Falconer

by John Cheever

Knopf, $7.95

Falconer is a penitentiary. Incarcerated therein, meditating on his sins though not particularly penitent about any of them, is Ezekiel Farragut, college professor, family man, drug addict, occasional homosexual, and the murderer of his brother. Locked up with the “freaks, fools, fruits, first-timers,” and other assorted felons of cell block F, Farragut prepares to succumb to despair.

Paradoxically, though, confinement liberates him. Prison allows him time to sort out his past while forcing him to satisfy raw and surprising appetites. At length, Farragut escapes, Monte Cristo style, in a dead inmate’s coffin and is thereby delivered to freedom, a man triumphantly reborn.

Farragut’s tale defies literal interpretation. It is a story in the classic Cheever mold, both bizarre and touchingly real, absurdly beautiful.

Prison is a familiar metaphor for hell, and in Falconer Cheever toys skillfully with Christian symbolism. But the novel’s most dramatic appeal arises from more potent stuff than intellectual gamesmanship. Loss of freedom is a nightmare that haunts us all. springing from some incalculable subconscious sense of guilt. Cheever confronts the nightmare and artfully lays it to rest.