TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/051490/0514472.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 3.5 KB | 80 lines

                                                                                BOOKS, Page 89

A Prayer for Raphael Noren


By MARGARET CARLSON

THE TONGUES OF ANGELS
by Reynolds Price
Atheneum; 192 pages; $17.95


    Those shopping for a philosophy of life could do no better
than to look to the works of Reynolds Price. Since his 1962
debut with A Long and Happy Life, the elegant North Carolina
novelist and poet has been examining the eternal puzzle of
families as they love and hurt one another, come together and
burst apart. The unlucky ones are beset by betrayal and murder
and suicide. The lucky ones are brought to the brink of
destruction but through grace and common sense find a way to
live in the universe and with each other.

    Even before pain sharpened his vision -- he was stricken
with cancer of the spine in 1984 at the age of 51 -- Price was
a master at creating characters others could live through,
particularly strong-willed women, such as the heroine in his
1986 novel Kate Vaiden. This time Price focuses on two young
men to tell his hypnotic tale of loss and redemption: Bridge
Boatner, a famous painter who looks back at the summer of 1954,
when he was a counselor at a camp in North Carolina; and
Raphael Noren, a prematurely wise, otherworldly 14-year-old who
was a camper there that summer. Price begins with Boatner's
reflecting, "I'm as peaceful a man as you're likely to meet in
America now, but this is about a death I may have caused. Not
slowly over time by abuse or meanness but on a certain day and
by ignorance, by plain lack of notice."

    These two innocents -- Boatner at age 21 was almost as
unworldly as his young charges -- had come to the camp to find
a way to cope with the sudden death of a parent. For Boatner,
getting through the first year after "the one man involved in
my creation ended for good and in my presence" seems like an
insurmountable hurdle (one Price himself faced at age 21). For
most of the summer, Boatner does not know that Rafe has
suffered a similar experience -- his mother was murdered while
he looked on -- and that is what has rendered him so fragile.
Yet Boatner somehow knows he alone can save Rafe from tragedy.

    But all is not life and death. Price easily captures the
pleasures of that peculiar American institution called camp and
the problems of "that painful fulcrum between frank childhood
and the musky outskirts of puberty." Boatner's boys can
"smuggle farts like anarchist bombs into the highest and most
sacred scenes of camp life," wet the bed one minute and display
extraordinary bravery the next, be ruled by their burgeoning
sexuality to the point of visiting the barn animals but soar
to great spirituality when one of the last members of the
camp's old Indian tribe imparts his wisdom.

    Boatner finds himself as an artist that summer, producing
a painting that stands the test of time. Happy, with two sons
of his own by the book's end, Boatner, whose mission in life
is to "copy things that count in the world," can no longer see
Rafe's beautiful face clearly enough to paint him. He can only
remember what matters, that he did for Rafe what he could not
do for his father.

    The novel is saved from melodrama by the presence of the
camp's founder, the "Chief," who disdains Boatner's poetic,
dense voice for simple words, hard and clear. After the death
of a boy at camp, he intones, "We thank you for all that's left
to the living. Help us see what it is and where to find it."
A prayer for all of us.