TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/010989/01098900.069

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 5.4 KB | 105 lines

                                                                                BOOKS, Page 64

Nice People in Glass Houses


By Paul Gray


    AMERICAN APPETITES
    by Joyce Carol Oates;
    Dutton; 340 pages; $18.95

    It was not true during the Victorian age, but it is now, in
the midst of the Electronic. Given diminishing attention spans,
stupendously prolific authors tend to wear out both readers and
reviewers. Here is another book by so-and-so, they mutter, and
I haven't yet found the time to get through the last two -- or
is it three? Guilt breeds resentment, which in turn fosters
rationalization. Anyone who writes that much must be doing a
pretty slapdash job of it. And this impression has led to a
distinct tilt in contemporary taste and criticism toward
"bleeders," those who rasp and file their words meticulously
before issuing slim volumes at discreet intervals.

    Joyce Carol Oates, 50, has done nothing of the sort. For
the past two decades she has produced roughly a novel a year,
plus numerous collections of short stories, criticism and
essays. She has written plays and even, two years ago, a
nonfiction work on boxing. This frenetic production has hardly
destroyed her reputation; she is a literary figure of
considerable clout, she holds a tenured professorship at
Princeton University, and every fall her name is rumored to be
on the short list for the Nobel Prize. But there is something
of the sideshow about her renown among the general reading
public; she is widely recognized as the woman who turns out all
those books, less often as the author of a single, unforgettable
narrative. Thanks to her own energy, nothing she has written has
ever been long-awaited.

    Perhaps American Appetites, her 19th novel, will be taken
for granted, like some of its predecessors, as just another
entry in a burgeoning bibliography. That reaction would be a sad
mistake. Oates is here working at the very top of her form, her
idiosyncratic virtues eerily in phase with the temperamental
excesses for which she has so often been rebuked. Those who want
to know what makes her important -- as opposed to merely famous
-- could find no better place to begin than right here.

    The setting is an upscale exurban village on the Hudson
River. Ian McCullough is a senior fellow at a rather grandly
named think tank, the Institute for Independent Research in the
Social Sciences. He specializes in population studies and also
edits a prestigious journal on international politics. Glynnis,
his wife of 26 years, has compiled two successful cookbooks and
is working on a third, an ambitious survey to be called American
Appetites; Regional American Cooking from Alaska to Hawaii. The
McCulloughs have a circle of close friends very much like
themselves: well educated, well-to-do, well regarded by their
professional peers and by one another. They all feel terribly
fortunate and sometimes worry about the envy or ill will of the
world at large. Glynnis thinks, "Our house is made of glass .
. . and our lives are made of glass; and there is nothing we can
do to protect ourselves."

    In the McCulloughs' case, this is almost literally true.
Walls and walls of their house are nothing but glass, and
readers who expect something to shatter will not be
disappointed. But the source and degree of the destruction are
entirely unanticipated. Glynnis finds a canceled check for
$1,000 that Ian had made out to Sigrid Hunt, a willowy young
woman whom Glynnis had once taken up socially and then dropped.
Ian's explanation happens to be factual: Sigrid had phoned him
in distress and in need of an abortion. Assuming she was
Glynnis' friend, Ian had offered what comfort he could and a
check. But Glynnis will not believe this story. Through a long,
tense evening, the McCulloughs drink and argue. Suddenly Glynnis
is brandishing a knife, there is blood on the floor, and Glynnis
hurtles backward through a plate-glass window. After 18 days in
a coma, she dies. Following the funeral and a police
investigation, Ian is charged with second-degree murder.

    This sudden, inexplicable eruption of violence typifies
what many find troubling about Oates' fiction. If the purpose
of art is to provide a comprehensible context, an explanatory
train of circumstances, for human activity, then Oates certainly
falls short. She knows this risk and consistently runs it
anyhow. Her obsession remains the untidy world where everyone
actually lives, where headlines daily scream out the unthinkable
and where nice people find themselves behaving in ways they can
barely imagine, much less condone. The McCulloughs' marriage,
despite outward appearances, is far from perfect; the author
deftly reveals the stresses and fault lines that have built up
over the years. But these problems do not lead logically to what
Ian calls "this sudden terrible fury that has ruined our lives."
These people have not earned and do not deserve their fate.

    Building a trustworthy bridge between civilized society and
the Grand Guignol is tricky work, and Oates' success has varied
from book to book. But American Appetites offers a thoroughly
credible version of what is both unbelievable and disturbingly
familiar. Her prose is headlong. There are cliches; sentences
do not ask to be examined for artful felicities. Pausing seems
beside the point. The rush is utterly convincing. Any definition
of art that excludes this novel is probably too narrow by far.