130
MAUREEN
HOWARD
given the interim, Siggy and his friend Graff set out on a motorcycle to
create their own crises. A plot evolves, a grand scheme equal to espionage,
as intricate in its heroics as a feat of the French underground. Grnff and
Siggy are to set free the animals in the Hietzinger
Zoo,
an enormous es–
capade which they construct as a fantasy and come to plan and document
as a reality. It is to
be
their history. Siggy, the instigator, the wild one,
dies in a foolish escape sequence on his bike, leaving a heritage as com–
pelling to his friend as the James Dean legend. He leaves, in fact,
his
Notebook, which constitutes a living autobiography, a superbly written,
amusing, kitchen history of Eastern Europe from his conception in 1938
up until the Hungarian Revolution of 1956: his family squabbling over
politics, correcting each other on dates and details, the events of
the
world woven into
their
world and present emotions.
Unfortunately, the Zoo watch sections, which depend too much on
verbal dazzle, are boring, endless accounts of the habits of the animals
at night, the schedule of O. Schrutt, their evil keeper, and a mawkish
anthropomorphism. The zoo plot in Irving's novel is disappointing, re–
miniscent of Updike's mythology in
The Centaur.
It's a wonder that so
talented a writer allows himself to spoil good work with such a heavy
apparatus.
Setting Free the Bears
is like a good drawing obfuscated to
come up to some notion of Art. Dickens devoted very little time to Silas
Wegg and his dust heap in
Our Mutual Friend,
but the modicum of fable
within the novel is perfect.
John Irving takes a conservative position for a young man in his
first novel: the wild animals let loose on Vienna do not pay back society
for the ills of the past. Revolutionary acts like self-made plots are fic–
tional and unsatisfactory. Irving insists that the young should not read
history as high romance-that they must deal sensibly with their own
time and incur their own debts.
Nog
by Rudolf Wurlitzer is a remarkable attempt to obliterate
any
past whatsoever. A narrator juggles a few memories which mayor may
not be fictional-that hardly matters. What does matter is that the
memories are set pieces which can elicit only a safe and stock response.
"No connections . . .. Narrow all possibilities. Develop and love your
limitations. No one knows you. Know no one." This is an extremely
sophisticated voice, quibbling with and controlling his memories-very
much like Roquentin in Sartre's
Nausea
who tells us:
Now I
think
of no one any more. I don't even bother looking for
words. It flows in me, more or less quickly. I fix nothing, I let
it
go. Through the lack of attaching myself to words, my thoughts re–
main nebulous most of the time. They sketch vague, pleasant shapes
and then are swallowed up. I forget them almost immediately.
