BOOKS
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sense for some of these writers. For Berberova the lines are clearly drawn
as a result of the direct experience of exile and atrocity, thus making it
easier to keep one's eye on the "sublime, gentle, unexpected, and full of
charm" while enduring the "horror, cruelty and affiiction." The others
have also experienced atrocity, often heroically so, but theirs is the more
difficult task of delineating the consequences of historical despair in pre–
sent-day reality, as well as in the consciousness that seeks to unite both.
Unsurprisingly, a pervading sense of alienation is the result, for despite the
clarity of past evil, the present is no more likely to bode affirmations of
the good. This is a sobering thought, and it's to the credit of Skvorecky,
Klima, and Konrad that they convey powerfully the sense of frailty and
fragmentation that accompanies it. In doing so, they once again enable us
as readers to stand in their shoes, maintaining for literature a serious sense
of purpose in its ability to bear witness and give hope.
PETER FILKINS
Sacred and Profane
vox.
By Nicholson Baker.
Random House. $15.00.
MARIETTE IN ECSTASY. By Ron Hansen.
HarperCollins. $20.00.
last
year, when
Vox,
the highly contemporary, largely unprecedented
novel by Nicholson Baker came out, it became one of the talking-points
of the publishing world. The wonder of it was not just that the author
filled one hundred sixty-five pages with nothing but two voices, talking
on the phone in a single evening, but that this unprepossessing material
propelled the determinedly literary Baker, bearded, balding and un–
abashedly "serious," to the top of the bestseller list. One reason, perhaps,
is
that Baker had written a tidy, user-friendly, accessory-centered diver–
sion for baby boomers. Another, no doubt, is that its theme, like its title,
is
a three-letter word ending in "x."
Baker's calling card, some would say his strong point, has always been
his
eagerness to write about what other people ignore (and what some of
us think ought to be ignored). His writing is nothing if not self-conscious
- the case to be made for it is that it is about self-consciousness - and its
&mous effects come from its ability to pry open moments, to gaze at
pimples, to dwell on all the intimate things we keep to ourselves, the
things that break through self-consciousness, and so make us most self–
conscious of all: picking one's nose, say, or indulging in lowbrow trash, or
