Time - Man of the Year/Time_Man_of_the_Year_Compact_Publishing_3YX-Disc-1_Compact_Publishing_1993.iso/moy/021792/0217471.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 6KB | 129 lines

                                                                                BOOKS, Page 79

The Man Who Wanted More


By PAUL GRAY

OUTERBRIDGE REACH
By Robert Stone
Ticknor & Fields; 409 pages; $21.95


    Roughly half of this novel, Robert Stone's fifth, is
occupied with putting together the complicated and elaborate
house of cards that will spectacularly blow apart during the
second half. In less assured hands, such a long swatch of
narrative exposition might seem cumbersome, even a little
tedious. Not so in Outerbridge Reach. A lot happens in Stone's
fiction, especially when nothing particular seems to be going
on. The author's laconic prose manages to be both dexterous and
sinister.

    Stone's task this time resembles the ones he undertook in
such previous novels as Dog Soldiers (1974) and A Flag for
Sunrise (1981): exposing characters to dangers, external and
psychological, that they may be unprepared to handle. Owen
Browne, fortyish, a graduate of the Naval Academy who served
four years in Vietnam, now sells pleasure boats for an outfit
called Altan Marine. Ruggedly handsome -- he appears in company
promotional videotapes -- Browne is also by most conventional
standards a good person, dutiful, loyal and faithful to Anne,
an editor, writer and his wife of 20 years. The Brownes have a
comfortable Connecticut house, an island summer retreat and a
mildly rebellious teenage daughter. Owen is, in other words, a
prime candidate for mid-life crisis. Sure enough, one arrives:
"For his own part, he was tired of living for himself and those
who were him by extension. It was impossible, he thought. Empty
and impossible. He wanted more."

    More is what he gets, thanks to the sudden disappearance
of Matty Hylan, a flamboyant millionaire who owns a
conglomeration of companies, including the one that employs
Browne. The runaway entrepreneur leaves behind a crumbling
financial empire and the commitment he had made to skipper a new
Altan Marine model in an around-the-world sailing race called
the Eglantine Solo. Hylan's beleaguered lieutenants scramble for
a replacement and find him in one of their own employees, Owen
Browne.

    Owen, of course, jumps at the chance to get out of his
routine, even though his only previous experience of sailing
alone was a five-day journey from West Palm Beach, Fla., to New
Bern, N.C., during which he fell prey to hallucinations. Anne,
at first, thinks the whole idea is crazy: "She was certain she
could prevent him from trying it, if she dared. But then there
would be the rest of life to get through." So Anne accedes to
the plan and talks herself into becoming its cheerleader:
"Imagine what kind of a feeling it is," she says. "Making your
way across all that ocean. Making your way across the whole
world. All on your own savvy and endurance."

    This is spoken not to her husband but to Ron Strickland,
a documentary filmmaker who had been hired by Hylan's company,
in a typically dopey corporate move, to record the millionaire
at sea, and who has now inherited Owen Browne as a subject
instead. Strickland's modest fame rests on his ability to make
people look ridiculous onscreen, and he is, by and large,
willing to jettison Hylan and try out his technique on the
photogenic and seemingly unassailable Brownes. Looking at some
still photographs of the couple, Strickland's assistant remarks
that Owen and Anne "don't resemble our usual run of scumbag."
Strickland replies, "Trust me."

    Stone's elaborate preparations set up a number of teasing,
ominous questions. The most obvious: Can Owen survive, let alone
win, the race around the globe? A mechanic familiar with the
boat Browne will pilot blurts out to Strickland: "My bet would
be this -- either he wins or he dies. You pay me either way. If
he quits or runs behind, I pay you." It also remains to be seen
whether Browne's idealism can withstand the self-enforced
isolation of the seas, and whether his marriage to Anne, mired
in comfort and mutual tolerance, will outlast the rough shocks
of separation. And what of Strickland's film? Will it be an
expose of a hollow man and woman? "You're not making fun of us,
are you?" Anne asks Strickland, shortly before Owen sets sail.
"There's no reason Strickland should want to make me look bad,"
Owen reassures his wife.

    But that is by no means a sure thing. Strickland is in
many respects the most interesting person in the book, a
spectator whose outward cynicism may mask a hunger for the truth
as avid, in its own way, as Browne's. The pleasure he takes in
his debunking films seems tinged with bitterness, as if his
quest for good, honorable people has once again been
disappointed. Strickland thinks that his stammer prompts others
to show him their worst sides: "His infirmity seemed to
encourage people toward boasting and indiscretion. He had
noticed it even as a child. It was they who came to him and
impaled themselves." Owen Browne has not yet done this, but
Strickland is confident -- and afraid -- that he will: "This is
a guy," he says of Browne, "who understands art. He just doesn't
know what he likes." Paradoxically, Strickland is the only one
to tell Browne, "Don't go. Don't."

    To the author's credit, nearly all the answers to the
puzzle he creates are unexpected, even though many clues
pointing toward them have been inserted in the text beforehand.
Anne's behavior, for example, once she has been left alone,
takes a shocking turn; yet a cluster of details and insights
into her character save this transformation from the realm of
the unbelievable.

    If there is a problem with Outerbridge Reach, it is not
that some of its conclusions appear improbable but that its
structure seems a tad too deterministic. Stone, at his highest
pitch, is a poet of doom; his characters must confront nothing
less than the implacable pattern that fate has handed them.
When they think they are most in control, changing the
direction of their lives, they are actually exposing themselves
to ruin. To be safe is contemptible, to dare disastrous. That
Stone makes exciting fiction out of this depressing scenario is
the hallmark of his mastery.