This, the scene in which Thetis presentsnAchilles with new arms andnarmor, is so much in the atmospherenof a TV commercial it might as well benabout parity shields. “Made in Heaven”nmight better read “Made in HongnKong.” Concourse with a divine, transcendant,npermanent aspect of beingn—in which the heroes, their poet, hisnaudience, all passionately believe—wencan only relate to as cute kitsch.nSome of the battle scenes wouldn’tnmake the grade in Classic Comics:nAnd as the arrows start tonsplash, back off,nRunning towards the backslope,nup, a catnAirborne a moment, onenglance back: “Dear God,nTheir chariots will slice,”nsplash, “corpse,” splash, splash,n”In half” . . .nDante in WyomingnThe gap between serious and popularnfiction seems to get wider everynday. Increasingly we are confrontednwith two choices that can be boiledndown to Sidney Sheldon or DonaldnBarthelme, neither of whom havenever had anything to say that couldnnot be written on the back of anmatchbook cover. The seriousnnovel, with plot, characters, and anpoint, is harder and harder to find,nespecially if the reader is searchingnfor the polish and intensity that wasncharacteristic of modern Frenchnand American novelists at theirnbest. One ambitious experiment,nhowever, has just come our way,nDesert Light by Chilton WilliamsonnJr. (New York: St. Martin’snPress; $15.95).nA burnt-out New York lawyernmoves to Wyoming to escape thenburden of his past—a bad marriagenand a successful defense of a clientnwho sounds suspiciously like JacknAbbott. If hell means having to gonthrough everything a second time,nthen Chuck Richardson must be anlost soul. Not only does his wifenreturn to haunt him, but he evennfinds himself joining the prosecu-nHera comes off as a gun moll:n”… If you sticknhim, him, and him, I promisenyou will get your Helen back.”nHelen is out of a Frederick’s of Hollywoodncatalog:nAnd Helen walks beneath anburning tree.nOver her nearest arm her olivenstole;nBeneath her see-through shift,nher nudity;nA gelded cupidon depletes hernwoe.n. . . and is, of course (though thencupidon, lifted from the second part ofnThe Waste Land, is originally “gilded,”nnot gelded), a castrating bitch, whatnelse? Among many candidates, thenfourth verse here may rank as the worstnever conceived by an English-speakingnREVISIONSntion on a ease of brutal and pointlessnmurder. As in a nightmare,nRichardson switches sides to worknfor one of the defendants: Jenny, anrunaway girl who has been thenshared mistress of two degeneratesnwithout losing a certain spiritualnvitality. In a way she is the proverbialnWestern heroine, the whorenwith a heart of gold.nThe novel gets off to a slow start,nand Chilton Williamson—a seniorneditor at National Review —nsometimes seems more at homenwith description than dialogue.nStill, it is a book hard to put down,npartly because the mystery is not sonmuch a case of who done it asnwhom can we believe. The themesnare as old as Sophocles and Dante,nand the book is set in a recognizablynDantean landscape. In Williamson’snworld there is much real evilnand some good. Richardson himselfnis a decent pagan at the end of hisnrope, but what saves him in the endnis also a mystery, the mystery ofnlove and, yes, grace.nDesert Light is not a perfectnbook. It is, however, a good book—nbetter than a first novel deserves tonbe. The prose is lean and muscular,nwith an understated eloquence thatnnnperson not habitually employed in thengreeting card industry.nOnce, in Mr. Logue’s fair cityn(where the blurb gives to understandnhe also writes for film), a kindly elderlynman named Henry James contemplatednthe work of a brash younger mannnamed H.G. Wells and remarked, asnof journalism in general, on the greatnnew science of beating the sense out ofnwords. Since, we have entered into thenmatter more thoroughly and can nownbeat the sense out of images (the stuffnof the imagination, no less) themselves.nSo this “account,” which merelynthrusts upon one of the world’sngreatest surviving epics—one sovereignnpoetic heirloom of the dawn ofnWestern civilization—its own deviantnprojections, does not even exist exceptnfor our time’s constructed capacity fornthe endless replication of solely manmadenand man-manipulated images,ncannot be learned in the Northeast.nThe author has great descriptivenpower and so sure a hand with thendetails of plot that most readers willnfind themselves engrossed, evennagainst their will. The final sectionn—a trip back to Jenny’s home tonpersuade her parents to testify—npulls everything together so suddenlynthat the reader is dropped,nwith an almost blinding awareness,nthrough the trapdoor of the scaffolding.nThe critics will probably not likenDesert Light or its author. AndrewnLytic, in an advance notice, describesnthe hero as “an outlaw whonrescues love from lust, justice fromnpower.” Hardly a popular theme,nnowadays. But Williamson’s novelnwill find its readers who like adventuresnwith a point, and if RobinsonnJeffers’ Medea was once describednas Euripides with the mind takennout, Williamson’s Desert Light isnlike Zane Grev with the mind putnin. (TF)nOCTOBER 1987 127n