PARTISAN REVIEW
RISK- TAKING
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT? By Gilbert Rogin. Random House. $6.95.
BURNING. By Diane Johnson. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. $6.95.
143
THE PROFESSOR'S DAUGHTER. By Piers Paul Read. Lippincott. $6.95
It
is fascinating, the risks Rogin takes in this flamboyant
book: he has narrowed his focus upon a very few personali ties and a
very few ideas, he insists upon working down and through and ulti–
ma,tely inside his protagonist, who is a Stereotype locked in a series
of boxes of Stereotypes (relationships with Father, with Wife, with Self,
with the inevitable Alter-Egos, with the Insanity of Contemporary Life,
etc. ). Such a deliberate limiting of subject matter could have been
disastrous, but Rogin succeeds wonderfully ; he may have even written
the book to end, forever, the necessity for writing such books. For this
reason alone anyone interested in contemporary fiction, from the writer's
viewpoint, ought to read this book.
What Happens Next?
is not a novel , nor is it a collection of stories;
it is a long meditative work, poetic and very serious. Because Rogin is
also very funny his work is in danger of being underestimated - we do
not really believe that one can speak truth with a smiling face, not
really. Indeed, the dust jacket of
What Happens Next?
promises us the
"comic tribulation of the family Singer" and proceeds to list them, the
wayan unkind critic might list the bloody °e'{;ents in
Mdc1Jeth
or, in fact,
the wayan unkind critic might list the wb"imsical events1iH
What Hap–
pens Next?
But the "I"j"he" hero, Julian Singer, profests: "You argue
I treat my life too flippahtly? No more than deatb 'itself is dealt with
1
,,'
in my mysteries. My life isn' t founded on philosophical ideas but on
temperament."
The work is sometimes aggravating, sometimes slowed down in a
maddeningly literal way, as when Singer feels he must report to us the
various good / bad features of his Florida trip. And perhaps it is too
long: for a work that is essentially poetic, lyric, the expression of a
temperament, this 260-page length is something of an unnecessary
achievement. (When Singer tells his wife proudly that he has not slept
with any other woman since meeting her, she asks him at once whether
it was because he hadn't wanted to, or was he trying to set a record ... ?
And he doesn't answer.) But most of the time Ragin's writing is poised
between the banal "outer" world we have seen before - too often be–
fore - and his own sharp, endlessly clever, endlessly questioning ap–
preciation of it. "Is awareness enough?" Be asks early in the book: is
awareness enough for salvation?
