PARTISAN REVIEW
627
TO THE END OF THE NIGHT
THE PASSION OF ROBERT BRONSON. By
J .
M. Alonso. Tha McCall
Publishing Company. $5.95.
THE BUSHWHACKED PIANO. By Thomas McGuane. Simon and
Schuster. $5.95.
THE BOOK OF DANIEL. By E. L. Doctorow. Random House. $6.95.
In this get-rich-quick America somebody is missing the chance
for a fast buck. Consider
The Insomniac's Book Guild
and its simple
motto: "Our Books Put You To Sleep." Volume a fter volume selected
by a distinguished panel of judges each superbly qualified for his job
because he, like each subscriber, has known the terror of the night.
A book the person who dreams of sleep would be smart to take
is
J.
M . Alonso's
The Passion of Robert Bronson ,
a hugely ambitious novel
about among others, two thinly disguised and grotesquely distorted real–
life writers. One, in this
roman
a
clef
feet; is a Boston-American poet.
Named Robert Bronson for libel purposes. Another is his anima of the
people, a Midwestern writer, with a Catholic girlhood behind her,
named Celeste Riley. "A number of her stories, remarkable for their
unsparing sexual candor about herself and her well-known associates,
people whose names will be remembered as long as there is an interest
in the prose, poetry, and politics of the American thirties, were strung
together to make a nO\'el, entitled
Tell Me Who You Are."
Celeste
writes about a heroine named Irene McNertney, and Mr. Alonso in–
cludes several of these stories and some of Mr. Bronson's poems here.
They are, needless to say, not a wit as good as their originals.
Dr. Mal Waters (get it? ), Robert Bronson's psychiatrist supplies
X.
J.
Muldoon - a Boston professor .and the book's narrator - with
tapes of Bronson's psychiatric sessions. So, with tapes, autobiographical
stories, the diary of Frank Chase. who's one of Celeste's lovers dontcha
know, and Bronson's poems, we have here quite a mixed bag of shticks.
Some books about real people are only interesting if you know who'i
who. And some are interesting despite that.
The Passion of Robert
Bronson
would ha\·e been more interesting if it had not been about
real people even if one simply
adores
gossip. Mr. Alonso is a good writer
almost in spite of himself and h is intramural games, and the energy
that must have gone into the ac t of reducing complicated people into
fools , without meaning to, is exhausting just to think about.
Thomas McGuane's
The Bushwhacked Piano
was not selected by
]he Insomniac's Book Guild.
They know a book that will keep you
a\\·ake when they see one.
~icolas
Payne is a young man who refuses
to ·be, unlike D. H . Lawrence, "at one" with things. He fi ghts against
