BOOKS
295
Gelber's novel is about Manny Fells, a young Mid-Westerner en–
sconced in a roach-ridden loft just south of Greenwich Village, who
under false pretenses gets a job with a shady and incompetent investi–
gating firm. He is sent out as undercover agent to a suburban discount
center where s.omething is rotten in the camera department. He gets
thoroughly embroiled with both outfits, and falls victim to undeserved
envy and unwanted love. His private life is equally untidy: driftings
through the Village, assorted dope parties, occasional Pyrrhic sexual
victories, and a final entanglement with Louise, whom he doesn't really
want and who is, besides, a sheep in wolfs clothing: under a swinging–
chick exterior hides a solid little homemaker's heart. At novel's end,
Manny has a clean apartment, a respectable job, and is tobogganing
towards matrimot;ly.
Despite incidental felicities, the novel fails on all counts. Consider
the hero. On a morning after, he describes himself: "One hung-over
male, Caucasian, third-generation American Jew, fledgling double agent,
childless but with a stiff cock, standing his full length, holding his head
which
is
much too heavy for his neck." After which, he enters the
kitchen and, going Peter Orlovsky's immortal line, "There comes a time
in
life when everybody must take a piss in the sink," one better, pisses
in
his host's sink. For Manny is a hipster or, to put it more elegantly
(since Mr. Gelber is fond of sudden elegancies: in the middle of tough
monosyllabic talk, there bob up words like "estivating," "griseous,"
''festinated''), a
picaro:
"Since when haven't the idiots run the world?"
he asks, giving it a condign finger. But he is also,
as
we can see from
that
emblematic self-description, a shnook: authority can make him jump;
a minor theft, weep. He is, moreover, a bit of a philosopher-poet, and an
uptown party inspires in
him
the following rumination:
The music said to the people: you are at a party. You may not
like one another elsewhere but here you may like each other.
Your miserable jobs are nothing if they can't buy your pleasure.
Do not be ashamed about the money. Dance. You hear; you
obey. Those wishing to investigate this remarkable phenomenon
will do so at some future time. Listen you schmucks, we offer
rapture.
The people say to the music: don't say anything about our mis–
erable life. These days generalizations are suspect. Sing but
don't swing, for swinging is all inclusive and all we want to
hear is the melody. Of course we're moving, we don't call it
dancing, in nerv,ous reaction to you. Rapture
is
too expensive;
give us exhilaration.
Now, these three aspects of the hero refuse to jell: just when he
