porcine discontinuity of most Americanndiscourse.” Yet he also shows a measurednsympathy for Karl Shapiro’s attack onnthe moderns, despite his rejection ofnShapiro’s idea that poetry (and poets)nshould be antirational. And in a fine tributento Conrad Aiken he joins the attacknon the sterile and loveless verse of thenlatter-day modernists, while commendingnthose who are seeking a newer andnmore vital language (e.g., Denise Lever-nFood for MemorynRichard Brautigan: So the WindnWon’t Blow It All Away; DelacortenPress/Seymovir Lawrence; New York.nRichard Sennett: The Prog WhonDared to Croak; Farrar, Straus &nGiroux; New York.nby Will Morriseyn1 he first-person narrative form inn20th-century fiction often asserts individualismnwhile undercutting it. Althoughnit is quickly clear who this “I” wants thenreader to believe he is, few fail, in thenend, to see who he really is. What isn’tnalways apparent is what the author thinks,nor believes, about his narrator’s seemingnand being. By refusing to judge explicitly,nmany modem novelists and poets dependnon their readers’ ability to find anconstellation of meaning beyond thennarrative’s landscape—beyond the individualnportrayed. Even in this irreligiousntime we have some idea of Dante’snmeaning, but what wiU readers make ofnJames Joyce six centuries after hisndeath? Joyce himself identified an immediatenneed for literary archaeologistsnto interpret his books.nThe current literary situation mirrorsnthe familiar political tension betweennliberty—an assertion of individuality—nand authority—^the embodiment ofnMr. Morrisey is the author of ReQectioasnon DeGaulle.nS6inChronicles of Culturentov and Robert Greeley).nXlayden Carruth apparently likesnevery kind of poetry except that whichnis demonstrably bad, and he spends muchnof his time in this volume separating thengraceful and durable from the facile andnmundane in 20th-century poetry. Fornthat, as well as for the beauty and precisionnof his prose, Working Papers isnnoteworthy. Dnmeaning. In modem times especially, individualsnresent authority but find themselvesndiminished when it is destroyed.nThey often get the worst of both: individualismnfor Stalin, tyranny for thenRussians; or, alternatively, anarchy fornthe many and subservience for the few.nBrautigan explores liberty in America.nSennett explores tyranny in Hungarynand the Soviet Union. Both use firstpersonnnarrators, and both pose thenproblems individualism causes.nBrautigan’s middle-aged narrator remembersnthe summer of 1947, when henwas 12 years old and “the most interestingnthing happening in his life” was watchingna husband and wife who fished in anpond while sitting in their living-roomnfurniture, carefully trucked out and unloadedneach evening at seven. Imitatingntheir deliberateness, he intersperses hisndescription of one afternoon spent waitingnfor them with memories of his childhood,nculminating in the day his “childhoodnended”—^when he accidentallynshot and killed a friend.nThe reviewer for the New York Timesncould find no purpose for this procedure,nbut the narrator explains it simplynenough: “I am still searching for somenmeaning in the story and perhaps even anpartial answer to my own life, which as Ingrow closer and closer to death, the answerngets farther and farther away.”nHence the attempt to reverse aging bynthe means of memory, to recapturenchildhood, the time when tmth seemsnnncloser—^not only for Wordsworth’s famousnreason but because an adult cannsee “unknown vectors” the child did notnsee. Brautigan does this well. He remembersnthe boredom of childhood. Hisncuteness, which has irritated more thannone reader of his other novels, here contributesnto a story that does not omitnchildhood’s childishness. Children pondernlying and tmth-telling, fantasy andnreality, with an intensity most will losenin adulthood; Brautigan knov^^ somethingnof how these intertwine. So, for example,nhe has his narrator remember the “verynancient and fragile” lock on an oldnwoman’s garage door:nThe lock was only a symbol of privacynand protection, but that meant somethingnin those days. If that lock werenaround today, a thief would just walknup to it and blow it off with his breath.nThe narrator remembers these thingsn”so the wind”—^today’s prevailing viciousness,na sort of realism—“won’t blow it allnaway.” His memories recapture not onlynchildhood but the more humane mindsnof that time and place—the AmericannNorthwest a couple of years after WorldnWar II, “before television crippled thenimagination of America and turnednpeople indoors and away from living outntheir own fantasies with dignity.” Thisnisn’t quite as sentimental as it sounds;nlonely children who spend thefr daysnwatching, not participating, often findntheir way to the eccentric adultsn(mostly old people—old age is a form ofneccentricity) who have time for them.nThe narrator draws these portraits vidthna bright child’s mixture of sarcasm,ncuriosity, and fondness.nOrautigan has never offered anynbut the simplest ideas, and his sentimentsn—the mixture of satfre and sympathynChristianity becomes when secularizedn—recall Dickens (as do his congmentnfascinations for eccentrics and children).nHis style is from Hemingway. Thentone belongs to Brautigan, and it is whatnmakes him a most elusive writer. He isn