home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
TIME: Almanac 1990
/
1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso
/
time
/
091189
/
09118900.072
< prev
next >
Wrap
Text File
|
1990-09-17
|
2KB
|
46 lines
BOOKS, Page 82What If?
CHANGING THE PAST
by Thomas Berger
Little, Brown; 285 pages; $18.95
Never mind how, but a middle-aged copy editor at a publishing
house suddenly acquires the chance to erase his life so far and
become, literally, anyone he wants to be. Walter Hunsicker balks
a bit at the opportunity. He is content with his job and has been
peaceably married to the same woman for 30 years. Why change? The
whole thing does not make sense. To which the mysterious stranger
who has proposed this scheme replies, "Since when has `making
sense' had any serious reference to what happens in reality?"
Veteran Thomas Berger fans will immediately recognize this
preposterous premise for what it is: fair warning that the author,
in his 16th novel, has something serious in mind. When Berger
begins with the everyday humdrum, as in Neighbors (1980) or The
Houseguest (1988), his plots spiral into absurdities. But his
what-if books, most recently Being Invisible (1987), conceal a dark
moral within the incredible special effects.
So it is with Changing the Past. Walter succumbs to the
temptation to remake himself. First he dreams of money and becomes
Jack Kellog, a big-city real estate tycoon. A few hours of this
heady life are enough for him. He rushes back to his benefactor and
complains, "Apparently insofar as I have a profession I'm a
slumlord among other things, all of them unsavory, and privately
a demented lecher who drives about the streets with his
pimp-chauffeur, importuning young women for sex. I must say I make
my own flesh crawl."
The debacle continues. Walter becomes, successively, stand-up
comedian Jackie Kellog, author John Kellog and radio call-in host
Dr. Jonathan Kellog. In each guise he succeeds inordinately and
then plummets. His life as Jackie is vintage Berger, a hilarious,
all-purpose show-biz biography. But why do these sweet dreams turn
so sour?
The fault seems to be Walter's abiding selfishness, which is
most visible when he becomes someone else. Berger's lesson -- that
bad lives are made out of the flaws of their owners -- is not
entirely new, but neither does it spoil the fun. And the novel ends
with the most telling punch line of the year.