BOOKS
453
the theories of J ohn Gagnon and William Simon , who argue tha t
sex ua l conduc t is regula ted by learned conventiona l scrip ts, just like
any o ther soc ia l ac tivity. "There is no na tura l man ," they claim,
" struggling aga inst the pressures o f civiliza tion ." Or, wha t amounts to
the same thing, we posit vario u s types of " na tura l man " to ra tiona lize
our a lways a lready socia lized in tention s. Far from being an escape from
culture, sex is a crucia l are na for tha t mos t civi lized o f tas ks, sardoni –
call y named by Cohen and Tay lor " the doing o f identity work."
I should no t leave the impress ion tha t
Escape A ttempts
is a
gloomil y de fea tist work ; fo r all their cy nicism, the authors winning ly
adm it tha t they themselves have been among the mos t bumbling and
pers istent of escape a rtists:
A visit to either one of o ur respec tive homes a t the moment would
revea l a museum o f ha lf-abandoned relics from these escape routes
and free a reas. H ere there is a hea lth -food diet book and a ha lf-emp ty
muesli packet left over from the days when rej uvenation through
food was eagerly tried. In the desk drawer are fragments of the
unfinished nove l which meant emancipation from the drudgery of
academic life.. . . Alongside the packets o f Rizlas and torn ca rdboard
on the living -room shelf are o ld boxes o f incense sticks to remind us
tha t tonight's taken -for-granted j o int was o nly a few years ago seen
as the doorway to new percep tion .... And in the cupboard under
the sta irs lie di scarded trave l brochures, ha lf-constructed model
a irpla nes, wrinkled dahlia tubers, unfini shed water-colours, vegetar–
ian recipe books, the rema ins of three hand-made ca ndles, a smelly
beer-sta ined polythene bucket, a nd a nas ty pile of fetid mushroom
culture.
Nor need every escape a ttempt end so ding ily. Mos t o f us have known
"Momenta ry Slips through the Fabric" - g limpses of a tra n sfigured ,
blissful wo rld. And even if we da re no t imita te them , we have before us
the grea t exempla ry fi gures who have gone permanently " Over the
Wall " in to madness, obsessio n, mys ticism, or utopian po litics.
Still , one might dismi ss
Escape A ttempts
as a witty trivia li za tion
of persona l a nd soc ia l unha ppiness, typ ical of the pusillanimous
seventies; one might a lso see it as a symptom of Eng land 's spec ia l
mala ise, cau sed by the fa ilure o f its na tiona l escape a ttempt into
imperia l adventure. Cohen and Tay lor them selves specula te tha t this
may be so, tha t in the wider horizons of America or prerevo lutiona ry
Russ ia, man 's des tiny might
be
less exclusively a socia l one.
The Serial,
however, cas ts a cold eye on the class ic American dream o f escape by
moving wes twa rd .
It
first a ppea red weekl y in the Marin County
Pacific
