and relationorder every thought to be lifted ship, and set down in alphabetical that, when you come right down to from the story-one discovers it, Mann has told us nothing we didn't know already.More by -y (they later get better) than by writing students'early bad examples I all the good literary examples everread,I've come to seethat fiction to it It simply dramatizes. givesimponanceto ideas, seems ffie, pretty much in the way the string on which a handful of pearlshave been When I readmy earliest, $rung Svrs a kind of imponanceto the pearls. and most ingeniouslyconstructedfictions (Tbe Resurrection Grmdel) I find I can no longerfigurethe damnthingsout-would that I'd kept for all my chans! Insofar as such books are interesting, me at least, they're interesting because like the characters hope, as I reread, I and that life (the rest of the book) won't treat them too badly. I don't mean, of course,that I intend neveragainto use symbols or designmy storiesso that the readerhas the kind of experience William James with suchdelight' "There goesthe samething described I sawbeforeagainl'What I do meanis that when I wasthreeor four, or twelve or thineen, I understoodfiction more profoundly than I

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understood it through most of my writing years.I understoodthat a story like a painting, or like a symphony,is one of the mo$ u'onderful, one of the mo$ useless, things in the world. The magnificence of a work of an lies preciselyin the fact that nobody made the anist make it, he just did, and-except when one's in school-nobody makes the receiverread it, or look at it, or listen ro it, He just does. The influence of my writing studentshas been to lead me ro understand (or imagine I understand)that art's value is not that ir expresses life's meaning (though presumablyit does, as do butterfliesand crickets) but that it is, simply, splendidly,tbcre. I think of the perfiormances mother and fatherwould sometimes my do tt, for instance,the monthly meetingsof rhe Grange.The way the night would go is this' First everybody would crowd inro one irnmenseroom with trestle-tables white-paprtablecloths,rhe tables and dl loaded down with food, all the red-faced farmersand their plump wives and children finding folding chairsnear friends,and somebody would tap a water gl*t with the side of his spoon and would say a quick, self-consciousprayer, and then everybody would ear. It was a wonderfully pleasantsocid time, lots of jokes and stories and abundant country food; but it wasn't a time they chose solely for its pleasantoss: you wanted ro ger farmers ro come from all If over the county late at nrght, after chores,you had ro feedthem. Then they'd all go into another room and have their businessmeetinghow much or how little they should organize,how to keep the feedmills, the truckers and the United StatesCongressin line. Nobody much cared for the business meeting, though sometimessomebody would "g.r off a good one," as rhey used ro .say. Then, when the work was done my mother and father would srand there in the middle of the big, bright room and say poems or sing. How strangeit seemedto me that all theseserious,hardworking people should sit there grinning for an hour or more, listenin for instance, g, to my father t llit g them an endles, poindes story of aghort in armor, or e ship rescued by pigeons, or somebody cdled Dangerous Dan McGrew. It was absurd. I wasn't just imagining it. The whole thing wils deeply, weirdly absurd. Clearly if one is to devote a lifetime to doing sornething as crazy as that, one had better do it well-not necessarilybecausethere is any great vinue in doing it well but only because,if one does it badly, people may wake up and notice that what one's doing is crazy.

JuliusCrcsar andthe Werewolf

AND THE WNNEWOLF,,IS ULIUS CENS,q,N

work of sbort publisbed only fiaion. It ap Iolm Gardner's postbumously of 1984issue Playboy.Wbile otbcruncolleaed in peared tbeSeptmtber a erist-"TbeDarkmingCrreen" a 1972lowa Review, coyote' stories frtm of an antbologr,dozsns unpublisbed trickster for fobh writtm especially strong mougbto seetned and u)orks-only"JuliusCaesar tbe Wereusolf" 0f colleaion bisprose. in include tbis final

to health, there seems me no causefor alarm. The As to Caesar's visible, though perhapsa little sympromsyou mention are, indeed, theatricizedby your informant. Caesarhas always been a whirlwind and of eneqgy for that reasonsubjectto nertous attacls, suddentempers, funks and so fonh. When I was young, I confidently put it down to of excess blood, s condition complicated(said I) by powerful intermitrenr ejectionsof bile; but phlebotomy agitatesinsteadof quieting him, and his habitud exhilaration, lately sadto say(sadfor my diagnosis), hogwash.I speaklightly of these makesthe bile hypothesis increased, former opinions of mine, but you can hardly imagine what labor I've put into the study of this man, scribbling,pondering, tabulating,while, one after another, the chickens rise to confront a new dty and my

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candlesgutter out. All to no avail, but pride's for peoplewith good digestion.I bungle dong, putting up with myselfthe bestI can. (You'll forgrve a litde honest whining.) No man of science waserr presented with a puzzlemore perplexingand vexatiousthan this Caesar, with or richer opportunity for observingthe subjectof his inquiry. He's interested in my work-in fact, follows it closely. He dlows me to sir at his elbow or t4g dong whereverI pleas-ao amusingspecacle,Caesar striding like a lion down some corridor, white toga flying, his blackrobed physicianleapingalong like a spasmbehind him on one good l.g, one withered one. In any event, at the ageof fJ, his animal spirits have never been more vigorous. He regularlydictates four scribes a time-jabber, to at jabber, jabber, sentences crackling like lightning in a haystack,all of his letters of the greatestimportance to the state.Between senrences, to distract his impatience,he readsfrom a book. Or so he'd haveus think, and I'm gullible. It saves dme, I {ind, and in the end makes no big difference.His baldness more annoys him, it seems ffie, than to all the plots of the senators.For years, as you know, he combed his stragling blond hairs straightforward, and nothing pleased him more than the people'sdecisionto award him the crown of laurel, which he now wears everywhereexcept, I think, to bed. A feeble ruse and a delight to us all. The reflected light of his bald pate glows like a sun on the senate-chamber ceiling. His nervous energy is not significantly increased, think, from the I dayswhen I first knew him, many years Lgo,in Gaul. I wastransferred to the legion for some disservice the state-monumental, I'm sure, to but it's been 35 /earspand I've told the story so many times, in so many slyly self-congratulating versions,that by now I'rreforgotten the was glad of the transfer.I was a seadoctor before.I don't truth of it. I mind telling lou, water scaresthe pants off me. I rernember my first days with Caesar clear as crystal. He struck me at once as singular almost to the point of freakishness. was He tdler than other men, curiously black-eyed like and blond-headed, rwo beingsin one body. But what struck me most was his speed,both physicaland mental. He could outrun a deer, outthink everyenemy he rnet-and he was, besides, very srong. We dl knew why he fought so brilliantly. He was Silty of crimes so numerous, back in Rome, from theft to assaultto suspicionof treason,that he couldn't afford

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to return there as a common citizen.(It was true of most of us, but wasthe worst.) By gloriousvictories,he could win public honors Caesar and appointmentsand, thus, stand above the law, or at least above kick. Whatever his reasons-this I haveto give to himits meanesr no man in hisrory so far as it's recorded,everfought with such effecblind-pig devotionfrom or and tiveness passion won suchunshakable, he his men. He was not then the strategist later became,killing a few the left-handedand blindfolded, then persuading restto surrenderand acceptRoman citizenship.In those days, he painted the valleysred, weigheddown the treeswith hangingmen, made the riversrun slugHe gsh with corpses. wes alwaysin the thick of it, like a rabid bitch, to at seven a time. His body, it seems tDe,runs luring and slaughtering tempo' His sword movesmuch fasterthan by nature ar an accelerated norrnalman's.And he'suntiring.At the end of a l2-hour day'sforced a he march, when the whole encampmentwas finally asleep, used to pace like a half-starvedjaguar in his tent or sit with a small fish-oil lamp, wriring verse.I wonder if he may not havesome unknown sub$ance in common with the violent little flea. Through all his wars, Caesarfought like a man unhinged, but I as He Su. you my word, he's not cruzy. has the falling sickness, you but, for all the tdk, nothing more. All his know. A damnednuisance musclesgo violent, breaking free of his will, and he has a sudden, vividly red senseof falling into the deepestabyss,a fall that seems around to cenain ne\rer end, and no ma$erwhat serrantsor friendspress there'sno one, nothing, he him (he'sdimly awareof presences, says), he can reachout to. From an outward point of view, he'sunconscious at thesetimes,flailing, writhing, snappinghis teeth, dark eyesbulging and rolling out of sight, exudinga flood of oily tsrs;but from what but in someway transhe repons, I would say he is not unconscious the laws of a different set of formed, as if seizedfor the moment by gods. (I mean, of course, "forces" or "biologcal constraintsl') No doubt it adds to the pressure him that he's a creaturefull on and contradictions. Once, in Gaul, we were surprisedby an of pangs twilit forest and ambush.We had morredfor daysthrough dangerous, had come, with relief, to an Lreaof endlessyellow meadow, where only to our knees,so that we thought we were safe. reached the grass Suddenly,out of the grassall around us leaped an army of women. We'nenot in Gaul to butcher females!" Caesar cried, "Sal yourselrres!

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In the end, we killed them all. (I, asCaesar's killed no one.) physician, I trace Caesar'smelancholy streakto that incident. He became, thereafter, moody and uneasy, praying more than necessary sometimes and pausingabruptly to glanceall around him, though not a shadowhad stirred.It was not the surprise the ambush,I think. We'd beensurof prised before. The enemy was young and naked exceptfor weapons and armor, and they were singularlystubborn. They gaveus no choice but to kill them. I watched Caesarhimself cut one in halt moving his sword more slowly than usual and staring fixedly at her face. The melancholy streakhas been darkened,in my opinion, by his yearsin Rome. His workload would rattle a stoneApollo-hundreds of letters to write everyd^y,lines of suppliantsstretchinghalf a rnile, each with his grievancel.rg. or small and his absurd,ancient right to spit softly into Caesar'sear-not to mention the foolish disputes brought in to him for settlement.Some starvingscoundrelsteals another scoundrel's newly stolenpig, the whole ramshackle slum is up in arms, and for the public good the centurionsbring all paniesbeforeCaesar. Hours pass,lamps are lit, accuser and denier rant on, bangng tables, giving the air fierce kicks by way of warning. Surely a man of ordinary tolerancewould go mad-or go to sleep.Not our Caesar. listens He with the look of a man watching elderly peopleeat, then eventu"lly points to one or the other or both disputants,which meansthe person'sto be draggedawry for hangng, and then, with oddly meticulous care,one hand over his eyes,he dictatesto a scribethe detailsof the 'hdmit the next," caseand his dispensation, with dl his reasonings. he says,and folds his hands. And these are mere gnats before the hurricane.He's responsible, asthey saywhen they're giving him some medd, for the orderly oper& tion of the largest,richest, rnost powerful empire the world has ever red-nosed, known. He must rule the senate, with dl its constipated, wheezingfactions-every bleary eyeout for insult or iniury everylirerspotted hand half closedaround a dagger. And he must show at least for some semblanceof interest in the games,escape the bloodthirst of the citizenry.He watches kills, man or lion or whate\r,without the a sign of emotion, but I'm onto him. He makesme think of my days at sea, that still, perfefi weather before a plank buster. All this work he doeswithout a panicle of help, not a singleassisunt except the four or five scribeswho take dictation and the slave

JULrus cAESARAND THE wEREwOLF / 2+l who brings him parchment,ink and fresh oil or sandds-unless one one mustr Mark Antony: aloyal friend arrd willeounrsras I suppose ing drudg. but, asall Rome knows, weak as parsley.(He's grown fat than he was on the battlefield. here in the city and evenlessdecisive I've watched him trying to frame letters for Caesar,tugging his jaw would rnake instantly.)In short, the life of a over decisionsCaesar to dangerous hedth. I've Caesaris donkey work and unquestionably keenestinterest,but he warned and warnedhim. He listenswith the to His wary glances left and right become more makesno changes. especially and frequent,more noticeable odd. He haspainful headaches, looking for something and ar executions, now and then he sleepwalks, low cupboard.I find his heanbeatirregular, and under benches in errery all wildly rushing,sometimes but turning around and walksomerimes ing backward, as if he were both in a frenzy and monally bored. Some blame the death of his daughterfor all this. I'm dubious, That Julia wasdearto his hean I won't though nor beyondpersuasion. he was off with her every afternoon he deny. When she was well, teachingher to ride, walking the could sted from Rome'sbusiness, as hills with her, tellingher fairy tdes of godsdisguised peopleor people or, occasionally-the thing she constellations transformedinto celestial I liked best,of course-recoundng his adventures. rememberhow the girl used to gszeat him such times, elbows on her knees,hands on over her shouldersand down her soft, palehair cascading her cheeks, long back-it mademe think of thosebeautiful dtar-lit statuesin houses of prostitution. (I mean no offense.Old men by nature are prone to nastiness.) wis an intelligentStl, dways pursingher lips and frownShe ing, preparingto sa/, "Tut, tutl' He taught her knots and beltwork and the nicer of the soldiers'song, eventaught her his specialtricks of swordsmanship-becauseshe nagged hirn to it (you know how daughtersare)-and, for all I know, the subtletiesof planning a campaign againstIndia and China. I neversaw a father rnore filled with woe than Caesarwhen the sickness first invadedher. He would rush (I never saw him take even a nap up and down, far into the.night through dl that period), and he was blisteringto eventhe most bentsenators, say nothing of whiny supbacked,senileand dangerous to pliants and his poor silentwife. His poemstook an ugly turn-much talk of quicksandand maws and the like-and the bills he proposed weren't much preaier; and then there was the business beforethe senate

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with the gladiators. But when Julia died, he kissed wilry forehead her and left the room and, so far as one could see,that was that. After the great funerd so grumbled about in cenain quarters, he seemed rnuch the sameman he'd seemedbefore,nor just externallybut also internally, so far as my sciencecould reach. His blood was very dark but, for him, normal; his stools were ordinaDr;his seizures more no tedious than usud. So what can havebrought on this changeyou inquire of and find so disturbing-as do I, of course?(At my age, nothing's as terrible as might have been expected.)I have a guessI might offer, bur ir's so crackpot I think I'd rather sit on it. I'll narraterhe circumsrances that prompt it; you can draw your own conclusions.

Some days Lgo,March first, shonly after nightfall, asI waswashing out my undenhings and fxing myself for bed, two messengers appeared at my door with the request-polite but very firm-that I ar once ger back into my clothes and go to Caesar.I naturally-after some perfunaory sniraling-obeyed. I found the greatman alone in his chamber, staring out the one high window that overlooksthe city. Ir was a fine scene,actedwith great dignity, if you favor that sorr of thing. He did not turn at our entrance, though only a man very deep in rhought could havefailed to notice the brightness the torchesas their light of set fire to the wide marble floor with its inlay of gold and quanz. We waited. It was obvious that somethingwas afoot. I was on guard. Nothing interestsCaesar,I've learned,but Caesar. Full-scdeinvasion of the Empire's borders would not rouse in him this banked fire of restlessness-fierce almost-except insofar asits repulsion playfulness, might catch him more honor. There was a scentin the rcom, the smell of an animal, I thought at first, then correctedmyselfi a blood smell. "Show himJ' Caesarsaid quiedy, still not turning. I craned about and saw,even before my Sides had inclined their torchesin that direction, that on the high marble table at the far end of the room some large,wet, misshapen object had been placed,then blanketed.I knew instantly what it was,to ti[ the truth, and my eyes widened. They have other doctors; it was the middle of the night! I have bladder infections and prostatetrouble; I can hardly move my bowelswithout a clyster! When the heavy brown cloth wes solemnly

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right. It was, or had once been, drawn away,I saw that I'd guessed rnerlr a slare, prcbebly riclr esd adFniredin whata tdl, bronze.skirlod evercounrry he'd beendraggedfrom. His kneeswere drawn up nearly at to his pectoralsand his head rolled out oddly, almost severed the his neck. One could guess stature only from the length of his arms and the shiny span exposed,caked with blood, from knee to foot. One ear had been panially chewed away. asked.I heardhim coming toward "Whar do you makeof iu)" Caesar swift feet, then heard him turn, pivoting on me on those dangerous, hissingsandal,moving back quickly toward the window. I could one though I did not look' gestures imagrnehis nenous, impatient gestures, of a man angily tdking to himself,bullying, negotiating-rapidly oPenflipping his right hand, like a sailor ing and closinghis fistsor resdessly playing out coil after coil of line. "Dogs-" I began. "Not dogsJ'he saidsharply,almost beforeI'd spoken.I felt myself grow smaller, the sensationin my extremities shrinking toward my and pulled at hean. I put on my mincing, poor-old-man expression out my beard,then reached Bngerly to mo\ the head, examiningmore Whatcloselythe clottedgangliawhere the thorax had beentorn Lwary. from He everhad killed him had done him a kindness. was abscessed When I looked over at Caesar, the thyroid to the arna caaasuperior. he was back at the window, motionlessagain,the musclesof his arm and shouldersvollen asif clamping in rage.Beyond his head,the night had grown dark. It had beenclear,earlier,with a fine, full moon; now and oppressive-no stars,Do moon, only the it was heavily overcast lurid glow here and there, of a torch. In the light of the torchesthe eyesgleamed,inheld, one on each side of me, Caesar's messengers tendy watching. "Wolves," I said, with conviction. his times in quick successionHe turned, snapped {ingersseveral in the high, stoneroorn, it was like the sound of a man clapping-and almost the sameinstant, a centurion entered, leading a grl. Before shewas through the archway,shewas down on her knees,scrambling toward Caesaras if to kiss his toes and anklesbefore he could behead almost piay, her. Obviously,shedid not know his feelingof tenderness, turned his back to the toward young women. At her approachCaesar window and raisedhis hands, as if to ward her off. The centurion,

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a young man with blue eyes,like a C'erman's,jerked at her wrist and stopped her. Almost gently, the young man put his free hand into her hair and tipped her face up. She was perhaps16, a thin girl with large, dark, flashing eyes full of fear. Caesarsaid, never taking his gazefrom her, "This young woman says the wolf was a man." I considered for a mornent, only fot politeness."Nor possible," I said. I limped nearerto them, bending for a closerloolc at the Stl. If she was insane, she showed none of the usual signs-depressed temples,coatedtongue, anernia,inappropriatesmilesand ge$ures.She was not a slave,like the corpse on the table-nor of his race,either. Because her foreignness, couldn't judge what her class of I ws, excepr that she was a commoner. She rolled her eyestoward m, a plea like a dog's. It was hard to believe that her terror was entirely an effect of her audience with Caesar. Caesarsaid, "The Goths havelegends,doctor, about men who at cenain times turn into wolrres." '4h," I said, noncommittd. He shifted his gazeto meet mine, little fires in his pupils. I shrank from him-visibly, no doubt. Nothing is stupideror more dangerous than toying with Caesar's intelligence. But he restrained himself. " Ah!' " he mimicked with awful scorn and, for an instant, smiled. He looked back at the Srl, then awary again at once; then he strode over to the corpse and stood with his back to ffi, staring down at it, or into it, as if hunting for its soul, his fists rigid on his hips to keep his fingersfrom drumming. "You know a good deal, old friendi' he said, epperentlyaddressingmyself, not the corpse. "But possibly not errerythirg!" He raisedhis right arn, making purposely awkward loops in the air with his hand, and rolled his eyesat rD,grinning with what might havebeen mdice, exceptthat he's abore that. Impersond rrye at a universetoo slow for him. He said, "Perhaps, flopping up and down through the world like a great, clumsy bat, trying to spy out the secretsof the gods, you miss a few thingsPSome litde rifle here or there?" I said nothing, merely pressed humble palms together.To make my perfectly clear my dutiful derodoo, I limped over to stand at his side, looking with him, gravely,at the body. Moving the leg-there was as yet no ,ig* monis-I saw that the body had been panly disemboweled.

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24t

The spleenwas untouchedin the intestinaldisarray;the liver was nowhere to be seerl. I could feel the girl's eyes on my baek. Casar's smile was gone now, hoveringjust below the surface.He had his hand on the deadman'sfoot, touching it as if to seeif boneswere broken, or as if the man were a friend, a fellow warrior. He loweredhis voice."This isn't the firstl'he said. "We've kept for the matter quiet, but it's beenhappening monthsl' His right hand moved out like a stealthyanimal, anticipatinghis thought. His voice grew poetic. (It was a.bad idea,that laurel cnown.)'A suddenblack and in the morning-in some alley shadow,a cry out of the darkness, or in the middle of a field or huddled againstsome rotdng door in the tanners'distria-a corpseripped and mauledpastrecognition. The womenl' victims aren'tchildren,doctor; they'r grown men, sometimes becameunreadable,as He frowned. The next instant, his expression if he were mentally reachingback, abandoningpresenttirne, this present heanbeats and then, just as suddenly, body. Six, maybeseven passed; 'And he was here with us again,Ieaningtoward me, oddly smiling. then tonight," he said,"this treasure!"With a gesturewildly theatrical-I saw myselfat the far end of the forum, at the greatdoor where the commonerspeerin-he s\ilepthis arm toward the girl. She looked, cowering, from one to the other of us, then up at the soldier. Caesarcrossed her; I followed pan way. "He was half man, half to wolf; is that your story?" He bent over her, pressing hands to his his kneesas he askedit. Clearly he meant to seemfatherly, but his body was all iron, the muscles his shouldersand arms locked and huge. of After a moment, she nodded. "He wore clotheslike a man?" Again shenodded,this time looking warily at me. She had extraordinary eyes,glistening,dark, bottornlessand very large, perhapsthe first symptom of a developingexophthalmic goiter. Caesarstraightened and turned to the centurion. 'And what up was this young woman doing when you found her?" "Dragrng the body, sir." One sideof his mouth morred,the faintest suggestion a srnile. "It appearedto us she was hiding itJ' of Now Caesar tumed to me, his headinclined to one side,like a lawyer 'And in court. why would she be doing that?" At last the girl's terror was explicable.

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I admired the grrl for not resistingus. She knew, no doubt-dl Rornansknow-that torture can work wonders.Although I've never been an optimist, I like to believeit was not fear of tonure that persuadedher but the cenain knowledgethat whate\Ersufferings mlght she put herselfthrough, she would in the end do as we wished. She had a curious elegance a girl of her station.Although shewalked head for duckedforward, asall such peopledo, and although her gait wasoddlong strides,feet striking flat, like an Egyptian s-her faceshowedthe composureand fixed resolveone sometimessees smtues, on perhaps somerangeful, endlesly patient Diana flanked by her hounds.Although one of the centurions in our company held the girl's elbow, there seemed risk that shewould ,ry ,o run away.Caesar, no wearinga dark hood and mande now, kept evenwith her or sometimes moveda little aheadin his impatience.The threeother centurionsand I camebehind, I in great discomfort, wincing massively every right-foot lurch but, at for dl that, watching everythingaround ffi, especially Srl, with the sharp attention. It grew darker and quieter aswe descended into the slums. The sky was still overcast,so heavily blanketedone couldn't evenguess inwhich pan of the night the moon hung. Now and then, like some mysteriouspain, lightning would bloom and move deepin the clouds, giving them featuresand shapes a moment, and we'd for hear a low rumble; then blackness would closeon us deeperthan before. The girl, too, seemed to mind the darkness.Every so often, as we circled downward, I'd see her lift and turn her head, as if she were trying to find her bearings. No one was about. Nothing moved exceptnow and then a rat researchinggarbageor scamperingalong a gutter, or a chicken stirring in its coop aswe passed, spirit troubled by bad dreams.In this pan its of town, there were no candles,much lesstorches-and just as well' The whole sectionwas a tinderbox. The buildingswere three and four one another storieshigh, leaningout drunkenly owr the $reet or against like beggars outside a temple, black, rotten wood that went shiny as intestineswhen the lightning glowed, wdls patchedwith hides and daubsof mud, $raw and rotten h"y packedin dghtly at the crooked foundations. The only water was the water in the streetsor in the river invisible in the darknessbelow us, poisonously inching under bridge after bridge toward the sea.When I looked back up the hill betweenlightning blooms, I could no longer make out so much as

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palaceor the firm, white mansionsof the richan arch of Caesar's only a smoky luminosity red under the clouds.The streetwas airless, heavywith the smellof deadthings and urine. E*ry door and shutter was unhedthily closedtight. more slowly now, barely able to seeone another. We progressed I cannorsaywhat we were walking on; it was slippery and gaveunderrefusalto use torches; but he was foot. I was feeling crossat Caesar's the crafty old warrior, not I. Once,with a clatterI mistook for thunder, the somelrrg. thing rushedacross streetin front of us, out of darkness and in again-a man, a donkey, some rackety demon-and we all sropped.No one spoke;then Caesarlaughed.We resumedour walk. Minures later, the girl stoppedwithout a word. We had arrived. The man was old. He might have been sitting there, behind his table in the dark, for centuries.It was not dark now. As soon as the had tipped back his hood, reached hide door wi$ tighdy closed,Caesar which iron svord and brought out candles, into his cloak p* his heavy he gaveto two centurions to light and hold; the room was far too confined for torches.The other two centurions waited outside; evo so, there was not much noom. The man behind the table was bearded, not like a physicianbut like a foreigner-a great white-silver beard that flicked out like fire in dl directions.His hair was long, unkempt, his eyebrowsbushy; his blurry eyespeeredout as if from deep in a cave.Purple bruisesfell in chevronsfrom just under his eyesinto his mustache. he wassurprisedor alarmed,he showedno sign, merely If sat-stocky, firmly planted-behind his squaretable, staring straight ahead,not visibly breathing, like a man waiting in the underworld. The girl sat on a low stool, her back againstthe wall, between her father and the restof us. She gazedat her kneesin silence.Her face wils like that of an actress awaiting her entrance,intenselydive, showing no expression. The apanment, we saw as the light seepedinto it, was a riddle. Although in the poorestsectionof the city, it held a clutter of books, and the furniture, though sparse, was elaboratelycarvedand solid; it would bring a good price in the marketsthat specialize things outin landish. Herbs hung from the rafters,only a few of them known to me. Clearly it wasn'tpoveny or common ignorance that had brought thesepeople here.Something troubled .y nostrils, making the hair on the back of my neck rise-not the herbs or the scent of storm in

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the air but somethingelse;the six-weeksmell of penned animds in the hold of a ship, it came to me at last. That instant, a terrific crack of thunder stnrck, much nearer than the rest, making all of us, even Caesar,jn*p-all, that is, but the beardedold man. I heard wind sweep in, catching at the raggededgesof things, rnoving everynhing that would move. The first indication that the old man was awareof us-or, indeed, aware of anphing-came when Caesarinclined his head to me and said, "Doctor, it's closein here.Undo the windowl' The beardedman's mouth opened as if prepared to object-his teeth gleamed yellowand his daughter'seyesflew wide; then both, I thought, gaveway, The man's beardand mu$achebecameone again, resignedthemselves. and the flicker of life sank back out of his face. I, too, had cenain The only window in the room, its shuttersnow smdl reservarions. rattling and rugging, was the one behind the bearded man's right like a man shoulder; and though he seemednot ferocious-he behaved under sedation,in fact, his eyelidsheavy,eyesfilmed over-I did not relish the thought of moving nearer to a man who believedhe could I change into a wolf. Neither did I much like Caesar'sexpression. rememberedhow once, hdting his army, heU sentthree men into a mountain notch to find out whether they drew fire. I made-cunning old fan that I am-the obvious and inevitable choice. I hobbled to the window, throwing my good leg forward and hauling in the bad one, making a great show of pitiful vulnerability, my face a heart-rending mask of profoundest apology-I unfastened the latches,threw the shutterswide and hooked them, then ran like To a child playing sticks in the ring back to Caesar. my horror, Caesar man, gloomier than Saturn until laughed. Strangero say,the bearded this moment, laughed, too. I swung around like a billy goat to give resPed or, at least, him a look. Old Lge,he should know, deserves mercy-not really,of course;bur I try to get one or the other if I can. was "He keepclear. . .werewolti' the beardedman said. His speech slurred, his roice like the creakiest hinge in Tuscany.He tapped his fingenips together as if in slowed-down merriment. The night framed in the window behind him was as dense and black as e\r but dive now, roaring and b*F g. Caesarand the rwo centurionslaughedwith the old man as if there were nothing $renge at dl in his admission that, indeed, he was a werewolf. The grrl's facewas red, whether with

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For angeror shameI couldn't guess. an instant,I was mad asa hornet, as they'd setup this business a joke on me; but gradualty, suspecring my reasonregainedthe upper hand. Take it from an old man who's seen a few things, It's always a mistake to assumethat anything has been done for you person"lly, even evil. white and the loudestcrashof thunder yet stopped The world flashed their laughter and, very nearly,my hean. Now rain came pouring down like a waterfall, silver-goldwhere the candlelight reachedit, a bright sheetblowin g awayfrom us, violently hissing.The girl had her hands over her ears. The werewolf smiled, uneasy,as if unsure what was making all the noise. Now that we were all on such friendly teffns, we introduced ourselves. The man's name was Vcidfiet-one of those nonhern names that haveno meaning.When he held out his leadenhand to Caesar, Caesarthoughtfully bowed and looked at it but did not touch it. I, too, looked, standinga little behind Caesarand to his left. The man's fingernailswere thick yellow and carvedwith ridges,like old people's toenails,and stranger yet, the lines of the pdm-what I could seeof of of them-were like the scribbles a child who has a vaguesense letters but not of words. It was from him that the animd smell came, almost intolerably rank, up close,evenwith the breezefrom the window. I'd have grvenmy purse to get the palps of my fingers into his cranium, especidlythe area-as closeas I could get-of the pallium prohaus. Preferably after he was dead. "Strange;' Caesar said,gendy strokingthe sides his mouth, head of bowed, shouldersrigid, looking from the werewolf to me, then back. unnatuolly alen, yet completely unafraid or elseindifCaesarseemed ferent-no, not indifferent: on fire, as if for some reason he thought he'd met his match. The fingersof his left hand drummed on the side of his l.g. He said,with the terrible coy irony he useson senators, "You seem not rnuch bothered by these thinp you dol' The werewolf sighed,made a growl-like noise, then shruggedand tipped his head, quizzical.He ran his tongue over his upper teeth, a gesturewe ancientsknow well. We're authoritieson rot. We taste it, insofar as we still taste, with every breath. "Come, come," Caesarsaid, suddenly bending forward, smiling, sharp-eyed, and jerked his right hand, fingers tight, toward the werewolf's face.The man no more flinched than an ox would have done,

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drugged for slaughter.His heavy eyelidsblinked once, slowly. Caesar said, againin a voice that seemedironic, perhaps self-mocking,"Your daugbur seemsbothered enough!" The werewolf looked around the room until he found her, still there on her stool. She went on staring at her knees.Thunder hir, nor as close now, but loud. Her back jerked. 'And It, youl' Caesarsaid,his roice rising,stern-again rherewas that hint of self-mockeryand somethingelse'lidded violencg-"that doesn't trouble you. Your daughter'sself-sacrifice, labor to proher tect you-" The man raisedhis handsfrom the table,palmsout, evidentlystruggling for concentration,and made a growling noise.Perhaps said, he "Godsl' He spreadone hand over his chestin the age-oldsign of injured innocence,then slowly raisedthe hand toward the ceiling, or possiblyhe meant the window behind him, and with an effon splayed out the fingers. "Moon," he said, and looked at us hopefully, then saw that we didn t understandhim. "Moonl' he saidcarefully."Cloudl' His faceshowedfrustration and confusion,like a strokevictim's, thou$, obviously,that wasn't his trouble, I thought; ro musclelos, no discernible differentiation betweenhis left sideand his right. "Full moon. . shine. . . oo, but . . :' Although his eyes were still unfocused, smiled, he he'd caughtmy worried glanceat the window. After a moment's eager; hesitation, the werewolf lowered his hands again and folded them. "The moon," Caesarsaid, and jabbed a finger at the night. "You mean you blame-" and openedhis hands The rnan shrugged, confusiondeepening, his as if admitting that the excusewas feeble,then restedhis dull eyeon Caesar,tipped his head like a dog and went on waiting. Caesar turned from him, rethinking things,and now I sawred fury rising in him at last. "The moon," he saidhalf to himself,and looked he Recklessly, flew hard at the centurion, as if checkinghis expression. back to the table and slammedthe top with the flat of both hands. "Wake up!" he shoutedin the werewolfs face,so ferociousthat che cords of his neck stood out. The werewolf slowly blinked. Caesarstared at hirn, eyes bulging, then againturned awayfrom of him and crossed room. He clampedhis handsto the sides his the staning his face and squeezed eyesshut-perhaps he had a headache

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up. Thunder bangedaway,and the rain, still falling hard, was now a steadyhiss,a rattle of small riverson the street,We could hear the two centurionsoutsidethe door flap ruefully talking. At last, Caesar half turned backto the werewolf. In the tone men usefor commands, he asked,"What does it feel like, coming on?" The werewolf said nothing for a long moment, then echoed, &s to if the words made no sense him, "Feel likej' He nodded slowly, The gtrl put her handsotrer or asif deeplyinterested secretlyamused. her face. Caesarsaid,turning more, raisinghis hand to stop whateverwords might be coming, "Never mind that. What doesit feel like afterwardl" that the creaturefound the question too hard. He Again it seemed with all his might, then looked over at his daughter for concentrated wonderfully morose.She lowered her hands by help, his expression an act of will and staredas before at her knees.After a time, the old man moistenedhis lips with his tongue,then tipped his headand looked hoping for a hint. A lightning flash behind him momentarat Caesar, ily turned his figure dark. Caesar bowedand shook his head,almostsmiling in his impatience and frustration. "Tell rne this' How many people have you killedl" This questionthe werewolf did seemto grasp.He let the rain hiss and rattle for a while, then asked,"Hundreds?" He tipped his head to the other side,watching Caesarclosely,then cautiously rrentured a secondguess."Thousands?" Caesar shook his head.He raisedhis fist, then stoppedhimself and changedit to a stiffly cuppedhand and brought it to his mouth, sliding the fingenips up and down slowly. A pool was forming on the dirt floor, leaking in. I clearedry throat. The drift of the conversation was not what I call healthy. The werewolf let out a sort of groan, a vocal sigh, drew back his arm and absentlytouched his forehead,then his beard. "Creaturesl' he said. The word seemedto have come to him by lucky accident. He watched hopefully; so did Caesar.At last, the werewolf groaned or sighedmore deeply than before and said, "No, but. . :' Perhaps he'd suffereda strokeof some kind unknown to rne. No, but is common, of course-often, in my experience, only two words the victhe tim can still command. He searched walls, the growing pool on the the floor, for language. was surehe wasmore den now, and I reached I

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out to touch Caesar's elbow,warning him. "Man,t' the werewolf said; "moon!" then, hopelessly, "Men do thinp," Caesarexploded, striking his thigh with his fist. He raisedhis hand to touch the hilt of his sword, nor quite absently, as if grimly making sure he could get ar it. '4x," the werewolf said. He was working his eyebrows,looking at his palely window-lit pdms as if he couldn'r rememberhaving seen them before. 'Ax!" he said.He raisedhis eyesro the ceiling and strained for a long time beforetrying again."No, but . . . No. No, but . . ." Caesar waved, dismissive, if imagining he'd understood. as Their eyesmet. The thunder was distant,the rain coming down as hard as ever. '4x," the werewolf said at last, softly, slowly shaking,then bowing his head, restinghis foreheadon his fingenips,pausingto take a deep, slow,whistling breaththrough his nostrils.'4x," he said,then something more. The grrl's voice broke out like flame. She was looking ar no one. "He's saying accidmtl' Caesarstaned,then rouched his mouth. The werewolf breathed deeply again; the same whistling noise. "Green parks-no, but-chill-den-" Abruptly, the girl said, shooting her burning gazeat Caesar,"He means you. You're strong; you make things safe for children." She shook her hands as if frustrated by words, like the werewolf. "Bur you're just lucky. Eventu"lly, you'll die." "The Empire will go on," Caesarbroke in, as if he'd known all dong what the werewolf was saying and it was not what he'd come 'indomitable hereto tdk about. "It's not Caesar's willl We havelawsl' Suddenly, his eyesdaned awlf, avoiding the girl's. "Moonl' the werewolf wailed. Caesar'srroiceslashedat him . "Stop rhatl' It was beginningto get light out. It cameto me that the old man was weeping. He laid his head to one side,obsequious. "Thank. . . gods. . .unspeakable. .Do, but. . ." His bulgng forehead . struggled. The candlelight was doing something queer to his glittering, tear-filled eles, making them like windows to the underworld. He raisedhis roice. "No, but. No, butt" He gave his head a shake,then another, as if to clear it. Funively, he brushed one eye, then the other. "Vile!" he

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weretrembling,aswere the edges cried our. "Na, but.. I' His hands of his rnouth. His voicetook on pitch and intensity, the words in the extremity of his emorionbecomingcloudy,more obscurethan before. I had to lean closero watch his lips. I glancedat Caesarto seeif he was following, then at the gitl. that mademe redize my tror: She was It was the girl's expression window,where the light, I sawat last,was not dawn but staringat the a paning of the thick black hood of clouds.There was no sound of rain. Moonlighr camepouring through the window, sliding toward us the across room. The girl drew her feet back as if the light were alive. His beard I cannor say whether it was gradud or instantaneous. a of the and mouth changed; alenness his earsbecame changein their shapeand then bristling,tufted fur, and I sawdistinctly that the hand swiping at his nosewas e paw. All at once, the man behind the table was a wolf. A violenrgrowl eruptedall around us. He was huge,flameeyed, alreadyleaping,a wild beasttangledin clothes. He was still in sword thwunked into his head, cleavingit-a mid-air when Caesar's face.Only the werewolf s mistake,pure instinct,I saw from Caesar's daughter moved rnore quickly, She flew like a shadow past Caesar and the restof us, running on dl fours, slippedlike ball lightning out into the night. the door, and vanished

It's difficult ro put one's finger exactly on the oddity in Caesar's behavior.One cannotcall it mania in Lnyusud sense-delusionalinhe's grown sanity,dernentia,melancholia,and so forth. Nonetheless, for odd. (No real cause alarm, I think.) You've no doubt heard of the gold squallof honors recentlyconferredon him-statues, odes,feasts, tides' Prince of the Moon, Father of Animds, medals,ourlandish Shepherdof Ethiopia and worse-more of them every d"y. They're nearly all his own inrantions,insinuatedinto the earsof friendly senators who darenot crosshim. I haveit on good authority that or enemies those who hare him most are quickestto approvethese absurdities, believingsuch inflationswill ultimately make him insufferableto the people-as well they mey. Indeed, the man who hungers most after horsebe proclaimeddivine. Caesar that his ruin hassuggested Caesar's seems delighted.[t cannot be put down to megalomania.At each new he or ourragehe conceives hearssuggested, laughs-not cynically but

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the by with childlike pleasure, if astonished how much foolishness as gods will pur up with. (He's alwaysbusy with the gods, thesedays, reasoningwith priests.) ignoring necessities, I did carch him once in an act of what seemedauthentic lunacy. He was at the aquarium, looking down at the innumerable,flickering goldfish and carp, whispering something.I crept up on him to hear. He was saying,"straighten up those ranks,there!Order! Order!" He shook his finger.When he turned and sawrne,he looked embarrassed, then smiled, put his arm around my shouldersand walked with me. "I ,ry to keepthe Empire neat, doctorl' he said."It's not easy!"And that, testy asI am when peopletouch he winked with such friendliness ffi, I was moved. In fact, tears sprangto my eyes,I admit it. Once a man's so old he's staned to piss on himself, he might as well let go wirh erarynhing.Another dme, I saw him hunkereddown, earnesdy 'Just playing,doctorl' reasoning-so it seemed-with a colony of ants. he said when he saw that I saw. "Caesar,Caesar!"I moaned. He touchedhis lips with one finger. The oddest thing he's come up with, of course, is his proposed to war with Persia-himself, needless say,as general.Persia,for the love of God! Even poor befuddled Mark Antony is dismayed. and throws "Caesar,you're not asyoung asyou usedto bel' he says, a woeful look over ar me. He sits with interdigitatedfists between council noom,the guardsstandhis big, blocky knees.We're in Caesar's ing stiff as rwo columns, as usual, outside the door. Mark Antony grows fatrer by the dry. Not an interestingproblem-he eatsand sleeps and copulation, He roo much. I'd prescribeexercise,raw vegetables cyst on the back of his neck. It must has an enlargedsubcutaneous itch, but he pretendsnot to notice, for dignity's sake.Caesarlies on but his legs, crossedat the ankles,are his couch as if disinterested, rigid, and the pulsethrough his right inner jugular is visible.It's late, but to almosr midnight. At times, he seems be listeningfor something, there's nothing ro be heard. Cicadas;occtsional baying of a dog. man. It strikesrne that, for dl his flab, Mark Antony is a handsome a suggest potentid for hean now toneless, His once-mighty rnuscles, blue under his too-smoothskin; roretheless,one and disease, there'.s can imaginehim working himself back to vigor, the dullnessgradutlly look at me, still upright, depaning from his eyes.Anphing's possible. thanks mainly to dier, though I'm fanher dong than he is. I frequently lose feeling in my right hand.

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"If you must attack Persial' he says,"*hy not send me? You're neededhere, Caesar!" His eyesqui$ tears,which he irrimbly brushes away."Tivo, three years-not evenyou can win a war with Persiain lesstime than that. And all that while, Rome and her complicated Everyin business the handsof Mark Antony! It will be ntin, Caesar! one saysso!" 'Are at Caesar gezes him. lou, my friend, not nobler and more honest than all the other Romans Put togetherP" his Mark Antony looks confused,raises handstill they're levelwith then returnsthem to their placebetweenhis knees,which his shoulders, "You're needed herei' he saysagain."Erteryone he once more clenches, saysso." For dl his friends' warnitrgs,I do not think Mark Antony confidant, Caesar's by gaspshow thoroughly he'sdespised the senate. that-meaning no disrespect-he really right arm. But besides Caesar's would be a booby. Talk about opening the floodgates! the a Caesarsmiles,snatches rnoth out of the air, examines wings wirh grearcuriosity, like a man trying to read Egyptian, then gently his lets i go and lies still again.After a moment, he raises right hand, "You reallywould palm ourward,pushingan invisiblebark out to see. 'Away to Persiafor murder and mayhem." like that," he says. Mark Antony lools to me for help. What can I sayP Now suddenly,black eyesflashing,Caesarrearsup on one elbow and points at Mark Antony. "You,are Rome;'he says."You are the hope of humanity!" Later, Mark Antony asksID, "Is he insane?" "Nor by any rules I understandi' I say. 'At any rate, there's no causefor alarm.'' the He movesback and fonh across room like a huge, slow mimi.ry of Caesar,rubbing his hands together like a man preparing to throw dice. His shadow moves,much larger than he is, on the wall. For somereason,it frightensme. Through the window I seethe sharphorned, icy-white half-moon. Most of Mark Antony's fat has gone into his buttocks. "They'll kill him rather than leavethe Empire in my handsl' he together like a priest's: Then, without feeling,his pdms pressed says. 'After that, they'll kill me." me. "Cheer upJ' I say."I'm his perHis clarity of vision surprises sonal physician.They'll kill ffie, tool'

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Last night, the sky was alive with omens: stsrsexploding, falling every which way. "Something's up!" saysCaesar, tickled as if he 8s himself had causedthe discord in the heavens. His bald head glows with eachstar burst, then goesdark. He stood in the garden-the large one createdfor his daughter's tomb-till nearlysunrise, watchingfor more fireworks. Mark Antony's beensentoff, plainly a fool's errand,trumped up to get him out of Rome. "Don't come backl' saysCaesar."Never corneback until I sendfor youl' I don't like this. Not at dl, not one damn bit. My life line haschanged. My stool this morning was bilious.

All day, Caesarhasbeenreceivingurgent visitors,all with one message:"It would be good if tomorrow you avoidedthe foruml' There can be no doubt that rhere'sa plot afoot. Late this afternoon, at the onset of twilight, I saw-I think-the werewolf s daughter.She'sgrown thinner, s if eaten awayby disease. (Eraryone,thesedays,looks to me eatenawayby disease. prostate's My nearly plugged, and there's not a surgeonin Rome whom I'd trust to cut my frngernails.) She stood at the bomomstepof the pdace stairway, one shaky hand reachingout to the marblehem. She left herbs of some kind. Their use, whether for evil or good, is unknown to me. Then she fled. Later, it occurredto me that I hadn't redly gotten a good look at her. Perhapsit was someoneI don't know.

Strangenews. You'll haveheardit beforeyou get this letter. Forgive the handwriting. My poor old nervesaren't all they might be. Would that I'd nerterlived to seethis d^y. My stomachwill be acid for a month. Caesarwas hardly seated, had hardly gotten out the cdl for prayer, with daggers. before they rose like a wave from every side,60 senators He was stabbed a dozen times before he struggledto his feet-eyes rolling, every muscle in spasm,as if flown out of control, though it what strengthhe called clearly wasn't that. You wouldn't havebelieved up in his final moment! He draggedthem from one end of the forum to the other, hurling off senatorslike an injured bear and shrieking, screamirg his lungs out. It was as if all the power of the gods were for an instant conffactedto one man. They tore his clothesfrom him,

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His blood camespuning or possiblyhe did it himselffor somereason. from e hundred wounds, so that the whole marble floor wiu slippery and steaming.He fell down, stood up again, dragging his assassins; fell down, then rose to crawl on hands and knees toward the light of the high centraldoor where, that moment, I was running for my bellowingsarestill it *y ears,strangelybright, life. His slaughtered-bull like a flourish of trumpets or Jovian laughter.

General Plan for TheSunligbt Dialogues

DISCoVEREDTHE GENER PLIN FoR THB AL

SunlightDidoguesuncanhgwdamongtbe papm of tbeGardner Collation at tbe Uniamity of Rocbester. document Tbe wbicbit is takm fr*, is a pbotocry of o typscript witb only a fru mirwr spelling conections in ink. Tbisir th onlyW of tfu Phn tmeartbed sofar;tbenigirwl, I pesume, no bngcr erists. Iobn Gardnn anorently wroteit eitber biseditorat for Knopf, Robm Gonliehm bisagen4Georges Borcbardt. a fan of tbe As bookand an aspiring rwuelist, readbiserplication I Possibly tbe greedily. hst majm unpublisbcd Gardrtcr duummt, tfu Phn is a mapfn tbegmnal readnard a treasurc scbolan. Bcginningwritm wbowktndfor more ffr in4cptbnuts-ard-bolts eramphs The An of Fiction andOn Becomin ing Novelist will find onsusrs makes scnvof fura On papn, Gardner " bis fugt, arcbiteaonic nouel,erplaining tbe interalinedmecbanisms of cbaratter, action, ideain specifia, mapping and cCInnections, huntingdoutn out plots, artd cbecking nents againstbistimeline.Tbougbbe wron tbe Phn f* t*eonr else, bard rrotto sce it's urgingbimvlf on, tsllGardner ing bimvlf tbat tbismonstrnus ngetbwin tbeend.It did projeawill come and it does. S.OIN.

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novel which exploresthe ideasof A long, difficult metaphysical responsibilrry and freedom on many levels organized around two metaphor(developed one a cops-and-robbers controllingmetaphors, in the main action),the other a philosophicalcontrastbetween the in and Hebrew cultures(developed the four ancientMesopotamian VII, XI, XIV and XIX). On a psychodialogues themselves, sections logicd level,responsibility meansthe struggleto resistwithdrawd and on alienadon,on one hand, despoticself-assenion the other; and freedom meanseither acceptance sufferingand limitation, and positive of action despiteone's sufferingor limitation, or else freedom-L bad kind of freedom-means psychoticflight from reality.(As in TbeResurrection, controlling psychological theory is that of R. G. Collingwood the and thosewho directly or indirecdy follow him.) On a familial level, successful unand the ideasof freedomand responsibility characterize within an archetypalfamily pattern-father, successful relationships mother, son, daughter.On a social level, the sameideascharacterrze relationships ethnic groups,generations, so fonh. Funher levels of and exploredare the politicd and meaphysical or, loosely,religious.All levelsof experience interpreted,asin anygood philosophicd system, are as parallelexpressions a singleabstractset of relationships-in efof fect, the complex relationships the archetypalcop and robber. of The two centralcharacters the novel establish polar opposiin the tion, Chief of PoliceFred Clumly, a just, moral, and responsible man who struggles defendand support "law and orderl'and whose difto ficulty is that the ideal he seeks an impossibleone, {inally-and the is archetypalrobber, known as "The Sunlight Manl' who, confronted by the complexityof the modern world, hasabnegated responsibility, socid commitment,evensanity,and who hasthe experience and intelligenceto makea convincingcase his position. The driving dramatic for concernof the whole thick novel,and the centralfocusof its suspense, is the risingchaoswhich threatens both men. As headof a police force which is-as mo$ small-townpolice forcesnow are-transitiond, shifting from the once standardmethodsto the methodsof modern technology, including the so-cdled "averaging strategy," whereby one calculates the relativeimponance of a given crime and fights crime with one eyeon the time-product-factor-that is, the exrentto which a giveninvestigation paysoff in terms of ta,xdollars (a nine-dollar theft

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is wonh one policeman's effon for one hour, if the breakdownof police force time showsthe operationalcost per man to be nine dollars an hour)-as headof such a police force, Clumly endurespressures from the Mayor, the public, and the press which pushhim in dircrgentdirections. The Mayor wants efficiencyat low cost, in other words, a record of apparmt success; public wan$ both this and police success the of the old-fashionedkind; the press wants yet another kind of successinterestingcases solved.And there are other difficulties as well: our laws,which Clumly would asee arejust, rE in fact ourmoded.Present d^y criminal systems-the modusoperandiof the new professiondsmake detection under the presentlaws nearly impossible.And the courts, traditionally calculatedto proteff the innocent, increase the difficulty by adding to the odds for the criminal. Because Clurnly is concernedwith the old valuesof the cop-preventing or checking crime-he works as he sees procrastinates with the Mayor, evades fit, responsibilities doesnot approveof (public talks, discussions the he of civic parking problern, etc.) and hopes to savehimself by a dramatic capture of the Sunlight Man before the police depanment roof falls in. Clumly is right that the captureof the Sunlight Man is importont; and one approves his defianceof the systembeing imposedon him, of which limits his efficiencythough it dso hasstrongjustifications. But as the novel progresses fearsthat his chanceof success according one to his own individudistic and prirately responsible code is very small. troubled fb make maftersworse, Clumly is old (sixty-four),occasionally by menml lapses, anility, and plaguedby panly irrational fears.In shon, Chief Clumly is a fictional embodiment of the problemsfacing the responsible man-persond, familial (his wife is unwell), socid, political, and ultimately metaphysicd aswell. If we affirm him and all he represen$, we cannot do so with any firm expectationthat he will prevail. But time is running out for the Sunlight Man, too. He knows this, and he is resignedto his doom. His question,and the reasonhe persistsin eluding capture,is that it is for him a psychologicdimperative Clumly that he know for cenain whether or not he is nght. He respects but seesclearly the impossibility of Clumly's ideal. As a result, the Sunlight Man holds a tentadve position as a nihilist and anarchist, and to some extent as maniac, though he is not quite crazy in the usual sense. of The necessity remaining"freel' eluding capture,forces him to repeated socid contacts, repeated crimes, and increasingly

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{lighr ro unredity. Philosophically,he is as right about the desperate he world as Clurnly-perhaps righter-and because is, like Clumly, an to absolutist,he stubbornly refuses resolvehis dilemrna in merely PrzE,matic terms.Tiue, his coursemust inevitably lead to his death, but he would rather die than submit to illusion or to what he thinks of as victimization by a confusedand sick society.Insofar as the Sunlight sympathy-*d for anythinkwho wins the reader's Man is a character ing readerhe musr surelybe wonh respect-his queer raceagainstdme as must be as suspenseful Clumly't. The ideasimplicit in the relationship of these two charactersare an funher exploredin the lives of a broad ca$ of minor characters: pursuesClumly iust old counrry lawyer who for complicatedreasons as Clumly pursuesthe Sunlight Man (that is, hunts down the areas of Clumly's neglectedresponsibility,searchesout the evidence of and so fonh); a younger lawYer,the older Clumly's incompetence, lawyer's son, who is a hunter of professiond skips-people who set milk a town, then vanish; a thief who has two up paper businesses, suburidentities,one asthief (Wdter Boyle), the other as respeaable (Walter Benson),and who cannot resolvethe conflict of the banite two; an Indian boy; a woman hell-bent on destroying the son she speci{ic parallelsof action and imagery loves;and others.In erary case, subtly sugge$the parallelsbetweenthesepeople and the archetypes, cop and robber.The most explicitly philosophicd andysisof the centrd conflict comesin the four didogues of Clumly and the Sunlight Man-conversations which come at intervals in the novel, in which Clumly is forcedto debatethe Sunlight Man's positioo: 8o extremely debate,sinceClumly is no logician and the Sunlight Man one-sided is. (He is also, and more imponant for the drama of the nortel, an expert amateur magcian.) in One of the centralquestions the novel is the identity of the Sunlight Man. (See"The ldentity of the Sunlight Manl' below.)On the levelof drama,the questionis part of the contrclling copeand-robbers vehicleof ideas.But the question dso involves the larger question of one's identity is, finally, a matter of human identity itself. Because freedomand responsibility.Ironically-and one's choicebetweenlawless symbolically-at the very moment the Sunlight Man learnswhat his real identity is, that is, what his frnd valuesare, he is robbed of his identity' he is shot.

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Prors
The main plot is that which concernsClumly and the Sunlight Man, but threadedthrough this plot are a number of subplots, eachdeveloping, as I have said, implicit ideas in the main plot.

One problem everywriter faceswhen he puts togetheran architectonic norrelof this soft-an old-fashionedViaorian nor/el,in a way-is that of probability. What leaves one restless about Dickens,say,is that sooneror later every charactercomesinto connct with everyother-a thing which strains the reader'sbelief. In this novel the interwoven plots havemoments of connecion but no final connedion. What must hold the book together is the thematic parallels,imagisticparallels, and similaritiesof action in the subplots.Funher cohesive elementsarethe novel's concentration on, mainly, one imponant family, the Hodges (the lawyer and his son, the lawyer's ex-wife, the lawyer'syoungerson, and the lawyer's brother, and, finally-as one learnsfor cenain only near the end-the Sunlight Man himself, a brother to the lawyer,who hasbeen absentfrom the norel's locde for sbaeen yearsbut hasreturned to it, incognito, in hopesof settingright an old mistake). Another cohesiraelementis the figureof the old lawyer's father,a fine and brilliant man-once a Congressman-who established ideal for his sonsand the grandsons, en ideal no longer meaningful becausethe world hu changed,politics has changed,and family life has changed.The old ghost'sraluesare at the hean of the laryer's wife's hostility,the Sunlight Man's nihilisffi, and so on. Hopefully, the novel will dso be held together by its use of a single,rich locde-western New York. And of course the novel's primary emphasis the Clumly-Sunlight Man on story will help to keep the rest in proper perspective. The plots are as follows. THE IDENTITYoF THE SUNLIGHT M,\N ( n U Y S T E R YU N T I L T H E E N D )

sixteen TaggenFaeley Hodge,who would nolv be forty, left Batavia as yearsxgo,in 1950,havingbeendisbarred a resultof his having He defrauded clientsand robbedthe government. wasthe youngest

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sons,the darlingof his family, the most brilliant of the Congressrnan's of the lot- In the army he was a minor hero. During his stint in the reladaughterof one of Batavia's he service marriedKathleenPa,rton, than Taggen tively new rich. She was a limle uazy, demandedmore could afford. In time, he beganto rob clientsto meet his bills. (He had and, of tastes his own to suppon. Queer hobbies,gadgets, expensive his wife aboveall, books and relicsfrom the Near East.)Abandoning and rwo children, he fled New York State, Kept in touch with Will Hodge's wife, his sole ^Ily, and in six months returned for a secret visit to his children, at Hodge's of{ice.Betraying Hodg., he vanished with the children, taking his car, which he abandonedin Cleveland, mailing back the keys. OId Clive Parctonhunted Thggen but never locatedhim, remaineda bitter man. Blamed TqggenHodge for driving Ifuthleen Pantonmad. She no\ryoccupiesa room in Clifton. After about communication. All is five years,Thggenand the Hodges reestablish shoeclerk, more or lessforgtven.Thggenworks asa usedcar salesrnan, custodianfor the public schoolsystemof Phoenix. Marries, becomes an imitation of his father.Beginsto write anicleson Assyrioloy. Also beginsto sendHodge feelersabout a reconciliationwith old Paxton. a Along with one suchfeelerhe sends clipping of himself in a magiothers,for Hodg.. cian'scape.A trifling detail,but one which recalls e\n before, Taggenused In college,in the service,and occasionally to do impersonations, tricks,and so on, to entenainpeople.And card he's psychic. On the night of August 22, Clive Paxton died in his study. His hean had been bad for a long time, and no one was surprised.The study window was opened, but no one noticed. His wife closed it dmost without thinking-as Clumly makesher rememberlater.What happened, course,is that tggen Hodge paid him a visit, and the of man died of either shock or rage. At llke Hodge's house,where Millie and Llke are held prisoners,in effect,by the Sunlight Man, the Sunlight Man for some reason makes a point of neverallowing anyoneto seehim. Millie would recognize him, though shecannot-quite-recognize his dtered voice.llke theoreticallycould not know him. Luke was six when Taggenleft Batavia. And yet somehow-who knows how?-Luke does recognize him. "I just before the trip in which Luke dies. know lou," he says

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What rnakes Clumly seek the identity of the Sunlight Man is Clumly's sense order. Why should a man from California (Clumly's of Nick guess) appear preciselyhere in Batavia) Why should he release Slater? Clumly isn't after a neat my$ery-plot connectionbut something much grander-connections in the very substance reality.Running of out of time himself-Mayor Mullen breathing down his neck-and havingno rational ideaof where to turn, he begins, simply,to fumble, that is, follow his hunches.He questionseverybody.Peopleoff the street. Fellow policemen. He hits a queer kind of paydin when he visits the Woodworth sisters. shows them a picture, and they say He they recognizeit. It's Taggen Villiers Hodg., father of the Congressman. T V. Hodge died in 1908. Clumly sendsa wire to Phoenix, Arizona. And visits Kathleen Paxton. Shown the picture, Kafileen screams-a high, mechanicd, repetitivescreech-then goescautonic. Kozlowski is with Clumly for this. He says,"It looks like you've got it, Chiefl' Clumly looks disgusted, bored. "You think he'sdangtrutsT" Kozlowski asks.Clumly looks out the car window. "The world is dangerous, Kozlowski.") A funher identity complicationr Walter Benson, shadowinghis boarder at a revolutionary meedng, seesWill Hodge Jr and believes him to be the Sunlight Man. Same voice, sameeyes.Will is famer, eppearsyounger, but evenso the impressionis so powerful that Benson is convinced.This too he must decidewhether or not to tell the police. When Will Jr greetsBensor, casudly, Benson is terrified, feelsthe Sunlight Man knows all about him, has gotten inside his skin, so to speak.On an impulse,BensonshadowsWill Jr that night, insteadof shadowing his boarder. SeesWill Jr go home, greet his nice family. Outside Will Jr'r housea caris parked.He's beingwatched.By whomP The next night Benson finds he himself is being shadowed.

CIUMLY'S Srony Chief of Police Fred Clumly, a man who seekshonestly to control He the area of his proper authority, be fully responsible. recognizes closedto experience the measureof waste of himself-the kinds of him by vinue of his privateand public commitments-and recognizes,

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though dimly, his human urge for fuller self-discove freedom from ry, the all social restrkrions, v$ for ev{ but suppresses urge. Finds his in poindess the populousand mechrsponsible puritanismincreasingly anized modern world. Seeson every side dehumanizationand the declinetoward bestiality.Strivesto overcomeboth through personal force,assenion,but, like anyman, lacksthe power. Suffersparanoid as delusionswhich increase the novel progresses-thedelusionsof a bitter old man who has outlived his time. At the sametime that he he acrsfor justicein the old sense, beginsto spy nervouslyon his men, on on the Mayor, and, confusedly, himsell his own motivation, his capabilities. His blind wife Esther, slightly self-pitying,thinks herself wonhless,a burden on the world; plansto kill herselfif she can ever "balance rhe score" rvith Clumly, who has sacrificedmuch for her, she (but Thinks he hasanother woman, perhapsseveral rightly perceives. only half thinks this)-he's been apparentlyimpotent for years-and she has a habit of studying her face and the facesof all younger women she can get to with her fingers.When Clumly beginsto stay our late (in connection with the Sunlight case,mainly), she begins ro follow him. karns he spiesoutside the Mayor's house (pan of Clumly's paranoia). Meanwhile Clumly hasbeenhaving "dialogues"with the Sunlight Man. At first Clumly pretendsto himself that his whole object is to crack the case,but eventually even he cannot hide from himself the but pointlessand dangerous psychofact that ir is panly soul-searching, for Iogicdly necessary him. He keepstapesof the didogues, takesthem them. The lawyer, home with him and hidesthem. Esther discovers about Clumly. Esther saysvery Will Hodge Sr, comes,asksquestions convincedthat this is her chanceto little. But graduallyshe becomes balancetheir score.Not knowing what is on the tapes,she imagines they revealsome plot in which the Mayor is involved.Knowing that Clumly is under fire from the M ayor and others, she takes them to Clumly's right hand man, Miller; tells him of Clumly's spying and asksto hear the tapes.Miller doesn't want to hear them, but gtves what the tapesmean, she knows she has in. Without understanding ruined her husband.C'oeshome, bent on suicide.(Miller refusesto keepthe tapes-from loyalty to Clumly.) But Esthercannot act. (Continued beltut.'t

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B o Y L E ' sS T O R Y Boyle is two men, Walter Boyle and Walter Benson,thief and middleclass"sdesrnan;' amateur poet and poerry lover (E. A. Guesr).His life is one of studied irresponsibility,when the world requireshim to be responsible goespeculiarly blank (withdraws)as if by an acr he of will and thinks-as it seems him-nothing. A prisonerin the to Bataviajail at the time of the jailbreak in rvhich the Sunlight Man releases Indian boy, he sees breakand the murder of the young the the guard, Mickey Salvador,but saysnothing, to avoid being implicated and thus exposed. Still, he is deeplydisturbedby the incident.It connects, for him, with the plague of brutal and amateurishburglaries Bataviais enduring-a plaguewhich increasingly forcesBoyle-Benson to take stock of himself, his occupation, the changedtimes ("Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world" in effect). Because his wife Marguerite'snervousness, of Boyle hasadvenised for and goffen a boarder, a radicd, in fact revolutionary young man who paintssigns,has a quietly disagreeable pa$, and is very proficient at hating the hatersof Negroes,Jews,Communists,etc. He becomes a grotesquelover to Boyle's wife in Boyle's absence, and continues after Boyle'sreturn. A connectionforms in Boyle'smind betweenthis man and the Sunlight Man as,little by little, he becomes awareof the love affair. He beginsshadowingthe man-Ollie Nuper-and slides toward the idea of killing him. What preventsit is, first, his poetry (here the novel burlesquesthe Kreutzer Sonata) and, second, his grudging love of the man's easybestiality.Like Clumly, he beginsto doubt, but with this crucial difference'whereasClumly has behind him a clear and distinct morality, Boyle has behind him nothing but of a moral suspension disbelief.As his ambiguoushatred for Nuper increases, his own senseof defilement increases. should have He so told the police what he knew about the escape. wife's dilletandsh His real becomes witchcraft, crackpotpsychology) occultism (horoscopes, for Boyle. He beginsto seeBoyle as one man, Benson as anotherDevil's man and C'od's man respecively, Sunlight vs. Clumly. The or full horror of his dilemma eruptswhen he throws open his bedroom door to catch Nuper in bed with his wife. (Cf, Kreutzer.)Rather than killing Nuper-his plan-he retiresin *guish. He "knows" he cannot face Nuper's bestid evil until he has purified himself. He must go

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to the Bataviapolice.But he can't. After the newsof the truck wreck in whieh t$ke Hodge is killed (below) he becomes, simply, Boyle. W I L L H O D G E S R ' SS T O R Y he He has settledfor a small, unhappy life because knows himself a his vitd and brilliant father the Congresslimited man, a pde ghost of man. To his wife he was coarse,stupid, gross;to his elder son he is a small-rimeshyster;to his younger son he is a weakling and a fool. of but He can tolerateself-accusation, when accused indirect resPon(by Salvador'smother)sibility for the murder of Mick y Sdvador but protection of the accused as though not simply his professional very characterwere at the hean of it-he feels a {ierce need to his jusrify himself, atone. Like Clumly, he takeson the resPonsibilities of the world-more than a man can take. (In fact, he must atone for and lemingdown both his sons,for robbing his wife of happiness, abora exacdy like that of the Sunlight Man, as dt for his blind selfishness, life ro it seems Hodge, he chosethe small responsible to avoid pain, asgreat,Hodge thinks, aschoosingsensudismand and that is a crime unthinking self-fulfillmentat any cost. (Here the argument gets very tricky' Hodge hasspenta lifetime being responsible-satitfyingor bending to or patchingup after others, yet his object has beenself-defense, of the avoidance pain-not Clumly's situation.Like his wise brother Ben, Will Hodge Sr is capableof love, but incapableof escaping joy.) cupidity- self-regarding hunting Nick. Talks to Sun-on-theC'oesto the Indian reservation, (karns about a witch's iresponsibilitl.) Drirresto water to no purpose. Estherin winClumly's late that night. Finds cer gone. Puzding. Sees learnsof Clumly's possidow watching.Begnsto dog Clumly's tracks, like Clumly, L"watchdog" but also, ble incompetence, becomes, and karns all about Clumly but lacls the conviclike Sunlight, a destrcyer. tion and will to act, panly from cupidinousdelight in the hunt itself. MTLLIE'S ToNY S to bitch. Her one virtue seems be that A sensudist; self-condemned shestickswith her son Luke (asClumly sticksto Esther,despitepain),

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not because loveshim or because feelsmaternal instincs but, she she just because. would willingly die for him, asshethinks. asshesays, She But shewould rnorewillingly seehim dead.Like Boyle, sheis socially irresponsible; the Sunlight Man sheis uncommittedand in some like ways selfish,a destroyer.Tluth is, Luke is her image of herself-but male, therefore more free, more powerful than she is. Her desireto reform him-make him go to college,put him in a position for poweris a desire to make him what she can't be herself;the desire to see him dead is hatred of his betrayal-his failure to live his life for her. When the Indian (Nick Slater)and Sunlight come and make her son and herselfprisonersin her son'shouse,shegraduallycomesto see Sunlight as Luke's potential savior.As a truck driver, Luke can truck Nick and the Sunlight Man to freedom. If he will, renouncinghis childish and puritanical rigidity (as Millie rightly thinks), he too will be free-a man at last (accordingto Millie's foolish definition of a rnan). Luke does as his mother wishes,or at any rate setsoff with the two criminalsin his truck. But insteadof freeingthem, he grandiosely kills himself in order to kill them. Millie learnsof the truck wreck from Clumly, by r fluke, and learns that there wasonly one body found. She takesa stiff drink, descends into hersell becomingpure selfishness, bestiality. Has a mad sense pure that she will never die.

W rL L J R ' s r o n y S
He has moved from a small-town, two rnan practicewith his father to a junior-partnershipin a firm of 39 lawyersin Buffalo. He chases skips, learns the mechanicalheanlessness for necessery a bill collector; dso, by rppointment, againwith professional indifferenceto right and wrong, defendsfelons he knows to be guilty and dangerous. All his life he hasbeenresponsible, though he iscapable greatanguish of but over justice, he is not quite capableof love. He needsphysicalcontact (fierce handshakes, for etc.),the only expression possible him of this panially loving anguish.He is supremelycontrolledfor a man of his sort, and extremelydisciplined. But he neverhastime to seehis children, never gets to mlk with interestingpeople, feelshimself losing all instinct for compassion, having been too often duped. Becomesfeebly

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attempt at return to innocence-takes piano religious-a desperate suffers,dreamsof teachingschool. He worsrudieslanguages, lessons, shipswork, not people,and knows that that's no decent life. Or is it that he runs on ego?he wonders.Did he leavehis father through enoughto defend a idedism (because country lawyer is not specialized his clients,grventhe complexity of modern law) or through fear of Cynicd at hean, tortured by consmntself-examination self-knowledge? comparable ro that in the Clumly-Sunlight didogues. Wears no wedding ring. of skips,the more uncertainhe becomes why The longerhe chases he is chasingthem. If mere ego,*hy is he not a skip hirnself-they satisf go,he knows.If he doesn'tbecomea skip merely from cowardice, what room for ego?So why chaseskipsP In the Cdifornbkphyr, late at night, just outside Provo,Utah, he accidenrdlycomesupon the man he hasbeenafter,R. V. Kleppmann. he the Stupidly, he can't decideto issue subpoena haswith him. (Plenty in of lawyerswould, he knows.) He grves to his bestialside,goescorrupt, gets nothing for it. L U T E ' SS T o R Y A totd cynic, or so he thinks, exceptwhen driving his Road Ranger for the Paxton tucking Company-a truck he thinks of in strictly sexualterms. He's a passionate boy, full of mingled love and hate, damnation and redemption.In the end, he destroys himself and the truck, thinking he's killing the escaped criminals,Nick Slaterand Sunlightbut in fact they got off miles back, on another of the Sunlight Man's "hunches." For Luke it's self-crucifxion, an unspeakableioy. CoNCLUSIoN Shakenby his son'sdeath,Will Hodge Sr goesto Mayor Mullen with what he knows about Clumly. TellsMullen the tapesare at Clumly't house-evidencethat Clumly hasbeenspeaking with the Sunltgh, Man and making no attempt to capture him by meansof his knowledge of where Sunlight will be at panicular moments-the moments of the dialogues. Mullen et al pick up Miller and Kozlowski, cops, then

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Millie, who of course knew where Sunlight was and can verify the meetings, at least in part. On the police radio they hear that Nick Slater has surrenderedand that Sunlight is gone. At Clumly's, Estheris waiting for them. When she hearsthe car drive up (Clumly's at the station)shepulls the masterswitch and waits in in the dark, armed. Being blind, she has an advantage the dark. She understands, now that shethinks she'sgoingto die, that her long standing wish to even the score was mere self-pity.They're equals, she and Clumly, and she is doing this iN an equal.They will not get will the tapeswithout killing her. (Shehasno ideawhether the tapes of Duty is the intellectualization love; without be wonh it to them.) and perverse. She alsoknows they'll get the love, duty is meaningless tapesif they want them. One does not act to achievesomethingbut simply because one must. Meanwhile, the Sunlight Man gives up-not to Clumly but to Figlow happensto be at the desk. In panic, Figlow Figlow, because The Sunshoots him, though Sunlight makesno threateninggesture. (developed the dialogues, here in light Man's reasonfor surrendering merely a mamerof action) is that "the gods" have spoken to him, he must. (Cf. Esther.) Ends with the image of the universeas metaphor' physicalchaos Final line, Figlow for amord risero beaury.A final imageof sunbearns. shot hirn through the hean. Epilogue of dry, meaninglessfact. (The reductio ad absurdum of Western the strictly ethical and intellectual side of the Hebrew-based culture and also,incidentally,a devicefor making a few detailsof the main acrion'smystery clear for any readerwho didn't understande.g., the identity of the Sunlight Man.)

F U N C T I O N SO F S O U N V T R Y M I N O R C H A R A C T E R S a Miller (Capt. Dominic Sangirgonio), normativecop-s good man, not but fond of kids, compassionate also professional, driven, not inis intelligent, loyal, capable of understanding rense, pleasant. He Clumly's behavior though he himself would never get himself into such an extremity.

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Ben Hodge, a norrnativecitizen,not at all a hunter and not inclined to d.fy socier),ehher His lay sermons at country churches contrast disbeliefwith the "serand in their gentleness willingnessto suspend mons" of Sunlight. and a little foolish, but good, a normaVanessa Hodge,senrimental of representative society'svalues tive wife, mother, and schoolteacher, to as they stand.Whereasthe Sunlight Man finally capitulates these are absurdthey are the valuesof all the though they valuesbecause does not know there is people to whom one is committed, Vanessa anything wrong with the valuesthat are in. of straight representati\s the ralues The ancientWoodwonh sisters, of Americain former times, beforethe populationexplosionbecame evil, etc. noticeable,before mechanizationbecamea necessary of and rabbis,representatives alternaThe novel'sministers,priests, justifiablebut also all of tive versions religiousexperience, decentand All imperfectand potenti"lly destrucdve. of theseessenti"llycontrast of with the Sunlight Man's true religioussense the world as holy, at (A mere of leastasideally conceived. true sense life's holinessprecludes and theology,sectarianism, the compromiseof abstractideal and concrere congregation.) compromise of Mayor Mullen, representative socidly acceptable resulting from insensitivity and a blunted senseof iustice. Marguerite Boyle, embodiment of the potential evil in brainless sentimentaliry. Nick Slater and Kathleen Paxton (wife of the Sunlight Man in through his former identity as Taggen Hodge)-stages of psychosis withdrawal.
CoNNECTIONS AND MNANING

My object in this novel is to presentan image of the way we live now which is as complete as Melville's image of his time in Moby'Dick,

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in a narrativeas dramatic and poetic as Melville's. What organizes the book on the levelof mere intellect is its generalconcernwith the conflict of principlessummed up in the oppositionof the two main characters, Clumly and the Sunlight Man. Clurnly serves order, loves it, believes it: he is one of thosewho seeks shapehis own destiny in to and he is heroic, howevercomic, because hopesro serveall civilizahe tion as he would servehimself. The Sunlight Man, a Mesoporamian priest-likefigure,submitsto destiny,chaos,mysrery.He is significanrno mere Emerson-becausehis submissionis incompleteand in pan grudgng. He thinks too much and experiences much for complete, too comfonable scuddingwith rhe wind. Like all important questions, the implicit que$ion in the conflict of these two men is religious-works vs. faith. What rorments rhe questionis the old setof unanswerables, the universe Is ordered? Can man control evenhimselP Along the lines of theseunanswerables lie the livesof the minor characters well asthe major. Millie, or Mama as (Mesopotamian earth-sex-goddess), seeksto conrrol; she differs from Clumly in that her control is thoroughly, though nor quite ignobly, selfish.Against the orderedstructureof Hodge family vdues and history she raises own poor-girl assenion personal her vdue and vinue. of (This defianceof the old valuesis at the hean of her lifelong arrempr to destroy the Hodge name.) Her value is not moral (merely selfcentered)and not aniculate(intuition and instinctover intellect).Thus she combinesthe Prlcessesthe Sunlight Man-his surrenderro larger of forces(but in Millie's case, forcesof personddesire, the nor rhe mumbling of the gods)-and the goal of Clumly, control. Seekingfreedom for her son (whetherhe wantsit or not), antisocial and amoralfreedom like her own, she effectu"lly murders him. In contrastto Millie, EstherClumly seeks what is best for others. Like Clumly, she is selfless; her object-her mode, really-is nor but to impose her order for the sakeof others, but insteadto withdraw her own identity from the scene-make peaceby getting out of the way (in effect, by suicide). Like the Sunlight Man, shewishesto submit, to be a passive instrumot;unlike the SunlightMan, she hasno faith whateverin gods,only in Clumly, and evenheresheis uncenain. But of courseher wish to give Clumly freedomis parallelto Millie's wish to gu. her son freedom-at base,a selfishwish. Her effect is to murder (but in this casenot literally) her loved one. If her final

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defianceof Law, when shewaits to fight with the police, is a stePuPin the ward Gincenow sheu-nderslands se!fishness her earlier position), In ir's a srepupwardonly for its consciousness. fact, both Millie and the Estherare recapitulating gratuitousact of the Sunlight Man when he "freed" Nick Slaterfrom jail and thus made accidentdly possible rhe murder of the guard. His acr was higher than theirs becauseit but on acr,not based love or self-love on a moral impulse is a universal (but dso, un-ordered) ethicd constraintor concern for by unshackled the larger good. Will HodgeJr, ultimately "freeing" Kltppmann, Providesanother freesKleppmann from moral and comment. He specifically consciously Will Jr cannot find, himself, reasons because order and responsibility for moral behavior. His recapitulation of the central mythical act (of most cynical, most corruPt. "freeing") is darkestof dl, because In contrast to thosewho dismissor renounceorder, asseningthe flight into freedom-Millie, Esther,and Will Hodge Jr in the end, all of perversions the Sunlight Man-are those who, like Clumly, are mainly concernedwith enforcinglaw and order. The figure mediate the betweentheserwo types is Walter Boyle-Benson, thief. Boyle feels it' order, but he constantlypostPones rather impulsesroward imposing wife, he gets a for than ded with the split in his life, disastrous his roomer. Rather than answerthe roomer'sradicalpoliticd philosophy, he sayshe must "do some reading,"which he ne\rergetsto. Rather than report what he knows about the jailbreak,he stewsand procrastinates. Chief of those who impose order-after Clumly-is Will Hodge like not Sr. He is a faulty avenger because, Clumly, he is caught up in he of the comptexities justice,but because takespleasurein pursuing, he jud$ng, and condemning.From selfishness hunts Clumly and canhis nor simply rurn him in. And it is another selfishness, reaction to his accusation. his son'sdeath,which leadsto his changeof mind and Will Jr is of courseanother of the imposersof order, until his final corruption turns him into one of the escapists. The model cop, Miller,'has an unthinking faith in life, a senseof He humor, dedicationto work and decency. doesnot get lost in abstruse difficutties,like Clumly, yet doesnot simply pounce,either. He fights with convictionbut alsowith restraint burglars) crime (e.g.,the reen-age men and lets men go in moderation He and compassion. both catches grounded on a firm senseof what it is to be human.

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Pvt. Kodowksi, Miller's disciple,funaions mainly asMiller's straight in man. He differs from Miller in that he is more self-conscious his (which rerrds itself in his dealing role ascop. And this selGconsciousness with teen-age burglars)is potentially dangerous-asWill Hodge Sr, an its extremecase, shows.The hunt becomes o\Mnreward,and righteousness replaces holiness. Nuper, Boyle's revolutionist roomer, a fiercecritic of "societyJ'a radical whose answerto the world's problemsis BBB-"burn, baby, burn"-the complex of Protest and Power-P & P-an organizerof mobs for "punishment" of the sick socialorder,showsanotheraspect is of the mythic cop or order-maker.Here the crime (society's) vague, Nuper, like Mario Savioof Berkeley,doesnot the enemy generalized, is want to be a dictator. But his selflessness deluded.All his charitable The impulses(e.g.,roward Boyle's fat, ugly wife) are really perverse. himself by andysis,the lesshe really understands. more he understands to Through psychoanalFicjargon, Nuper manages makeselfa concept as dehumanizedand abstract as his concept of society.

A T H N O N D E RO F S E C T I O N S N D E V E N T S who I. Tbe Waubdog. Clumly arreststhe Sunlight Man , a magician to frightens Clumly' it seems seemsslightly mad but who vaguely but Clumly that he is up to something,is dangetous; Clumly cannot rationally suppon his hunch. His conflictswith the Mayor, with his men, erc.,make his concernwith the potentialdangerof the Sunlight he Man dangerous, should concern himself with other problemsunlesshis hunch is right. Section dso showsClumly's temptationto throw it all up, abandon his wife who's a burden, etc.-a temptation he adrnirably resists.He is something of a bungler, too late for the times, but wonh respect &t least uP to a point. , III. Wbm tbeExorcistSbatl Go to tbeHouseof tbePatimt. , . Introduces for of the stories the Indian, Nick Slarer(arrested a crime more serious when he committed it, hence a victim of than he could underssnd Clumly't thief, and funher develops law), Waher Boyle, professional conflicr with modern police methodology.Funher signsof Clumly's then, worse, returns paranoia.The Sunlight Man makesan escape,

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to free the Indian-with the accidentalresult that a guard is killed. (Theehapter title cornesfrom acuneiform tablet from ancient Mesoevil potamia.The Sunlight Man exorcises in Babylonianterrns,commits evil in Hebrew and modern terms.) m. Lion EmergingfrnmCage Story of Will Hodge Sr, who is made and murder, and who, after for to feel panly responsible the escape a life of ducking his head,is driven to action' he will help to recapture standsin that Clumly's seemingincompetence the Indian; later sees Clumly's hunter. Sectionalso inBecomes the way of the recapture. cludescomment on Hodge's life with his wife and sons and on the image on the lives of his influence of his father the Congressman's family and himself. IV. Mama. Will Hodge Sr's wife. Her conflict with her younger and efficientdestructionof the old her son, her selfishness, conscious Hodge family and its vdues. At the end of the section,Millie (the wife) and her son Luke are at Luke's house in the country and are imprisonedthere by the escaped Sunlight Man and the Indian boy. V. HuntingwiW Asses.(Like the title of sectionthree,the title comes from a famousMesopotamiantablet drawi"g.) Dealswith Clumly's pursuit of the SunlightMan, and the tightening net around Clumly himself-Mayor and Will Hodge Sr, aswell asClumly'r own weaknesses. VI. Estber. (Based the Biblical Esther.)Presents on Clumly's wife's characterand difficulty-her feeling of unwofthiness,her religiosity, self-sacrifice, is, her wish to balance that the scorewith her husband. VII . TbeDialogue Wood on . and Stone The {irst Clumly-Sunlight dialogue. tapped, so that he is forced to listen to the Sunlight Man, Clumly hearsthe criminal'sarguments nihilism. (See"The Four for Dialogues;' below.) \4II . Tbe KleppmannFik. IntroducesWill Jr's pursuit of the professionalskip, Kleppmann, and Will Jr's ambivalentfeeling about Kleppmann, about his own life and family, about Law itself. Also exploresWill Jr's feelingsabout law in the old days(aspracticedby his

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and exPensive, counrry-lawyerfather) and law now (highly specialized, grandfather inhumane),aswell as his feelingsabout his Congressman and the changing ideals of America. Aaordingtr My Will:' (From an I [X. "Like a Fobber, Sball Proceed old cuneiform manuscriptabout a king who renouncedthe will of rhe gods.)Dealswith Clumly's continuingpursuitof the SunlightMan, and others' continuing pursuit of Clumly. Hodge Sr, the Mayor, Clumly's wife. domesticroubles, his jedousy and and X. Poetry Life. Benson-Boyle's shadowingof his boarder.His impulseto tell the police all he knows about the jailbreak,and his conflicting impulsetoward self-presenation. XI. Tbe Diahgue of Houses. Second intellectual confrontation of Clumly and the Sunlight Man. . XII . A Motber'sl-oae Millie, the Sunlight Man, the Indian boy, and Millie's son, Luke. Millie's feelingthat the nihilism of the Sunlight from his Congressman-inspired Man mnybe the k y to her son'sescape in short, free him to be what she wants him to be. puritanism-may, zu Xm . Nab ist-und sclnser fassm dsr Gon A return to Will Hodge delight in the on Sr's pursuit of Clumly, with emphasis his increasing one. He feelsfree of the old pursuit itself, rhe despoticpower it gives increaslife. of restrictions his formerly timid, responsible He becomes ingly destructive,though so far only in potentid. XtV. TlteDiolog* oftbeDead.Clumly andSunlight,third confronntion. andDtty. XV. Loue to Esthermkesthe Sunltgh,dialoguemPes Miller.

to X1,rt. Voyage tbe Undm)orld. Will Jr, pursuingKleppmann, catches a up with him but corruptly accepts trifling bribe to free the skip. His anguishas he does this. XVU . Bcnsonas.Bryh. Funher developmentof the Benson story. the Reaches poinr of knowing he must go to the police. Can't do it.

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XVm . Winged Figure Carrying Sanificial Animal. (Based on yet another famoussblet illustration) Millie's decisionto make llke helP Sunlight and the Indian escape,by driving them to safety in his Paxton truck. of XIX . TbeDialogue Twm. Clumly and Sunlight, founh confronution-conclusion of argument. XX . Luke. Luke, driving the Sunlight Man and the Indian boy to to freedom, chooses wreck his truck and kill himself in order to kill . his two riders A joyful self-crucifxion-but Sunlight and the Indian have jumped off, and the self-crucifxion is pure waste. XXI . E silmtio. Prodded by his younger son's death, Will Sr acts, closing in on Clumly. The Indian surrenders. XXil . Law and Order. EstherClumly, knowing sheis panly responfor destruction, siblefor her husband's takesthe responsibility defending him, though only in an absurdge$ure-she will not let the police to get the Sunlight tapes.She prepares fight the police in her house, with Clumly's pistol. Meanwhile, the Sunlight Man surrendersand is shot by a panicky policernan.

Epilogw' Documents. A death repon on the Sunlight Man, now identified asTagen F. Hodge, disbarredBatavialawyer who hasbeen living in Phoenix. Also other documents,cold, drab, and inadequate.The facts of a human life are merely facrs, devoid of meaning.

( , T H E F o U R D I A L o G U E SS E C T I o N S V I I X I , X I V , A N D X I X ) The four dialoguesof Clumly and the Sunlight Man-in imitation of the Platonic technique-extend the central exploration of cops vs. robbersto its highestlevelsof abstractionand set contemporary questions againstage-oldquestionssummed up in the conflict of ancient Babylon vs. ancient Israel.

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I . T H E D I n L o G U EO X W O O D A N D S T O N E , ORTHE PUpPETS F BABYLON O The dialogue developsideas implicit (for the Sunlight Man) in the Babylonianconceptof the godsand of the human soul.The Babylonian (WhereasGreek and Hebrew holy godsare separate from the senses. valueto the godsof the offering'sscent,the Babylonsacrifices assume ian priest purifies the air of all smell.) Babylonian civilization as a whole-brilliandy commercialand materialistic, one hand,mysticd on and Easternon the other-asserts a fundamenraldudity of life, a coexistence without necessary conflict of body and spirit, both of which are ralued. The connedion baween body and spirit is in its very essence mysterious, on and the health of eachdepends the healthof the other. WhereasJudaismwould solvethe middle-aged man'ssexualproblems morally, by affirmation of duty and commitment, the Babylonian would grant the subtle workings of the unconscious(even (a would make the marriage\ow practical unificationof estates) psychic), whatand would leara satisfaction mysteriousinstinc, any lawlessness to ever being allowable and culturally approved. In politics, the Babylonian would assena closeconnecion berween rulers and the mumbling gods(cf. the parallelstructureof palaceand etc., practical,but would temple),would make governing,contracts, finally leavethe welfare of the stateto the ruler's intuition, aidedby the readingof omens by diviners.That this didn't work in ancient Mesopotamia is obvious (cf. Israel'sfailure). However, the principle that a ruler's great freedom and great responsibilitymakespossible moment by great wisdom, 4D ability to act flexibly and impersonally, of moment, nor on a basisof hard and fast principle but on a basis Cf. action and reaction,is wonh consideration. Goldwater'sdemand for a "policyj' Johnson's evasionof fxed policy which may not fit tomorrow's situation. in In the sphereof socialpro$ess,the Babyloniandisinterest individual life (cf. Israel'sassertionof the supremeimponanceof the indithat civil rights cannot be made vidual and his stock) would suggest come but musr inevitably develop,at the usual grossnatural cost ro in lives: a sickness curesitself. (Contrast physicd medicine-a JudeoChristian product.) What is the Sunlight Man's answerto modern America'spolitical He and socialproblems? has none. He doesnot deny that we should

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go on $ruggling for improvement.But he doubm that our systemis in tune wirh, or keyed ro, the actud nature of redity, If it is not, we this, he musr fail. And he thinks we will fail. And because believes Hell's Angel, or the beatnik who says he cannot himselfact. Cf. the he is "beyond protestl'

O 2. THE DIALOGUE F HOUSES The dialogueis groundedon omen-watchingin the ancient Near East, an specificdly on the Egyptian-Babylonian of astrology.The Sunlight berweendivination and m4gc-the attemPt to make Man distinguishes not for spiritual holy passivity, the godsacr for one. Divination assens fulfillmenr, as in the Far East, but for practicaland spiritual life. He as of speaks acting witb the gods, being bodily possessed one fires a makes love, or rules a State. machin gun, writes a poem, in in Persondresponsibility, sucha view, consists two things' stubbornly maintainingone's freedom to act (in the Sunlight Man's case, evasionof captureby the police), and jumping when the spirits say iu*p. One of courseneverknows for sure that the godswill speakcf. the caseof the Assyrian king who behaved"like a robber"-but the possibility. one must preserve Tentativelygranting this, what are the implications of the first "ll imperative,maintaining freedom? In the sexud sphere,one must either never marry or one must in maintain completesexualindependence marriage.Is this possible? Is the "sexud revolution" of the West Coast a step in the right or It the wrong directionP is possible,saysthe Sunlight Man, but in our culture, possibleonly for superior people.The woman's posr-Judaic than the man'sin that shehasthe morethan<ulturd problem is greater shameof rnenstruation(every animd hassome measureof distastefor it firss; tells lions where one has been, if nothing else).For the male the problem is that he can't alwaysachievean erection-his potency dependsheavily on his feeling of at least equality with the partner, is amongother things.If intercourse a job (strictly a familid function), or or e pitying gift, or an embarrassment, a thing of no mystery-sex is poisonedfor the male. And both mde and femde must contend with the family instinct by which each seeksto entrap and control

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the other. What are the necessary nrles,then?Male and femalemusr be pranically protectedfrom their weaknesses the totd culture, insoby far as possible.It is not enough that mdes and femdes understand each other's problems,for this rationdity leadsro duty and guilt and to non-intuitive sex. Instead,the place of intellect is to establish the cultural norms-build the highway down which lovers can then unthinkingly speed.The "superior people" menrionedabove,then, are not superior intellectually but superior by culturd grft: they are the accidentalproductsof the right homes.The sexualrevolution is a srep in the wrong direction-anti-puritanism which mu$ resultin a lossof mystery heightenedguilt of a new strictly psychological kind. But rhe wrong step might be transformed(by accidentof history) to a mediare step toward a right step.leadin g awayfrom ancient Israel, it doesnor lead to Babylon but makes Babylon once more a live option. There still remain problerrrs: menstrualshame,mismatcheddesire, familid instinct, the panicular difficulties of the excessively insecure, dominant mde or female, and so on. So it was in ancienr Babylon (horror storiesof Babylonian sexconflicts).But grandng the essential irnperfection of the species,some cultural premisesare better than others. Sexud independence remainsa high valuefrom which our culture (and every modern culture) seemsclosedoff. As for socialand political implications,the imperativethat one must remain free raises evenmore difficult problerns.Socidly, one must at once maintain one's ethnic identity and spurn ethnic identificationwhite, black, lrish, Jewish.Here cf. Babylonianand Israelean assimilation of foreigners.The Babylonian askedacceptence ruler and gods, of Israel askedcircumcision and totd transformation. Neither worked, both having built into the systemthe sarneerror-both made an intellectud assertion.The only way men can really "love one another" is by coming to know one another, in persond, intuitive terms. Now, with our population, that is impossible, and our culturd heritagemakes it even more impossible.Armed truce, that is, democracy,becomes the only hope-and it is not a hope. tuce alwaysmeansregrouping' of ultimately socialproblemswill be resolvedby the emasculation all rninorities. One answer:kill them now-the Rightist answer.Another, the interm arry at once, an answerwhich destroys individual socid unit just as statereligion destroysthe citizen (i.e., Nazi worship of the abstrect State).The Sunlight Man's solution, tentativeand temporary,is great

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of on emphasis eachculture'sunderstanding itself-an unsentimental defecls,an{minimization of conof understanding both vinues and cern with the other culture asa foil. If individualswant to intermarry let let them. If minority groupswant to borrow majority values, them. who he is. Does knowing who you are entail But let everybodyknow hatredof the rnandifferentfrom you, whose identity requiresa modification of your identity?It can.The SunlightMan would make social intercoursea practicd concern, social individuality a spiritual and the mysticalconcern,and the man who crosses line-the bigot-he would execute. The sameargumentcan be madefor international affairs.Nations are equivalentto ethnic or socialblocs.

3 . T H E D I n L O G U EO F T H E D B N O a The dialogue,which develops theme left unexploredin the second didogue, dealswith the ancientBabylonianconceptof death and personal immonality. If man must rnaintain his freedom to act as the gods will-if he extentphysicalindividuditymust maintain his spiritualand to a lesser To what is it that he will do when he actsP what extent is the action itself individud-a persond as well as universalexpression? The Sunlight Man presents,in answer,atr interpretation of the of Gilgamesb, analysis the Babylonianconceptof personalimmortn (a rnad goal)and death (a reality).In Mesopotamia,the struggle nlity struggle.We are walled in for personalfulfillment is a wrong-headed from the outset. The pursuit of Youth (cf. America) is mad; so too fame (cf. Americah lineage(cf. America); a great palace(or novel or is industry). As for pursuit of Heaven, the answer in the Gilgamssb that if there is an afterlife it is sealedup, wdled in. Thus one acts to maintain the freedom to act, but the ultimate Act is impersonal, a movementof the universe., tstroke by, for, and of sole interesttothe gods. (Explicationof the metaphor.) Why act, thenP Because that is the nature of life. That is the imponanceof Gilg. Bk. XII, the "actions" of the dead king among the ineffectualdead. The question is not shall I act or shall I not, but how shall I act?(Not to act is to die, evenindecisionis an act). Once

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one has said this, one must ask, shall I act within the cosmicorder between I do believein? Or, again, shall I act by standingindecisive of the two orders-not striking out for the cosmicorder because my out for the cultural order because human commitment, not striking Which shall I of my divine commitment (or devotion to the Real)? renounce,my body (of which ethical intellect is a function) or my (But The Sunlight Man hasthus far chosento hover,undecided. soulP for the pressure decisionis mounting.)

+ . T H n D I n L O G U EO F T O W E R S The basisof the dialogueis the beautifulBabylonianTowers(Babel, Thematically, the dialoguecontinuesfrom the last. for instance). to The rowersare curious.Their heightsuggests the SunlightMan (as to the Jews)a wish in man to becomelike to God. But the god has his placenor on top of the towers but in the base.He is an inner mysrery from which the towers ascend.Or' from man's own inner mysrery, rhe destructiveprinciple in his blood (born for death),his to his ascend, godly will, his desire becomeat one wirh achievemenrs total reality, either by mergrngwith it or by controlling it. the universe, For the SunlightMan it is a marrerof fact that our culture is not at one with total redity and can nevercontrol it or evenmatch its force, sexually,socially, and politic*lly we are doomed, as all civilizations he to havebeen doomed. He refuses join his own culture not because in what would be possible he minds doom but because hasa vision of a betrerculture-one he doesnot expecteverto arisein the world. On he the other hand, he will nor openly rurn on our culturebecause has he knows the effects now, increasingly personalties to it and because, actions on the innocent, for instanceon Nick Slater. of anarchisric if What happens you do makea choicefor the universe Clumly asks, and againstthe culture which producedyou? Who knows?You can'r act until the call comes,and then it may be a rrifling acr, an absurdity,the minds of the godsbeing indifferent to our values. And what if you oPt for those you love? The Sunlight Man's elaborateanswerbringsthe novelto its rhetorical climax: the Sunlight Man's terrible vision of the and philosophical

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future. (A vision which, by the way, is brilliant but wrong.) He sees violence an age of sexualcatastrophe-increasedbondage, incre-ased shameand disgustand ennui. In the socid sphere, and gpilr, increased toul chaosin the political sphere. hatredand boredom.And he foresees of of The capitalisticbasis the greatvalues Westernculture will preclude solutionof the world's problems.China and Africa will destroyWestem civilization utterly, but for lack of respefi for individual life will fail to build a freeand responsiblecivrlizationof their own. (The Babylonian Towersblur with an imageof New York's towers.)This grim vision of whar our cultural errors must lead to is what keepsthe Sunlight Man from choosingthe ethical side-commitment to his imperfect but belovedculture. mainly of the Sunlight At the end of this dialogue,which consists of Man's monsrous vision of the future, Clumly getspossession the gun. He "frees" the Sunlight Man for the following almost explicit reason' Clumly is outsidehis jurisdiction.It is not that Clumly accepts lawlessness bendsto it, but that here in the cavernof metaphysical or anguish,Clumly hasno authority. The Sunlight Man's crime is against life itself. [The Sunlight Man's smile was scornful now. "You think I'll be 'higher' arrested, then, by authorities?" Clumly thought deeply."l beliwssol' he said.He rubbed his jaw. "Yes. That is what I believel'l Clumly's faith provesright. After the accident,the death of llke Hodge, the surrender Nick Slater,the SunltghtMan-Luke Hodge's of uncle, in fact-feels driven, "called" as if by the mumbling gods, to give himself up, confesshis name and lineage,and, in shon, affirm his culture for better or worse. Sgt. Figlow, reacting in pure terror before can tbink, shoots him. be

KIITIDS FINTEREST HE NOVELOFFERS O T A first-ratenovel is of interestin a variety of ways. The most obvious kind of interestin this one is its suspense-notonly the suspense already described, the rnain plot, but alsosuspense subplots.The Boylein in

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Bensonsubplot(the story of the double-identity thief) is equallysuspenseful,Boyle'sconflict with his boarder,the potential dangerof the young radicaland his political activities,the potentialdangerin Boyle's jealousy,the funher potential dangerin his accidentallycrossingthe path of Will HodgeJr, who is hunting the dangerous skip,Kl.ppmann. In effect, the suspense the Boyle-Benson in subplot comesro norhing because Boyle'sinability to act. And the sameis true in the Will of Hodge Jr subplot.Will Hodge Jr hunts Kleppmann,a man capable of killing to preservehimself from capture,but in the end Will Jr (More capitulates, t"king a pdtry bribe and abnegating responsibility. his may come of this, however.I don't know yet.) In any case, suspense the built up in the rwo cops-and-robbers subplots, beingbased the same on dilemmas dealt with in the main plot, are calculated spill over into to the main plot, where a catastrophe doescome and the reader's expectation is fully and grimly fulfilled. Another form of suspense builds up in the conflict of Millie's selfishness her wish to imposea similar and selfishness Luke, on one hand, and, oo the other, Luke's manyron like reaction to his mother's will-his wish to assen an idealistic selflessness is againsther selfishness. this subplot, the catastrophe In ironic' Llke makeshis assenion and, in hopesof killing the two criminals, kills himself alone. Here the bitter absence poetic justiceis of cdculated to feed the intensity of the cata$rophein the main plot, where poetic justice is realized,and for all the right reasons. Setting and characterprovide another kind of interest.The locale of the main action,Batavia, of Ny., is real-as arethe locales the minor actions-and the characterof the locale is closelyanalyzed,one gets a valid senseof western Ny. life and people,of western NY. geography-its peculiar lights and shadows,its stony hills, old-fashioned barns, its conflict of the old and the new (going back to the time of Senecarule). Western N.Y. architecture,westernN.Y. names,and so on, evenwesternNY. folklore are preserved at the sametime used and for their symbolic implications, so that one gets,as in Tbe Resurrectiqn, a very rich senseof place.At the sametime, localestreated in the minor plots-San Francisco,los Angeles,Denver, Phoenix, and southern lllinois-cl arify by contra$ and introduce a larger imageof American life. In the process this long novelone getscloseanalysis of Avenuewhoreof a rich variety of housesand landscapes-aHanrester house in Batavia,one of those fine old brick housesfound nowhere

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28t

but in western New York, old RossStreet housesin Batavia, modernistic housesorcrlooking los Angeles freeruays,I town house in San Francisco,and so on. All of which is to say that I believe Fielding is right about the novel, it must presenta wide variety of settingsand must dways be absolutely convincing. the I As for characterization, belierre norelist should walk the tightrope berweenrarisimilitude and romance.Ercry characterin the norrel, of elcn the most minor, h larger than life-like the characters Chaucer, for instance-yet more or les convincing.Absolute rarisimilitude leads to plodditrg aaualit/; on the other hand, extremeand obvious distortion leadsto a kind of thinnesslike that in fair tdes or yarns. My is objecr in creatingcharacters to make peoplejust convincing enough to that the readernever remembers say "I don't believeiti'yet not so pedestrianlyconvincingthat the readerforgetsto be intetested.Thus Clumly is a canoon of aman-hairless asa grub from an old sickness, rnore intensethan police chiefsusudly are,yet inrolrcd with real problems,sufferingrealemotions.And thus the Sunlight Man is an incredible person-a magcian, somewhatpsychic,unusually intelligent and well-read,yet also panly confused,torn by ordinary human anguish, by All capableof making foolish mistakes. the characters, the way, are based-remotely-on red people.In the final'rersion,their profesional activitieswill be rrerycarefully researched-ascarefully asthe activities concernsof the philosopher, of Tolstoy'speople.(Cf. the professional Chandler, in The Resunectiun.\ In a novel of this sizeit is possibleto reat closely and sensitively the whole gamut of human emotions, from puppy-loveto the love of old people,from adolescent hostiliry to maturc hatred, from befuddle ment to madness. And paft of the interestin dl this is that all of these emotionscan be interpretedin terms of the samesystem-contrasting kinds of responsibilityand withdrawd. Another point wonh mentioning is that, unlike many modern nortels, which all significantcharacters cry-babiessuffering enorin are mous sentimentd panp, this norrclpresents mature and sensiblepeople, as well as immature, sentimental,or mad. Frorn start to finish, the norm of the novel is optimistic, common sensicalt though the central characters extremis$,confronting the world with the intensity of are Melvillean heroes,there are all around them normative characters, remindersthat there is a ho-hum workaday world in which the novel's concernsare not disastrous.

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And then this. For the politicdly inclined, the novel hasan original (?)and carefully worked out politicd thesis.For the religious,a theory of holinessvs. mere ritud. For the psychologicrllyoriented,an andysis of mind and mord conflict. And so fonh. As for the poetic quality of a good novel, this novel has a refined and complexstyle, admiaedly not a rryle to please readers the popular of nortel,but one which ought to satisfr anyoneseriouslyconcerned with the novel as an an form. The Clumly sectionsare straightfonvard, humorous in a Kafkaesquesort of way, and fairly simple. The Will Hodge Jr sections-since Will Jr is intenselyintellectual,almost an escapist-involve interior monolose, phantasy, and a farly heavyuse of foreign languages-one of Will's waysof evadinglife-French, German, Iatin; but one can follow the story without knowing the languages (aswell as in Thomas Mann, for instance).The mo$ intenselypoedc sections,and the most difficult, are the Sunlight dialoguesthemselves. Whereas Walter Boyle, the thief, is a popular poer, school of Eddie Guest, Sunlight is a true poet, for whom metaphor and dlusion are a meansof releasingessentialredity. As for the larger poetic rhphm of the novel, it residesin recurrent images,parallel evenrs,and the interpl ay of plot against plot, character againstcharacter. Finally, the novel has poetic effect in that it presentsa universe, somethitg the whole spectrumof American life in 1966"pproaching the whole political and social spefiruD, s well as the relationship of the presentmornent to the flow of history from the medievalformulation of the idea of modern civilization to the fall of the West through the prediaed riseof a new and radicdly different,equrlly futile civilization grounded on the premisesof Africa and Asia. (The individualistic valuesof capitdism, accordingto the Sunlight Man, cannot save the modern world; but the answers modern times,proposedby China for and Africa, though valuablein that they correctthe error of capitdisffi, carry the seedsof their own destruction in that they find no vdue in individual human life. And neither can the Easternanswers evolve into a valid answer, becausethe sheer force of overpopulation must In perpetuatethe kernel weakness.) terms of the Sunlight Man's metaphor, both Babylon and ancient Hebrew civilization are doomed to destruction. There can therefore be no answer for the world. There can only be an answer for the individual' love and commitment in a doomed unirarse.But this is no d**y affirmation.Just asindividud

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of arisesdirectly because human mondity, so human consciousness is social,political, and mord consciousness a valuableproduct of the death. (Cf. the theme of Tbe Resunection.) idea of L E N G T HO FT H E N O V E L I cannor predict how long the finished novel will be. The first four The secrionsare finished in rough draft and come to 400 ms. Pages. (I've also whole book will probably run to at least l1t0 ms. Peges. of the later sections.) finished a fevv I can'r accuratelypredict, either, how long the book will take to finish. I hope to harrea complete first draft by this September-but that is no mor than saying I hope to have the canurs blocked out, figures drawn in in some detail. In any case,I'll need to sit and fret months at least. with the rough dra for serteral

INDEX

Aaron,Hank, 99 Abbot, Bud, l9l Abe, Kobo, l r0 Tbe, Profcssor, 83 Abscnt-Minded 17 Acccnt, 6 Aas of King Artbur and His Nobh Tho,ll2-18 Knigbts, A d a , 7 l ,l 8 t , l g t 9 Samuel, t Adams, TIn, 86-89 Adaenturer, Aftn lulius,24 Aiken,Joan,219 Albee,Edward,17, Alia in Wondnland,6O-64 Alination, 22 Allen, Ethan,95 Allen, Woody,9l Alhy laggffi, 42, 48 All tbc King'sMcn, 177 Amnican Drcam,An, 71, 167 Anna Karmitu, 37, 196 79, of Apollonius Rhodes, tBl, 184,ztl 28, Aristotle, 103 Arkin, Alan, 224 Anniesof tb Nigbt, 167 An of Fiaim, Tbe,vii, xvii, xviii, 2J8 An of Wah Disnry,Tfu, 79

As I by Dyng, 221 '*pcas of Alice, 6O 2Ol, 202 Tbc, Assassins, 199, 2OO, Auden,W. H., 60, 62 Austen, Jane,41, 7t, 232 108 Bach,JohannSebastian, , 162 BadMan, A, 74, 75, 167 x Bddwin, James, Thc, 130, l3l, 20, Baranin tbe Tnes, B a n h , o h n ,x i , 7 1 , 7 2 , l l 8 , 1 3 4 , J l 1 3 9 , 1 6 41 6 r , 1 7 0 , 7 l , 1 7 r , , 1 1 7 9 , 1 8 1 ,8 2 ,1 8 3 ,1 8 4 ,1 8 6 , 1 8 7 ,1 8 9 ,l 9 t , 1 9 2 Dondd, 7r-7+, 7r, 76, Banhelme, 8 6 , 1 6 + ,1 7 0 ,1 7 r , l 9 l "Bartlebythe Scriraner,"l-12 Charles,166 Baudelairc, 16 Bazzaris, PeterS., 165 Beagle, Aubrey, l+, Beardsley, Samuel,13, 41, 48, J0, t6, Beckett, 7 3 , 8 8 ,9 1 , 1 7 0 ,1 7 6 , 2 2 2 8l and Bcdhnobs Brosntsticks, lldwig ran, Ill, 162, Beethoran, 220, 2rl Tbe, 169, 195 Beah-Leg,

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oN wRrrERs AND wRrrrNG

Behan,Brendan,Jl &irg Tberc,72 Bellamy, Joe David, xiv, xvi, lll, 182 Bcllcflnr, 199-204 Bellow,Saul,xvii, 13, 18, 16+, l6t, 1 6 7 ,1 6 g ,1 7 0 ,1 7 t , 1 7 6 ,l g g , l g 4 Bennett,Arnold, 9l Benny,Jack, 190 Beoutulf, xx, 87, 140, l7+, 232, xiv,

2rt
Bergson, Henri, 48 Bry^d tbc Bc&oan Wall, 90-94 Bbagaaadgita, T2 Biely,Andrei, l8t, 231 Big RmkCanQ Mountain, Tbe,90, lt t Blake, Peter,79 Blake,William, l7l, 231 Blanshard, Brand, 123 BleahHoue, 45 Bledsoe, Thomas 41, 4t , BloodOrangcs, The, 169 Blmdsbcd, l8t Bloom, Allan, pci Boccaccio, Giovanni,206, 22O,221 Boethius, Anicius Manlius Sercrinus, l+t Bobeme, 2rO 14, Borchardt,Georges, J8 2 Borges, Jorge[lis, 88, lr0, l7t, 19+ furn Frce,83 Bourjaily,Vance 17 , 6 Braithwaite, B., 6, R. 174 Brcakfat of Cbampions, Brcat, Tbe, 65-69 Brockway, James,22 Cleanth,176, 2r2 Brooks, Brotbers Karamazcu,Tbe, 123 Brock, 7l Bncwer, Browning,Roben, l2t, 229 Pat, :rxi Buchanan, Bulht Park, tt-t9, 128, 168 Burgess, Anthony,18, 26, 27, 49-50 Burke,Kenneth,6l William S., 71, 73, l7l, Burroughs, 1 7 8 ,1 8 8 ,1 9 t Byron, GeorgeC'ordon,Lord, 12 Cdvin, John, t9 6, Cdvino,Itdo, I 30- 33, 17 20t-l I

Camus, Alben, 177,231 Cannibal,Tbc, 169 CantnburyThles, Tbe, 233 Capote,Truman, 14 Capp,Al, 3+ Carlyle,Thomas,231 Carroll, hwis, 60-6+ Carter,Jimmy, xxi Caner, Raymond, xviii Casanova, Gioranni, 87, 88 Castaneda, Cados, 196 of Tbe, 130-33, Castlc Crossed Destinies, 20, Catcb22, xix Cato, 86 Caulfield,Holden, 7t Caute,David,41, 52-54 Caxton,William, ll2, ll3 C.cntaur, Tbc, 184 Cbarlone's Wcb,219 Chaucer, xiv, Creoffrey, 37, 68, 74, 8 t , 9 8 , l 3 l , l + r , 1 7 4 ,l 8 l , 2 2 0 , 221,232, 28t Chayevsky, Paddy, 12, Cheertr,John,xvii, 5 5-59, 71, 90, 1 2 + - 2 9 , + t - 4 8 , 1 6 8 ,1 6 9 ,1 7 6 l Chekhov, Anton, 13 199, 2O2 Cbildwold, C b i m n a ,1 7 r , 1 7 9 ,1 8 3 City Ltfe, 74 Clegg, C., 22 N. Clinton, Hillary, ui Tbe, Chtn Viscou.nt, 130, lr2, 205 Coenen,Frans,22 Thylor,168,l9l,23l Coleridge, Samuel Colhaor, Tbe x$(, 134 , R. Collingwood, G., ix, 2t9 Collins,Wilkie, 2 3l Tbe, Camedians, 2J Compson, Quentin, l9l of ConfcssionsNat Turnn, The, l t 6, | 57 Tbe, Confibnce-Man, 9, ll, 106, 169 l8 Conrad, Joseph, t Coover, Roben,71, 164,165,169,17O, 1 7 2 ,1 7 r , 1 7 8 ,1 9 0 - 9 1l,g t , 1 9 6 130, C,osmicomics, 132, 2O5 C,ouples, 76 Crould, 176, 194 Cozzens, James Crane,Stephen,l8 t

rNDEx /

291

Crews,Harry, 169 7 Criersand Kibitzers, 5 lt6 Cime and Punisbmmt, xvii Crouch,Stanley, R Crumb, ., 8t Dahl,Rodd, 219 DanielMartin, 13+-39 DanteAlighieri,143,174,231 "Dead,Thei' 221,224 23t "Death in Venice," Tl)e, 2A6 221 Decamersn, , Tlte, 41, t2-t4 of Decline tbe West, Defoe,Daniel,xix, 87 de la Mare, Walter,60 R., Samuel xv Delane.y, ltz Nicholas, Delbanco, ix Deliaerance, 88, l7l, 218 Marquis, de Sade, ix, Charles, xvi, 19, 37, 4t, Dickens, 8 2 , 9 1 ,1 0 5 ,2 2 2 ,2 2 9 ,2 3 0 ,2 3 4 , 23t,262 viii, Dickey, James, xix, 16l Sbsu,Tbe,74, 7t, l9l Dkk Gibsan Dink'sBlues,It Walt,viii, 3+,78-85, l+2, 143, Disney, 2 2 l t 6 , 1 7 4 , 2 9 ,2 3 0 ,2 3 1 , 3 4 ,2 t t Tbe DiaineComedy, , 232 E. Doctorow, L., 134,167 168 , Donne, , 2 John 17 l0l Don Qluixote, 19, Fyodor, 53,91, 156, Dostoyevsky, 2 2 0 ,2 2 t , 2 3 1 ,2 3 + Image,Tbe, 16 Double Lloyd C., 196,229 Douglas, of Dope tbe Eut, A, l9t Doyle,Sir Anhur Conan,231 Richard,224 Dreyfuss, xxi Dinesh, D'Souza, 149-tt Dubin'sLiaes, 22+ Dubliners, Dumbo,79 5 Iennis,17 Dunlap, William, 17 6 Eastlake, Tbe, 13+ EbonyTbwer, Alben, I t0 Einstein, Dvight D., 168, 177 Eisenhower,

Eliot,T.S.,49 6 E l k i n ,S t a n l e y ,8 , 7 4 - 7 t , 7 6 , 8 t , 8 6 , l t 2 , 1 6 7 ,1 7 0 ,l 9 l Duke, lr 6 Ellington, P., Elliot, George 175 Ellison,Ralph,xix, 168, 194 William, 18, 19 Elsschot, R"lphWddo, 71,74,167,272 Emerson, SS Empedocles, Tbe,25, 26 Encounter, End of tbeRoad,The, 139, l6t 6+ Edmund, Epstein, Erik, 94 Erikson, 184 Euripides, Peter,15, 27 Faecke, Fair,RonaldL., 40 Faitband tbe GoodTbing, tx, 169 124-29, 146, 168 Falconer, 78, Fantasia, 79, 84, 142 F a u l k n eW i l l i a m ,2 5 , 3 1 , 3 7 , t 4 , 7 0 , r, 7 1 ,8 2 , 9 1 ,l t 9 , 1 7 7 ,1 7 8 ,l 8 t , 1 9 3 ,2 l r , 2 2 1 ,2 2 4 ,2 2 7 Fcsst,xix 91 Fellini,Federico, of Fiaion and tbe Figures Ltft, 7| , I 7l , 1 8 6 ,1 8 7 kslie, 182 Fiedler, Henry, 217 231 Fielding, , 79,80, 81, 83 Finch,Christopher, Wake, 28, 3t, 8t, l0l 27, Finnegans Tbe, It Firebugs, F. Fitzgerald, Scott, 7l FlodtingOpera,Tlte l6t , Formsof Fiaion, Tl,n, viii, 17t Fowles, John, xix, 68, lt4-39 43 Frame, Janet, , 44 Tbe, 167 Francbiser, 9f Benjamin, Franklin, Book, xt<i Freddy's FrmcbLiattmant'sWoman,Tbe, 134, t3t t, F r e u dS i g m u n d , 2 8 0 , , + , 6 1 , 6 2 , , 6t, 67,174 Fry., Northrop, 19t xiv Fulgentius, x Fuller,R. Buckminster, 16, Alexander, 17 Fullenon,

2 9 2/

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Gaddis, William, l0l-ll, 127, 164, 1 6 5 , 1 6 9 ,1 7 2 ,l g 7 Galswonhy,John, 9l GarciaMarquez,Gabriel, l30 Gardner, John,vii-p<i, 173, l8t, 2t8 Gass,William H., viii, xi, 21, 27, 3 0 - t 4 , 4 r , 6 9 , 7 1 ,7 2 , 7 6 ,g t , 9 6 , l l l , l t 6 , 1 6 4 ,1 6 9 ,1 7 0 ,l 7 l , 1 7 2 , 1 7 3 , 1 7 5l , g ,l g t , l g 6 , l g 7 , l g g , 7 189,lgl, lg2, lg7, 2lg, 221 Gausof tbe Forest, Tbe, 5l-t2 Gershwin,George,lt 6 G i d e ,A n d r e ,1 7 7 , 1 8 3 ,1 9 2 Gilcs Goat-Boy,7l, 173,183 Gilgamesb, 281 87, C'oethe, JohannWolfgangvon, xix, I I I Gogol, Nikolai, 6t, 69 Gold, Herben, 17 t Goldwater,Barry, 278 Goodbye, Columbus, 194 Gordimer,Nadine,4l , +2, 43, +5 C'ordon, Caroline,193 Gottlieb,Roben, zt} Graves, Roben, 6l Graoity'sRainhou, 169 Gray,Dondd 1., 6, Greene, Graham 14, 25, 26 , GrccnLigbt, Tbe, 196 Gregory Horace,60 Grmdel,viii, x, lu, l7l, 174, 2r5 Guest,EdgarA., 228, 266, 286 Gupta, Robena,2l+

Hcnog, 18, 189 Hess,Rudolph,I t8 Higgins, 214 Joanna, Hobbit,Tbe,140, l4l Hoff, Marilyn, I t Hoffman, Dustin, 224 Hog Butcbtr, Th, +0 Holquist,Michael,6 ,, 6+ Holy Lond, Tfu, xrx, +5-48 HotrrcIs Wbne YouStart From, It H o m e r , 3 , 8 8 , l t t , 1 6 6 ,l 8 l , 1 8 8 , t 220, ztl Horowitz,Gene,lt, 16, 22 Horton, Chase,ll2, I I 3 House tbc Canal, Tbe, 22 on Howard,Elizabeth Jane,2+, 2t Howells,William Dean,7l H u c kF i n n , 0 , 7 2 , 7 1 , 7 + , 7 7 7 Humboldt's Gtfr, 189, 19+ Hurnperdinck, Engelben, 230 "Hunting of the Snark, The:' 61, 64 Hurston, 7,oraNeal, xix Iliad, Tbe,87, 89, 166, 22O Inganen, Roman,l2t In C,old Blood,14 Indian Summn, 37-+O In tbc Heart of tbe Hcart of tbe 72, Country, l9l, 221 "In the Regionof lce," 60, 75 InaisibhCities, 130, 20t Inaisiblc Man, xix, 19+ Iouta Rnicu, 237 Irving, Washington, 200 Italian Folktalcs, -2ll 2A, kaya,Kikuo, xvii

Haley, Alex, xix Hansen, Ron, 214 HopH Days, 7, Hardy, William M., 40 Hassan, Ihab, 164, 166 221 Iock and tbc Bcanstalk, Hawkes, 2 1 6 ,2 1 7 , 2 1 8 , 2, John, 164,169 17 17t , J a k e s ,o h n , J 1 7 4 ,1 7 , 1 8 4 ,l g g , 1 9 + t Henry 71, 75, 76, 77, 90, James, Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 168,218 76, lt+,232 Hecht, Anthony, 16+, 192 William, 199 2t t , James, Heidegger, Manin, 66 laon andMc&ia, xii, xiii, l8l -82, Heller,Joseph, xix, 17 6 1 8 4 ,1 8 6 Helprin, Mark, 164, 195 Thomas,98 Jefferson, Hemingway, Ernest, 3, 82 Charles, 169 t Johnson, Hmderson Rain King, l6t, 167 194 Johnson, 278 tbc LyndonBaines, , Herben,George,172 It2 Samuel, Johnson, Hersey, 176, 194 Jones, James, John, t 5

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293

B J o n s o n , e n ,1 0 3 ,1 0 6 2 J J o y c e ,a m e s , 7 , 2 8 , 33 , t + , 6 + , 1 5 2 , 2 1 6 6 ,1 7 g , 2 4 ,2 2 t, 2 2 7 2 3 2 ,2 r 4 , J R ,l o l - l l , l 6 t , 1 6 9 lubjub Bird, Tbe,40 'Julius Caesar the Werewolf," and 2 3 7t 7 Karl,63 Jung, lunglc Book,Tbe,82 8, 6t Franz, , 67, I 31, 17 192, Kafka, 286 Ivan, 120 Karamazov, Kazin,Alfred, 177 Keats, John, 231 Kelly,Wdt, 8t 4 Cdvin, 17 Kentfield, 176, Kmyon Reaieus, 2t2 Kerr, Walter,6 3 4 Ken, 17 Kesey, Soren,15; 122, 123 Kierkegaard, , 177 22t , Kimball,Roger,xxi Indian, Tbe, l8l King's l9 Kirk, Russell, 3 Henry 86 Kissinger, Knowles, John, 37-40,43 70, KosinskiJerzy, 72-73, 173 , "Kreutzer Sonata, TheJ' 266 219 Kumin, Ma,xine, Pir, lagerkvist, xix, 43, 4t-48, tO, 52 Lancelot, ll9-23 I:ne, Margaret,16 LastGntbtnan, Tbe,ll9 World,Tbe,4l LateBourgeois Tbe,7l l"ateGreatCreantre, D. Lawrence, H., viii, lt0 T. l-awrence, E., 88 t lrbowitz, Al, 17 94 Ire, Peggy, Leg,The, I 9 Let NoonBe Fair, 16 kvin, Harry, 6l lt6 Lie Dntn in Darkness, Limbaugh, Rush,)<xi Lime Tbig, The, 169 Abraham, 3-84, 96 8 Lincoln, Lionbeart, 16

Lolita,Tl tongfellow,Henry Wadswonh,229 xiv, 17 17 longinus, , | bng March, Tln, 156 Tbe, 140, l4l Lordof tbe Rings, Love and Deatb,9l Itue and Deatbin tbeAmericanNoael, 182 Loae Bug, Tbe,8, Loae tbe Ruins,ll9 in Lytle,Andrew,176, 19+ Helen, 16 Maclnnes, Magic Mountain, Tbe, l0l Magus,Tlte, lt5 Norman,38, 71,88, 16+, Mailer, 1 6 7 ,1 7 6 ,1 9 4 3, 149-5 164, Bernard, Malamud, 2 1 6 7 ,1 6 8 ,1 7 0 , 2 7 , xix, ll2-18, Malory Sir Thomas, 4 1 2 2 ,1 7 Andr6,87, 88, 177 Malraux, Manbunt,232 Mann,Thomas 232, 23t , 286 , xv Manin, Valerie, 82 Mary Poppins, xv Mory Rcilgt, Mather,Cotton, 59 William, I l3 Matthews, Guy Maupassant, de, 66, 190 McCarthy, Joseph,177 178, 193 Carson, McCullers, 218 McDonald,Ross, 4, 6 McGalliard, John, 17 17 4l llleanwbih Batk at tbe Henbousc, xvi, xix, l-12, lf , Melville,Herman, 1 , 3 7 ,t 4 , 7 1 , 7 t , 7 6 , 8 11 0 6 , 4 9 , l t 2 , 1 6 4 ,1 6 8 ,1 6 9 ,l 7 l , 1 9 2 ,2 1 6 , 2 2 2 1 7 2 1 8 ,2 1 9 , 3 0 ,2 7 1 , 7 2 ,2 8 t , Meyer,Nicholas lt4 , Michaelson, Greg, 214 218 Michener, James, xxi Glnsts, Mickekson's Miller, Anhur, 16+ Miller, HeatherRoss,20 2 Milton,John, 10, 17 , 23O,2rl Yukio,20, 2l Mishima, M! Darling, 27-rO MissMaclntosb, 4J, lVloby-Dick, 271

2 9 4/

oN wRrrERS AND wRrrrNG

Montb of Sundays, l7l A, Moravia, Albeno, 178 Morrison, Toni, viii Mortc dAnbur, xiv, xix, I 12-18 Motber in Hisury, A, 17 Motley, Willard, 16 Mwiegoer, The, ll9 Mozan, WolfgangAmadeus,lO9, llo, lt0, 230 Mn. Stnms Hean tbeMermaids Singing,22, 2t MSS, viii, 212-lt Nabokov,Vladimir,xvii, I ,, 27, 63, 7 0 , 7 1 ,9 1 ,1 7 3 ,l g t , l g 5 Nader, Ralph, 97 Naked and tbeDead,Tbc, 167 176, 192 , "Narrative of A. C'ordonPym, The," 88 Nathan,John, 20 Nemerov,Howard, 17 6 Nework, 12, NewFiaion, Tbc, lll Newman, Cardinal,2tl Nar Yorkn,Tbe l0l, l+7, 176, 218 , NickclMountain, viii, l8l Nietzche, Friedrich, t+,87, 88, 21, 1 2 0 ,l 2 r , 1 7 7 2 0 9 ,2 2 t, 2 3 1 ,2 3 2 , Nigbt at Sea, 16 A, 199, 2OO Nigbtsidc, 9 98.6, 17 Noncristntt Knigbt,Tbe, 130, l32,zOt Nooa Express, 188 Nunez, Sigrid,2t4 Carol,viii, 60, 74, 7t-76, Oates, Joyce 77, 17 , 199-204 t O'Bowen,Robert,17 + O'Brien,Tim, 194 of Ocean Story,The, 183 O'Connor,Flannery, 17, 174, 178, xi, t93 Oaobcr Ligbt, ni Tbe, Odyssey, 87, 88, 89, 166, 220 Of tbeFarm, 23, 24 Old Wiaes'Tah, Tbe, l0l Olian Twist,va lnck, 14, 27, 30-34, 72, Ommsener's 1 6 9 ,1 7 0 ,l 8 t , 1 8 6 ,1 8 9

On Batnting a Noaclist, 2tg On BeingBhu, 188 Onccand Future King, Tbe, I I t OneHundredand One Dalmatians,82 On Moral Fiaion, xx higtn of tbc Bnrnists, The, 71, 169, 170 Otis, Elizabeth, ll2, l l t Our Mutual Frimd, l0l Out, 17 9 Ozick,Cynthia,18t, 19+ PaintcdBird, Tbc, 72 Pdmer,William, 169 Paradise Lost,231 Patcb Blue,A, 229 of Pearl, 140 "Pedersen Thej' 72, l 8t, l9l Kid, Wdker, ll9-2r, ltg Percy, Pmpcaiac,17 6 Peter Pan, 79 Phillips, Roben,6l-63 Picasso, Pablo,82 Picwres Fidelman,I t0 of Picttc, 9 Pilgnm's Progrcss, 169 Pinoccbio, 80, 174 78, Pitcher,George,6 3 P l a t o ,5 3 , 6 4 , 2 3 1 Platonisrl, 8, 29, 202, 277 2 Phybuy,237 Plotinus,33 P o e ,E d g a A l l a n ,2 0 , 8 1 , 8 2 , 8 7 , 8 8 , r l l l , 1 6 6 ,1 6 8 ,1 7 6 ,1 7 7 ,1 9 2 , 229 Porter,Katherine Anne, 193 Pornoy'sCrtnplaint,67 Man, Portrait of tbe Attist as a Young

A, 22+
25, Power, Crawford, 26 163 Price,Reynolds, Price,William, viii 169 hichsongs and Dcscants, P r o u s tM a r c e l9 3 , l l l , 1 6 6 ,1 7 7 , , , l92,2rl 68 Purdy,James, 91, 16+, 165,169, Pynchon, Thomas, 1 7 , 1 7 , 1 8 9 ,1 9 7 2 '

rNDEX /

29t

187 Raymond, Queneau, R a b bRte d u x , 7 3 , 7 6 , 7 7 i Racine, Jean,166 Donald,63 Rackin, 134, 167 Ragtime, Rand,Ayn, 123 6 Ransorn, John Crowe,17 , l9 3 Tbe Recognitions, , 103 Roben,224 Redford, xV, Ishmael, lt6 Reed, of Rmnnbrance TbingsPast,l0l Tlte, Resurrection, 168,23t, 2t9, 284, 28t, 287 Paul, I O0 Revere, 6 Mordecai,17 Richler, Rilke,RainerMaria, 66 Alain, 63 Robbe-Grillet, 6 Tbe,19 Robe, RobinHood,82 xix, Crusoe, 87 Robinson xix Roofs, 2 6t t, Roth,Philip, -69, 12 I 70, 17 , 1 7 t , 1 7 6 ,1 9 4 ,l g t xv Russ, Joanna, witb tbe SailorWbo Fellfron Grace Sec,Tbe,2O,2l 2 S a l i n g e r.,D . , 1 7 8 ,2 1 3 , 2 7 J M^y, 22, 2t, 2+ Sanon, ix, Sanre, Jean-Paul, 2+, 59, 66, 67, 8 7 ,8 8 , 1 7 7 Post, Tbe, 178, 213, Eacning Saturday 232 Roben, 19+ Scholes, Scott,Walter,229 Island,83 Seal and Searcbes Sciwres,167 I 9l , Sedgwick, Georg, 123 on Sa Tltis House Fire, I t 6 SeamPillarsof Wisdam,Tbe, 88 17 Reaiats, 6 Sewanee vri Sbadouts, William 37, 15 218, Shakespeare, 5, , 2 2 0 ,2 2 8 ,2 2 9 ,2 3 1 219 Shreve, Susan, Silmarillion, Tbe, 140-44 Sinatra, Frank,224 194 Singer, Isaac Bashevis,

Knigbt,87, and SirGawain tbeGrem

l+0 Sir Orfeo,140 2tl Smollett,Tobias, Flem, 177,192 Snopes, 7 SnoatWbite(Banhelme), t SnowWbite(Disney),78, 8 2 xviii, 68 Socrates, Soft Soap,18, 19 Son of theMorning, 199, 202 l Choice, t +-62 Sopbie's Tbe, t6, 7 1 ,l 3 + , [ 7 ] , Factor, Sot-Weed l 83 , 1 8 6 Soundand tbeFor!, Tlte, l8t Soundof Music,Tbe, 222 Tbe, l+ Rcoian, Soutbern Stafford, Jean,17, 177,178 A, of Stdte Siege, 43, 44 90, I t t Wallace, Stegner, Steinbeck, John, I l2-18 George,l0l Steiner, Strpr,72-7 , 87 Wallace, Stevens, 8 Philip,17 Stevick, vti Stillness, vrii and Stillness Sbadows, Tom, 123 17t Stoppard, , Tbe, of Stories lobn Cbeeoer, 145-48 2 Richard, 3l Strauss, William, lt4-62 Styron, R S u k e n i c k , o n d d ,1 7 9 - 8 0 ,1 8 3 ,1 8 6 , 189 Tbe, t 74 , SunligbtDialogues, 2 t 8-87 6 Swift,Jonathan,t, 68, 106,l6t, l9l Sylaie and Bruno, 62 A, Taleof Twa Cities, zt0 Thksof HofnAnn, Tlte, 230 Tate,Allen, 60, 19, Thylor, L., 61 A. tylor, Larry, 76 tylor, Peter,I t Tinantsof tbe House,20 Tmgu Cbild, xvii Tenniel, John,6l Sir Tennyson, Alfred, lord, 229 Tbtm, 76 Tbcsie,I 8 3

2 9 6/

oN wRrrERS AND wRrrrNG

Thomas,lowell , 177 Thompson, Stith, 208 Thoreau,Henry David, 73, ltO, 167 Tbursand and Orc Nigbts,Tbe, 183 Tbrougbtbe Inking-Glass, 62 Thurston,Jarvis 17 , 6 TicketTbat E*plodtd,TIn, 7r, l7t Tolkien, R.R., 140-44 J. Tolstoy, [eo, ix, xvi, xviii, lt, ,7, 52, t3, 68, 90, l2+, l2g, l3l, l3+, l t z , 1 6 8 ,1 7 7 ,1 9 0 ,1 9 6 ,2 1 7 , 2 2 0 ,2 2 2 ,2 2 4 ,2 2 r , 2 2 7 ,2 g t Tracy,Don, 16 Ti'anscendentalists, 70, 7r, 167 The, Tieuurc Island, 82 Trenorof Intcnt, +g-tO Tioilas and Criscydc, 221 Tsukui,Nobuko, xvii Tunrcl, Tbc, ltt TwainMark, 71,7t, 74, lt0, 168, , t72 2O,0N LcagwsUndcr tln Sea,82 Tytrt of Fiaion, Tbe, 17t t ?frrl,l3O, 132,2O5 Ulysscs, 166,22t 33, Tfu, 169 Uniamal Baeball Association, 9 Up, 17 Updike, John,xvii, 23, 24, 68, 71, 7 t , 7 4 , 7 6 , 1 2 7 ,l 7 l , 1 7 4 ,1 7 6 , 1 8 4 ,l E 9 , l g t , 1 9 7 ran Gogh, Vincent, ll0 Van OudshoornI ., 22 , Vergette, Nicholas,viii Yrty, Jones,167 Vidal, Gore, 17 6 Vinaver, ll3 Eugene, V i r g i l ,t 8 , 2 3 1 Visionof Banbments, 18 A, Vittorini, 192 V o n n e g u K u n , 7 l , l 7 + , 1 7 6 ,1 7 8 , t, 2lr, 216 Wagner,Richard,2rO

Wdford, Naomi 45 , Wallant,EdwardLewis,17 6 War and Pcacql0l Ward, Jay, 8t Warren,Austin, 17 6 Warren,RobenPenn,lt9, 177,232 Washingon, George, J, 96, 98 9 Watcbnand Abr Stories, Tbc, l r0, lr2, 20t Wan, 48 Weiss,Paul, lzt Wellek, Ren6,17 6 Welty, Eudora,I 78, 19t West,Paul,+2, +t, 4r, 48 West, R"y B., l7 6 WestmtRniew, 17 6 "Wheel of [ove, The," 7t Wfun SbeWw Good,67 White, T. H., llt Whitehead,Alfred Nonh, ix Whitman,Walt, 70, ll4, 167, 19+ W Are Wein Vicnam?, 167 Wiesel,Elie, tl-t2 Willard, Nancy,219 Williams, Charles,169 Williams,John A., x Willie Mutm' bncsomcWfe, 71, l7l, 1 7 3 ,1 8 6 78 Winnie-tbe-Poob, lrudwig,48, 63 Wingenstein, Woiwode, larry xvii, 90-94 Wolfe, Thomas,lt9 Wolitzer,Hilma, 219 6A, 199 Wondnland, 60 Woolcott, Alexander, Woolf, Virginia,60, 62, 87 Wouk, Herman,176, 191 Wrakagcof Agatbon, Tbe, xiii Wright, Richard,x Wurlitzer,Rudolph,189 xvii, 27-r0, 174 Young,Marguerite, Yurick,Sol, 194 Zweig,Paul,86-89

Cnnorrs
" 'Banleby"Art and SocialCommitmentl'Pbilosopbical January196+. Quarterly, "An Invective Reuiew, Spring 1967. AgainstMere Fictionj' Soutbern "More Smogfrom the Dark Satanic Rnitat, Winter 1969. Millsi' Soutbern "BulletPark, by John CheeverJ' October24, 1971. Nm YorkTimesBook Rsaim), "Alicein Wondcrland, kwis Carrolll' NffBR, January30, 1972. by "Tbe Breast, Philip Roth," NYTBR,September 1972. 17, by "The W.y We Write Now," NIIBR, July 9, 1972. "SaintWaltl' NeutYork, 12, November 1973. "Tbe Adamturer, PaulZweig)'NfTBR, December 22, 1974. by "Beyond Bedroom 28, t. Wall,, larry Woiwodel' NYTBR, September 197 by tbe 'hmber (C'et) (Your) (Plastic) Times, October Nru York GrainOncle Sarn)," Waves of 29, lg7t . "lR, by William GaddisJ' of New Yorklleaiew Books, June 10, 1976. "Tb Ads King Anlntr and HisNoblc NfZBR, October Knigbts, byJohnSteinbecki' of 6 24,197 . "Lancelor, WalkerPercy," 2O, 1977. NYTBR,February by "Falconet, John Cheeverl' . April 2, 1977 Reaieut, Saturday by "Tbe Castle Crossed by Destinies, Italo Cdvino," NI'TBR, April 10, 1977. of "DanielMartin, by John Fowlesl'Saturday . October l, 1977 Reuietu, "The Silmarillion,by R. R. Tolkieni'NI/TBR, October23, 1977. J. "Tbe Stories lobn Cbeeaerl' Tiibune Book World,October 22, 1978. Cbicago of "Dulin's Liues, Bernard 2t, BookWmld, February 1979. by Mdamudl' Wwbinry Post "Sopbie's NITBR, May 27, 1979. by Cboice, William StyronJ' 'A Writer'sView of Contemporary 1980. Fictionl' Dismisura, American "Bellefleut, JoyceCarol Oates," NYTBR, July 20, 1980. by "ltalian Folktales, editedby ltalo Calvino,"NYTBR, October 12, 1980. "Fictionin MSS;' MSS, Spring1981. "What WritersDo," Antaeus, Winter/Spring 1981. "Cartoons," 3 NI/TBR, January30, 198 . 'Julius 1984. September Caesar the Werewolfl'Playbry, and "GeneralPlan for Tbe Sunligbt from the GardnerArchive,ca. 1971. Dialogues,"

297