them is as much as anything else what itnmeans to be human. Harry learns thisnexperientially as he finds unsuspectedndepths in the people who surround him.nIt is the achievement of The Natural Mannto convey so much sense amid so muchndelicious fun.nAn air of nostalgia, though not of ancheaply sentimental sort, pervadesnMcClanahan’s novel. The world of Needmore,nthe author knows, is gone; even innthe summer of the book’s action, television—carriernof a blander, more uniform,nmiddle-class, national culture—^alreadynhas begun to exert its lure on the locals.nA hapless charlatan like Dr. Rexroat, whoncannot fool even the inhabitants of thisnbackwater, takes on an endearing charmnpartly by virtue of the unspoken but inevitablencontrast with his far more slicknand dangerous counterparts today.nMcHoming, we know from the start,nwould meet his death in our more violentnand chaotic times—^”fragged” by hisnown men in our war in Vietnam. Thennostalgic air raises in the reader’s mind anquestion: can the kind of rich comic imaginationnwe find here engage the contemporarynreality with equal balance andnsuccess? Or is the American urban scenenof the last decade so ridden with ideologicalnfenaticisms as to thwart the sensenof artistic perspective, combining detachmentnand love, vital to a rich comedy?nThe evidence of the two other comicnattempts does not suggest an encouragingnanswer. It would seem that, as wenmove from past to present and fromncountry to city, the winds of ideologicalnfeshion loosen the grasp of fiction on thenrealities of genuine experience, leavingnus with giddy, zany, increasingly weightlessnbooks.nIhe much-touted “New Boston” isnthe setting for another first novel, ToddnMcEwen’s Fisher’s Hornpipe Indeed, itnis, in a sense, the antagonist, for the peoplenpeculiar to the renewed downtown andnenvfrons are the people with whom thentide character wrestles madly, hilariously,nbut finally inconclusively. 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ZipnClass” types that give the Cambridge-nBack Bay-Faneuil Hall axis the distinctivenethos which makes the area a magnet fornthe likes of the novel’s SUNY-BuMo dropoutnnow artfiilly social climbing amongnthe media execs of Harvard Square.nMcEwen catches an array of such trendynfolks: the boozy Brahmin playboy whoninvites Fisher for libations at “QuincynMawket”; the vegetarian survivor of thencounterculture’s heyday who keeps ancozy littie suburban commune Fisherndubs “the Fruitlands”; and the feministnlaw student on her way to becomingnFisher’s ex-girl friend with this profoundnmissive aflSxed one morning to the fridge:n”You can’t treat me like this anymore.nDon’t you realize I’m in Law School? Wenhave to talk. You’ve changed… [etc.].”nNot of this class is the itinerant alcoholicnnn”philosopher” who inveigles Fisher intontyping and later promulgating a bizarrenmanifesto denouncing the general statenof things in America. Fisher, throughnwhose consciousness the book is narrated,ndepicts with zesty anger the culturalnrituals and shrines of the New Classn—^the obligatory French film showing atnan arty Utde theater in Harvard Square,nthe fern-filled salad restaurants nearby,nand, of course, the sacramental healthnfood of Fruitlands: “a flavorless rubberynball which stuck limpetlike to the roof ofnhis [Fisher’s] mouth and seemed to benslowly expanding.” Through all this stumblesnthe bumbling Fisher, somewhat unhinged,nit seems, from a Ml on the ice ofnWalden Pond that has left him with a grotesquenbandage and an enraged di^xjsitioanYet for all its acute and amusing ob-n9nOctober 1983n