Reader's Choice

The narrator of SAUL BELLOW’S new novel, HENDERSON THE RAIN KING (Viking, $4.50), is a middleaged American millionaire who, after a life of boisterous desperation, has made a trip to darkest Africa (as created by Mr. Bellow’s imagination) in search of salvation. Introducing himself as a blustering roughneck and a bum, a disgrace to the famous name he bears, Henderson begins his story by rattling through the zany career of suffering which prompted his African quest. In a tone that manages to be simultaneously exuberant and dolorous, he tells us about his wives (two), his children (five), his income (after taxes and alimony, $110,000), his appearance (enormous head, huge nose, hulking body), his drunkenness, his dental troubles, his pursuits (the violin and pig raising), and his gnawing appetite for life. For years, he says, a voice in his heart kept clamoring, “I want, I want, I want” — but left his questions unanswered. He was drawn to medicine in his late forties, and his wife (the first) laughed him out of it. Then, at fifty-five, “dying of misery and boredom,” he suddenly took off for the African interior.

First Henderson became the guest of the gentle Arnewi; confided his troubles to their wise old Queen; and tried, with his Western know-how, to rescue them from a plague of frogs — with disastrous results. Discredited, he pushed on into the realm of the dangerous Wariri, where, after performing a stupendous feat of strength at their rain-making ceremonies, he found himself unwillingly appointed Rain King. The rains did come, and Henderson won the friendship of King Dahfu, who recognized that everything about him was crying out for salvation and undertook to cure his distress by subjecting him to a close-range study of the ways of the lion. After further fantastic adventures, Henderson returned to America fortified by the wisdom of King Dahfu, which, among other things, taught him to put service before desire. He is determined, now, to be a loving husband and to study medicine so that he can devote his life to healing.

I have summarized the action at some length in the hope of suggesting why I find Mr. Bellow’s book an odd and puzzling affair. At times, the story reads as though Bellow were parodying the earnest-minded middlebrow novel about the quest for self-realization, but I am reasonably certain that the author’s intentions are not essentially parodic. I take it, rather, that Bellow is trying to rescue the theme of American discontent and search for self-realization from the rut of solemnity by treating it in altogether fresh and startling terms: picaresque adventure, extravagant comic tone, and fantasy of setting. Unfortunately, the atmosphere of unreality and ever-present hint of burlesque undercut the serious insights which the author wishes to register. There is a fine streak of drollery in the characterization of Henderson, presumably a symbol of American unrest; and there are passages of straight storytelling which are weird and gripping. But one is left with the impression of an attempted tour de force which has failed to come off — an impression of labored cleverness and stretches of pseudo-portentous mumbo jumbo.

American discontent is also a major theme in a factual work, THE WAIST-HIGH CULTURE (Harper, $4.00), by THOMAS GRIFFITH. The title is somewhat misleading, since it suggests a withering indictment of our society, and Mr. Griffith is a sympathetic critic who does not carry condemnation further than the old frontier verdict, “Guilty, but not so dern awful guilty,” and who frequently speaks as attorney for the defense. Indeed, one of the merits of his analysis is its awareness that “our bad is often a concomitant of what we consider good, and is intertwined with it.” Mr. Griffith has turned out a thoughtful, interesting, and attractively written book. But for a social critic to be so temperate and sensible is a mixed blessing. Those who relish high firepower and bold originality may find The Waist-High Culture a bit on the tame side.

One third of the book is autobiography, and these chapters are a firstrate account, modest and mature, of American experience: childhood in a Seattle boardinghouse, one notch above the orphanage; depression years at a state university, which dispensed the kind of education where “the indulgent curse of mediocrity in American life begins”; a stint as police reporter on the Seattle Times: then transplantation to New York and Time Inc., where Griffith has been national affairs and (since 1951) foreign news editor.

The rest of the volume consists of essays on various aspects of contemporary American life. The hub of the discussion is that much of what Griffith finds distressing stems from the sentimental equating of democracy with equality — a confusion which stunts our intellectual growth, fosters cant and demagogy in public life, and generally encourages vapidity and mediocrity. Griffith calls our culture “waist-high” because it exalts the vast middle ground where the cash returns are largest. A massproduction economy, which must please most of the customers most of the time, is of necessity under the spell of a force which Griffith calls “the pull of the profitable middle.” But we have allowed the profit motive to become our yardstick in spheres where it does not properly belong, and to an increasing degree we find ourselves bereft of goals and values other than those of the business world: money and success. Those who are discontented with the present situation —seeing everywhere the advertisers’ image of a smug, conformist, consumption-happy America — glumly think themselves an impotent minority. But Griffith argues that we are better than the American Image, and he finds that what is “most encouraging about American life today is the amount of discontent with it.” In America, he concludes, “sweeping changes of opinion begin with a rustle of discontent.”

Mr. Lippmann’s book is a slightly expanded version of four newspaper articles which he published last November after an interview with Khrushchev. Khrushehev’s central conviction is that the Soviet economy will soon surpass ours in productivity and that this will cause the world’s backward countries to turn to Russia as a model and for material aid. He therefore considers it self-evident that the Soviet Union stands to gain by avoiding war and that the United States is making alliances and arming itsell in order to halt by aggression Russia’s rise to world leadership. Khrushchev declared that tensions could be relaxed on the basis of acceptance of the status quo. But in his mind, the social revolution now in progress in many parts of the world is the status quo, and he wants us to recognize it as such. Thus he would regard an American effort to prevent, say, the Iraqi Communists from seizing power as a violation of the status quo, an aggravation of the Cold War.

Obviously the Cold War is going to continue throughout the foreseeable future. Lippmann’s main contention is that we can no longer afford to rely on a policy of military pacts and aid to governments threatened with the rise of Communism among their people. This policy, he says, has antagonized the masses and has helped Soviet propaganda to portray us as imperialists and warmongers.

It does nothing, moreover, to counter what Lippmann considers the real Soviet challenge: “We delude ourselves if we do not realize that the main power of the Communist states lies not in their clandestine activity but in the visible demonstration of what the Soviet Union has achieved in forty years, of what Red China has achieved in about ten years.” Lippmann believes that the only convincing answer to the Soviet appeal to backward countries is to show that our system can do more effectively and in a more humane way what Communism has done; and he suggests that such a demonstration could best be made in India.

Mr. Lippmann’s various prescriptions grow out of a rejection of the still fashionable view that the conflict with Russia is not another contest between great states but an ideological or religions war, from which one system will emerge as the universal order. I gather that he expects Communism to go on gaining in Asia and Africa. On the other hand, he finds that in Central and Eastern Europe (as the Soviet leaders probably recognize by now) Communism has no serious attraction and would not long survive a Soviet military withdrawal. This means, he says, that “we are missing the bus as long as we fail to identify ourselves with the idea of bringing to an end . . . the military occupation of the European continent.”

The author of A Room in Moscow is a twenty-three-year-old American girl who went to the 1957 Moscow Youth Festival as a delegate (because it was a practically free ride); she then got herself invited to China, and returned to Moscow, where she lived for five months with a job in the Foreign Languages Publishing House. Sally Belfrage’s early immersion in political prejudice and counterprejudice — her parents, militant leftists, were deported to their native England — left her with a keen appreciation for tolerance and a determination to steer clear of partisanship. This outlook — together with her youthful high spirits and curiosity, her zest for people, her brashness and insouciance and spontaneity— makes her book unique among the many accounts of a sojourn in Russia. It is probably the only one whose author succeeded in not being taken to a collective farm or a single factory.

Miss Belfrage lived in the shabby discomfort of a better-than-average Moscow rooming house. She traveled on streetcars, stood in shopping lines, and learned what a struggle it is for Russians to get tickets to the theater or the ballet. Many of her evenings were spent among the stilyagi or style-chasers — a young bohemian smart set, composed largely of the nonconforming sons and daughters of prominent citizens. But Miss Belfrage also had Russian friends of a more serious stripe. Some confided to her that they loathed the Communist regime and were haunted by the fear of being spied upon. Others displayed an immense enthusiasm for the Soviet system and unquestioningly accepted its propaganda image of the West. And there were those who freely deplored the evils that horrify us but saw them as the temporary abuses of a revolution that is building an inspiring future. By seeking above all to understand people, Miss Belfrage has given us sharp glimpses of the diversity of opinion in Russia; and her straightforward account of her experiences conveys, more tellingly than zealous strictures, how wretched are the conditions of Soviet life and also what are its rewards: the immense and highly prized opportunities for education, pride in the speed of recent progress, faith in the future. But Miss Belfrage does not seek to give undue weight to her impressions. Perhaps the operative point about her book is that it is the lively story of a bright, friendly Western girl in modern Muscovy.

One of the most singular figures in the history of archaeology is Heinrich Schliemann (1822-1890), discoverer of the ruins of Troy, a selfmade merchant prince who started excavating only when he was fortysix. A life of him by Emil Ludwigappeared in 1931, and his career was sketched in Gods, Graves & Scholars. Now he is the subject of another biography, THE GOLD OF TROY (Funk & Wagnalls, $3.95), a March Bookof-the-Month Club selection, by ROBERT PAYNE.

Mr. Payne is moderately clichéprone, and he subscribes to the annoying practice of quoting without identifying the source, but all in all his book is a capable job of popularization — it could not be more readable.

Schliemann’s life conforms with astonishing fidelity to the fairy tale plot of the poor boy who makes his childhood fantasy come true. As a child he was spellbound by stories out of Homer told to him by his father; and he claimed that when, at seven, he saw a picture of Troy in flames in a history book, he announced that someday he would rediscover the lost city and its treasure. Poverty cut short his schooling; he became a grocer’s assistant, and at twenty decided that languages would be his passport to fortune. In two years he taught himself seven, and earned himself a promising position in Russia as representative of an import-export firm. He grew rich rapidly, and by his forties had made two more fortunes: one in the California gold fields, another from profiteering in the Crimean War. Then he recalled his early enchantment with the Homeric world and set out for Greece. He had asked a friend there to find him a bride, specifying that she be poor, beautiful, loving, well educated, and an enthusiast for Homer — and he got exactly what he wanted.

Schliemann’s discovery of Troy resulted from his careful reading of Homer (ancient Greek was one of the thirteen languages he mastered) and his faith in Homer’s accuracy, which led to the conclusion that the site could not be Bunarbashi, as was generally supposed, but must be nearer the sea. Homeric Troy was only one of many buried cities which Schliemann’s excavations unearthed, and it was subsequently established that he identified the wrong layer of ruins as the citadel of King Priam. Nor was the great treasure he found Priam’s; it dated back to an even earlier era. Schliemann also drew false conclusions about his equally dramatic discoveries at Mycenae. Nevertheless, he occupies the first place among those who have brought to life the Homeric age, which he reverently regarded as the last magnificent flowering of heroism. Ironically, Schliemann himself had none of the qualities celebrated by Homer. He was devious, pompous, ill-tempered, and singularly devoid of natural nobility — a dingy man who had an extraordinary career.

YASUNARI KAWABATA, one of Japan’s foremost novelists and the author of The Snow Country, has written another strange and beautiful book, THOUSAND CRANES (Knopf, $3.00).

At the opening of the story, the hero, Kikuji, attends a tea ceremony given by Chikako, once the mistress of his father; and she introduces to him a pretty girl (with a handkerchief bearing the thousand-crane theme) whom she wishes him to marry. Also present is Mrs. Ota, the alluring woman for whom Chikako was cast aside by Kikuji’s father, now dead. Mrs. Ota and Kikuji become lovers, guilt drives her to suicide, and presently Kikuji finds himself in love with her beautiful daughter, Fumiko. But Fumiko is oppressed by the feeling that they are soiled by the past, and in the moving climax she takes it upon herself to shatter the circle of guilt in which their families have been caught.

The best Japanese novelists express symbolically much that Western writers would develop explicitly in terms of action or introspection. In Kawabata’s story, Chikako’s ugly birthmark powerfully suggests that something evil governs her life; the thousand-crane handkerchief becomes an image of the conventional, comfortable destiny which Kikuji has brushed aside in favor of illstarred love; and the two fine old China bowls, out of which Kikuji and Fumiko drink tea as did their parents before them, are charged with a multiplicity of meanings. Kawabata’s small, taut, tender novel has the qualities of the best Japanese writing: a stunning economy, delicacy of feeling, and a painter’s sensitivity to the visible world.

ROMAIN GARY has followed his ambitious novel, The Roots of Heaven, with a light, urbane, ironic comedy capped with a startling touch of Gothic horror — LADY L. (Simon and Schuster, $3.50). Lady L. is one of England’s last grandes dames; the mother of a duke, the grandmother of men in eminence in government, the church, the Bank of England. On her eightieth birthday, she decides it would be fun to shock her prissy old admirer, the poet laureate, by telling him the true story of her life. As they stroll toward the summer pavilion, she delightedly unfolds the incredible saga of a Paris streetwalker who fell in love with a dashing anarchist; was transformed by him into a great lady so that she could better help him to bring off robberies and assassinations; made the heartbreaking decision to escape from a lover who loved only humanity; and married an eccentric duke who obliterated her past — except for the secret which explains her daily visits for more than half a century to her beloved summer pavilion.

Lady L. is an extended anecdote in the tradition of Maupassant and Maugham. It is trivial, deliciously amusing, and written with impeccable polish.