BOOKS
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novel, Croker is a convert to the stoic Church of Zeus, transforming his
bankruptcy into a financially successful evangelical mission.
America is famous for its spiritual quick changes. Its born-again
Christians resemble entrepreneurs who, having lost a fortune, emerge from
bankruptcy to acquire a new one. The point of stoicism is that it triumphs
in the absence of external rewards. Wolfe allows his character to have it
both ways. The ending comes off as a joke. Is Wolfe saying that American
prosperity won't allow for genuine stoicism? Or is he complicit with
American evangelicalism, which says you can have both Jesus (or Zeus) and
material rewards at the same time? I have had to give the ending away
to
make the point that it dissolves whatever moral seriousness the novel tries
to achieve.
The question which reviewers have not addressed because they have
been largely preoccupied with the question of whether the book is serious
literature or not literature at all is the question of Wolfe's point of view. Is
Wolfe simply satirizing American reality or is he in perhaps a perverse way
celebrating it? One can cite passage after passage to show his demystifYing
disposition. He is nobody's fool, and he is quick to expose pretension,
hypocrisy, malice, greed-the full inventory of vices. However, the abiding
impression the novel makes is of a writer caught up in the sheer dynamism
of contemporary life. He has it both ways: as satirist and celebrant. The
most memorable scenes, virtuosic in their descriptive power (the killing of
a rattlesnake, the mating of a prize racing stallion with a mare in the pres–
ence of an astonished dinner party invited for the occasion, the battles for
possession and dispossession of fortunes) reveal the source ofWolfe's imag–
inative power. He feeds off the energy and hype of American life, which
we see displayed daily on television and in our less-frequent visits to the
cinema. This is not life as ordinarily lived, "the dull spaces," which even
the excitable
D.
H. Lawrence believed to be the business of the novelist.
Wolfe writes his novels in the spirit of the New Journalism he invent–
ed. His realism is not the realism of ordinary life, but rather of extreme
event, that is, event intensified to the level of melodrama. He is not alone
in his keen sense of the stereotypes of our popular culture. Don DeLillo
has it. DeLillo, the more serious writer, always cultivating difficulty and
complexity, is tough going. Wolfe is nothing if not readable. His great
appeal lies in his cinematic gift for melodrama, which dilutes whatever is
serious in the work to the pleasures of a good read.
EUGENE GOODHEART
