Reuben, Reuben

Clifton Fadiman says of Peter De Vries, "There is something wrong with the world, and this man . . . knows. He expresses his knowledge, not by caterwauling, but through farce, parody, language-play and a kind of commedia dell'arte manipulation of absurd characters and situations. His wacky art reflects the fact that our condition is as preposterous as it is terrifying." A world in which "nobody knows how to live" is "hilariously and classically recorded in the comic morality plays that are his novels." In this one, nobody knows how to love. "The human botch of mating," as one character calls it, is the central theme of an intimate closeup of several interlocking romances, both sacred and profane. The setting is again that swatch of eastern seaboard De Vries has made his own, but this time seen through the eyes of three aliens: a Connecticut chicken farmer helplessly bewitched by the invading New York culture; a visiting Scotch poet named McGland, whose quenchless amorous thirst is as sad as it is funny; and a handsome young Englishman named Mopworth who falls in love with the farmer's granddaughter, thus bringing the action full circle. The follies of our de-romanticized time are perhaps best satirized in the woes of poor Mopworth, whose zest for women leaves his intellectual friends no conclusion but that he must be fighting inversion. Minor characters include a doctor without a car who hitchhikes to his patients, and a man known as C.B.S., a communications tycoon who can't communicate, at least with his wife, one of McGland's mistresses. Reuben, Reuben is certainly the mature best of one who, ruefully as he views a world of increasing sexual isolation, in which "the Individual prospers at the expense of the Pair," always makes his point with mirth. We may see ourselves as we watch a few of our fellow mortals paint themselves into a corner while the door to love stands open.