Page Four
V HE MICHIGAN DAILY
SLinday, Mgrch 23, 19 0
PageFourIHEMICHGAN AIL ~jnoy, arc Z3,P.I
2 Readings
TUES. 18th:
ANDREI CODRESCU
This is not an all-day.read-
ina. When we know the
exact time, we will announce
it in the store.
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SHARON LEITER
The lady will be readinq by
permission of "The Bailiff of
Time."
SCI-FI CLASSIC
a Trout'
BOOKS
HOCUS-POCUS
More, magic from
'VenUS:
Out of obscurity
529 E. LIBERTY
663-8441 .663-8452
Gardner 4
STORIES AND TALES, by
John Gardner. New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 323 pp.,
$8.95.
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VENUS ON THE HALF-
SHELL by Kilgore Trout, New
York: Dell Paperbacks, 95c,
204 pages.
By DON KUBIT
LISTEN:
Simon Wagstaff has one
terrible fault. He asks questions
no one can answer. In the past
this habit would have qualified
Simon for residence in a loony
bin. But this is the future. Any-
thing can happen. And does.
Simon Wagstaff is an immor-
tal Earthman. He is famous
throughout the universe. He is
known as the Space Wanderer.
He is the hero of a TV series
shown on at least a million
planets.
His exploits are the subject of
Venus on the Half-Shell, a novel
by Kilgore Trout, part-time
science fiction writer and for-
mer stock clerk at a trading
stamp redemption center.
9TROUT HAS a cult following.
Some of his fans are famous
people. More on that later.
The Space Wanderer's adven-
ture begins when Earth is de-
stroyed by a mysterious flood
in 3069. Simon is the only hu-
man survivor. Everyone else
dies. So it goes.
Simon finds an abandoned
Chinese spaceship and decides
to travel the universe until he
finds the answers to his ques-
tions.
He befriends a Doberman
pinscher. The dog is not space-
ship-broken and Simon has to
spent a lot of time cleaning the
shit off of everything. They be-
come friends anyway. At one
point in the story, the dog saves
Simon's life thus suggesting that
the adage about man's best
friend may indeed be true.
Simon also picks up with
Chworktap, a female robot. Al-
though originally programmed
as a slave, an accident jiggled
her circuits and she escaped.
Chworktap is much smarter
than Simon. They fall in love
anyway.
After a while, Chworktap re-
LOOK FOR
THIS SYMBOL
it could be your opportunity
to be part of the mnost exciting
assemblage of people in history
i
cording to a scientist from Tral-v
famadore, only Earthlings wvorry jIJOHN GARDNER'S new col-
about free will. Simon is rot lection of stories is a tour
seeking absolute freedom. He of the jungle with gun, cam-
merely wants the chance to be era and kaleidoscope. We are'
free within life's limitations and - taken through literal and meta-
those impositions the Creator and distributed them a dirty physical r a i n forests; some-1
of the Universe puts on man. book stores. times the author trots with us
Consequently, Trout's prse! like a loyal Indian guide, otherI
{IMON IS an atheist. This has often been linked with or- times he skips forward to leave
does not prevent him from nography. Nothing could bc fur- us agog and agrope among the
praying when he gets into some ther from the truth. There is snakey vines - all of this lead-'
tight jams. His primal question no explicit sex in Treut's fic- ing, we must surmise, to a mag-
is "Why are we born only to tion. Most ofit is about a tragic ical clearing in which stands
suffer and die?" failure to communicate. Gardner's vision of the truth.
As it says in The First Book According to an avid ' liout We weave through the shadows,,
of Bokonon, God left the answer fan, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., 'What startled by strange beasts'
to that question for man to Trout has in common witn por- floating eyes (Gardner's beasts
decide. nography isn't sex, but anta- all have at least three eyes)
Simon tap dances through the sies of an impossibly hospitale enthralled by brilliant skyward
universe. He learns +hat it is' oworld.'' imagery that flashes betweenI
world."rtoas the tough old trees of the au-
far easier to ask questions than ' What Trout does is to desribe tho g ld trechnique
to answer them. He visits many an appalling society (not unlike thor s literary techniques.
planets. Although many of them his own) and tries to suggest But when we get to the last
are technologically advanced, ways to improve it. 'he best page, we know three things for,
their inhabitants have the r ame f way being uncritical love. sure: (1) We have not arrived
human problems as cavemen.' at the fabled clearing; (2) We
i
x
i
E
E
t
i
I
turns to her former planet to
free other slaves. Simon con-
tinues his quest for answers.
Love ends. So it goes.
Simon thinks a lot about de-
termination and free will-ac-
By DAN BIDDLE .
"
jungle
His use of the language,
deepened by his knowledge of
Old and Middle English, sparks
the hopes of those among us
who feared that the world has
simply run out of clever things
to do with prose. The book is
divided in sections, and the five
tales in "The Midnight Reader"
s m a c k violently of Poe's
premature burials, shuddering
castles and deaths in amontil-
lado storages. A cyclone rips
across the Illinois plain in "The
Ravages of Spring", making
"trees burst to life with the
shudder of an infant first suck-
ing in air;" white sycamores
burst "through the emerald
green forest like heart attacks
and above us the thunderheads
loaded and flickering with light-
ning like a dying man's brain."
There is a definite ether of
Mann or Kafka in these very
anatomical descriptions; later
the protagonist mounts a porch
"slippery as flesh" from the!
"blood-dark rain" - and if that
isn't Shakespearean enough for?
vou, the man's horse is named:
Shakespeare.
THE LITERARY muscle-
flexing does not end there:
in the final novella from which
the collection gets its name, the:
crew of an old New England
whaler laugh "like jackals off
the Syrian coast" without so
much as an apology to Homer
or Joyce. Gardner is just plain
adept with this sort of stuff,
although he tends toward ex-
hibitionism more generally as-
sociated with older, cruistier
al'thors: almost at the end of
this final tale, he throws cai-
tion and suspension of reader
disbelief to the winds by arbuot-
l\ -gffirming the existence of "I,
John Gardner, the man that,
with thedhep of Poe and Mel-
rille arid manyak.other men,
wrote this book."
6618 HAVEN HALL
a
.......
Progress doesn't always mnake
life easier.
THE CITIZENS of e v e r y
planet Simon lands on arej
repulsed by his odor. There are:
many theories in the universe
as to why Earthlings smell so
bad. The most accepted one isI
that psychology affects physol-
ogy. Earthmen stink because'
their ethics stink.
Simon finally gets the an, ver'
to his question when he lands
on the most advanced planet in
the universe. The residents of
Clerum-Gowph were the ones
who flooded Earth. They de-
stroyed the planet to save it
from Earthlings.
The answer to Simon's ques-
tion is provided by an elephant-
sized cockroach, named Bingc,
who is a friend of It. It. Bingo
tells Simon, created the uni-,
verse.
Bingo's explanation teaches
Simon that if the questions
don't make sense, chances axe;
good the answers won't either.M
FVERY'r1ING equals c-u si
the end.
Although Kilgore Trout is a
prolific writer, his work has al-
ways been at the mercy of an
indiscriminate publisher wh.> at-
tached lurid covers to his novels
ELIOT ROSEWATER, the only
known owner of a complete
Trout library, has called him'
"the greatest wirter alive today
. . . this society's greatest
prophet."
Trout's writing style is often'
hideous. What is important are1
his ideas and imagination. What
htretdristlthe truh
have the distinct impression of
passing it several times; and
(3) our guide's wizardy has so;
befuddled and befogged us as .
to open the possibility that the,
clearing is a moving target -
that on John Gardner's multi-
lingual treasure map, "X" does
not necessarily mark the spot.
"NEIL SIMON'S BEST PLAY YET. A JOY. A
LOVELY PLAY, EXTRAORDINARILY FUN-'
NY."-Clive Barnes, N.Y. Times
EDDIE
BRACKEN
ARNY
FREEMAN
a state which does not alwaysTHE TREASURE HUNT,
lend itself to high Lrerary nonetheless, is a reader's
standards. dream. The King's Indian is the'
latest in Gardner's remarkable
Venus on the Half-Shell is apriertn f mgntve
puppet show. Like most science- proliferation of imaginative
fiction it gives readers a chance prose and poetry (five books
to e-nvntthemselves and 'he and one major epic poem in .six'
to re-inventtemin.d years), and like his two major
world they live in. novels, The Sunlight Dialogues
Venus is the first Trout n novel sTeSnih ilge
to enjoy mass circulation It is (1972) and Nickel Mountain
bound to increase his foilowirg (1973), this new, richly illus-
The publication of Venus jia trated collection is not the per-
Thefected vision to which he clear-
day that will go down in his-IV strives. But at the fresh age
tory. But then every d goes of 43, this very American nov-t
down in history. elist's vast potential is demon-
jT HAS BEEN said that laugh-' strated in his latest imperfect:
ter is often the only remedy work.
for the bitter disappointments In Gardner we sense the
of Truth. There is a lot of Truth I emergence of a Merlin the Ma-
in Venus on the Half-Shell. gician to equal or exceed Faulk-
Poo-tee-weet. ner and translate Joyce from
Dublin to southern Illinois, but
as yet the young alchemist is
Don Kubit is a frequent con- still testing his elements in odd1
tributor to the Books Page. proportions in his search for
molten gold. God knows the1
elements are there, though. As
in the novels, Gardner hits his
highest heights with a parade I,
of fine imagery that began in
The Sunlight Dialogues and
struts boldly through the nine
"Stories and Tales" of Indian. I
close. to that clearing in which
his truths stand. N i c k e l
Mountain, so softspoken and
pastoral after the first book's
hurricane violence, seemed al-
most a retreat from the jungle,
a prayer that the clearing need
only be imagined and never
attained.
In The King's Indian, I
sense indecision: From an au-
thor who undoubtedly will
someday write a great Ameri-
can novel comes a book filled
with other writer's pathways
-albeit brilliant explored -
and lighthearted jousts with the
reader's resistance to the sup-
ernatural.
In the midst of all this - cy-
clones and armored knights,
preachers and hippies, monks
and whores, Mississippi flim-
flam men storm-toss'd with an-
cient mariners, magic prin-
cesses and evil scientists -
there is too much dialogue and
not enough sunlight; too many
half-hearted stags at philoso-
phy. And there are two few of
the noble characters who pos-
sessed the reader in his earlier
books.
PUT I SUPPOSE it's only a
matter of time. Read this
book, for it will outwit you,
scare you to death and laugh
you back to life. You may soon
live in tense anticipation of
the day when Gardner rolls up
all his tricks in one big triple-
decker masterpiece. He will
make you stand by the door, as
he might say, stamping and
snorting like a horse seeking
shelter from the wind-whipped
night. Meanwhile, read this odd
collection and keep an eye out
for three-eyed beasts.
Dan Biddle recently retired
fron his position as Editor-in-
Chief of the Michigan Daily.
Have a flair for
artistic wr;tinq?
If you are interest-
ed in reviewing
poetry, and music
or writing feature
stories a b o u t the
drama, dance, film
arts: Contact Arts
Edit %r, c/o The
MichiganDiy
NCIL LMON3
scwCOXiEDT
Here the trickerv becomes
tronvhlesome. Granted, the ma-
nimNlation of narrators and snir-'
its in the novella is so remark-
able that a little reassurance is
almost necessary, but Gardner
nroceeds to declare the bookl
"not a child's top . . . a col-
lage: a celebration," to the en-
liuhtenment of no one. This
may be his key flaw: he has
not vet found a consistent nath
between the understatemnt
and the sledgehammer, be-
tween comnlex symbolism and
pure arcanerv for the fun of it.
In the Sunlight Dialogues.
Gardner's incredibly rich and
ambitious allegory of socialj
conflict in a small American
town, he came agonizingly
-I
r
p yGi ti
"
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