what Mozart thought and felt. But theneflfort is for naught. Mozart never madenpublic his true feelings. So ultimately,nhis chroniclers can teU us nothing of hisnreal values; they can only hold a mirrornup to themselves, creating in Mozart anportrait of their own experience.nUnfortunately, Hildesheimer cannotnresist the temptation to add a few brushnstrokes of his own. He studies Mozartnwith the depressingly familiar cliches ofnpsychology and modernism. Having castigatednone biographer for stating thatnMozart was “the glory of Catholicism,”nhe goes on to inform us: “CertainlynMozart was a believer, in that his mentalnlife was never given over to the criticalnexamination of God, to doubts or denials.”nA surprising statement coming from anman who has just devoted 300 pages tonthe concept that we can make no suchnassumptions about the substance ofnMozart’s emotional experiences. ExploringnThe Magic Flute, Hildesheimer tellsnus that a line in it “acquires meaningnonly through music it is a non-verbalnexistential statement.” One wondersnwhat Mozart would have made of suchnan interpretatioanrlildesheimer gets it right when hensays that Mozart was, in essence, “an unearnedngift to humanity, nature’s unique,nunmatched, and probably unmatchablenwork of art.” like that other great gift,ngrace, Mozart cannot be explained. Henshould be simply accepted withngratimde. DnThe Imporfeince of Being CutenEdmund White: A Boy’s Own Story;nE. P. Dutton; New York.nJohn Updike: Bech is Back; Alfred A.nKnopf; New York.nStanley EUdn: George Mills; E. P.nDutton; New York.nby Gregory WolfenA he latest offerings of EdmundnWhite, John Updike, and Stanley Elkinnare rather sad reminders of Coleridge’snpertinent distinction between imaginationnand fancy. Imagination, Coleridgenheld, is an act of creation in which formnis fully integrated with the reality itnseeks to represent. Fancy, on the othernhand, employs ftxed images and ideasnwhich are clapped together. Works ofnfancy, though they can be pleasing, tendnto break down into their constituentnparts; these novels of White, Updike, andnElkin, in attempting to explore homosexuality,nthe role of the author in society,nMr. Wolfe is the editor of The HillsdalenReview.nand the so-called “working class,” tendnto crumble into the dust of liberal cUches,nbecoming fragments of a banal yet allpervasivenZeitgeist Picking up the piecesncan be interesting, but it is no substitutenfor encountering a work of art.nEdmund White has been cooed overnby several of the current literary elite, includingnGore Vidal, William Burroughs,nand Susan Sontag. In addition to two previousnhovels. White is the coauthor ofn•”l-.ilnuiiKl \ liiu-isiiiln-1-riMi.-il |lli|h,n1(11 ki Ifiriliin- i;ilUl ik-iiri-.”nliberals have in the homosexual community;nit is a coimterculture oppressednby obscurantist moral and social values,nbut potentially destructive of those values.nA Boy’s Own Story is a homosexualnBildungsroman, a first-person narrativenwhich supposedly presents an admirablenyoung homosexual’s initiation into “adulthood.”nWhite depicts the protagonist asna fiill-fledged homosexual by the age ofnten, without so much as a question as tonwhat himian norms might be. Thus, atnthe start there’s an artistic failure sufficientnin itself to doom the novel, butnthere is more.nA Boy’s Own Story is a novel-as-wishfulfiUment.nIt is merely a thesis clothednas fiction. White’s world is a Hobbesiannone in which sexual lust is the rulingnpassion: everybody does it to everybodynelse, without discrimination based onnage or gender (this is what Sontag callsnWhite’s “convincing sensuality”). As thenhero grows older, White provides himnwith two escape hatches firom homosexuality:npsychoanalysis and orthodoxnChristianity. The satire of the successfulnanalyst—^who is in reality a drug-takingnpsychological wreck—is vapid and fecUe;nthis option is quickly discarded. ButnWhite leaves the temptation to Christianityntill the structurally significant endnof the book. The hero meets the Scotts, anyoung couple who teach at his school,nand becomes fascinated by their intel-n•• -V H(is (AMI .”»l()i”y’ h;is;iiiiniii(llinj;i.’ KliUitk- |\liiie|iH.liifV(.-s.i\i)iKliriull>npdi.M’il licliuii.”n”W hill’s wiDiiji ]silli . /J()|’.< I >iiii tldiy] is iilsd lii-lii …. iilriin:iU’l rlKri’ i.in hi- :iiin;iiulri>i;i\ …. I liDpi” so … . ;M-.ii:ililv is m-l\ roi’k-lMinoiii sliill.”nThe Joy of Gay Sex and author oiStatesnof Desire: Travels in Gay America Burroughs’snabsurd comparison of White tonTocqueville indicates the vested interestnnnissijk(.-(l liiiiisi’lf’jdisijn^iij.shi’il chiini in IIK’n—‘ilw Siitionn—iNwr Voffe Times Hook Kfrii’irn—VillilUe Voicenlectual Christianity: they read and discussnDante, Donne, Eliot, and C. S. Lewis.nFor a time the hero is intrigued by then”high static relief of allegory” whichni27nJane 1983n