The Strength of the Name

The fare before us, to be plain about it, is the first (and last) novel by Joan Baez’s brother-in-law, whose non-literary hobbies included the Irish Republican Army, Fidel Castro, and—lethally—the motorcycle; the twentieth or so novel by the tired old work horse of Italian realism, Alberto Moravia; and a group of short stories by the Austrian Robert Musil, who, practically anywhere else in his work, wrote better. That is, our authors proved their mettle in other ventures, and their publishers are risking these offerings to a vacationing public on what used to be called politely “the strength of the name.”

Mr. Fariña (we are urged to believe by his publishers) might have qualified as one of the higher epigonic masters of The School of Cool except the breed is so uniform in its sameness that, as with their chicks, the square eye cannot tell one from another. In the farced and drawn-out anecdote that he has jollied into novel length, we meet one Gnossos Pappa-dopoulis, undergraduate at Cornell, jerk, and narcotics addict. That his heart is golden and his spirit loftier than yours or mine is assumed, of course; we are simply asked to observe the style with which he parlays his cool through the plot. All the scenes worth making are here: the destruction of private property, theft, overthrowing a campus, Cuba, the narcoses fashionable at the time of composition (pre-LSD), and so on: the full list is too boring for a summer evening’s typing.

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Guy Davenport

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The fare before us, to be plain about it, is the first (and last) novel by Joan Baez’s brother-in-law, whose non-literary hobbies included the Irish Republican Army, Fidel Castro, and—lethally—the motorcycle; the twentieth or so novel by the tired old work horse of Italian realism, Alberto Moravia; and a group of short stories by the Austrian Robert Musil, who, practically anywhere else in his work, wrote better. That is, our authors proved their mettle in other ventures, and their publishers are risking these offerings to a vacationing public on what used to be called politely “the strength of the name.”

Mr. Fariña (we are urged to believe by his publishers) might have qualified as one of the higher epigonic masters of The School of Cool except the breed is so uniform in its sameness that, as with their chicks, the square eye cannot tell one from another. In the farced and drawn-out anecdote that he has jollied into novel length, we meet one Gnossos Pappa-dopoulis, undergraduate at Cornell, jerk, and narcotics addict. That his heart is golden and his spirit loftier than yours or mine is assumed, of course; we are simply asked to observe the style with which he parlays his cool through the plot. All the scenes worth making are here: the destruction of private property, theft, overthrowing a campus, Cuba, the narcoses fashionable at the time of composition (pre-LSD), and so on: the full list is too boring for a summer evening’s typing.