ing alone with his spinster sister andnthe ghosts of his own guilt. Before thenmurder, Dr. Heme had been a patriciannpatron to local black youths. Onenof his proteges, ironically named RooneynLee, now dominates the doctor’snlife by forcing him to submit to flagellationnby Rooney’s wife. Hux takesnadvantage of a religious vulnerabilitynin Heme’s sister to pose as an evangelistnand win her confidence, but then,nwhile attending a real evangelical tentmeetingnrevival, undergoes a profoundnreligious conversion himself and isnforced to reexamine the implicationsnof his vengeance. In the zeal of hisnnew faith, Hux confronts the doctornwith his crime and forces him to kneelnin prayer. The novel ends tumultuouslynwith Dr. Heme’s suicide and Hux’snnear-fatal beating by the criminal RooneynLee.nPerhaps the publishers and earlynreviewers should be forgiven for drawingnobvious parallels between ThenSummoning and the works of suchnauthors as Bellow, Percy, O’Connor,nand Faulkner. The emptiness of Hux’snNew York life and career—divorced,ndeprived of his son, and void of professionalnsatisfaction—is the familiar existentialnproblem of much modern literature.nWhen Hux is “summoned” tonavenge his dead friend’s murder, hisnlife assumes purpose, although it is thendiscovery of his true summons thatnexorcises the ghosts of the past andnfrees the emotionally crippled Hux tonlove again. The Deep South settingnand the treatment of racial guilts are,nof course, highly suggestive in themselves.nMany readers will recognizencharacteristics of “Southern Gothic”nliterature. There are unmistakablenechoes of such religious grotesquesnfrom Flannery O’Connor as the fakenBible salesman Manley Pointer innHux’s imposture as a traveling evangelist,nof the “Misfit” in the malevolentnRooney Lee, and of Hazel Motes,nwhose mission to found a “ChurchnWithout Christ” becomes a profoundnspiritual quest. But The Summoningnends on an ambiguous theologicalnnote, as Hux (who has at least beennreborn to the capacity for commitment)nsays, “Jesus was the name Inspoke, the name I prayed to. But thenname doesn’t seem necessary to mennow, maybe not even useful anymore.”nThe apparent parallels withnO’Connor, Percy, or Faulkner provenmisleading. Towers does not show Percy’sntalent for exposing the absurditiesnof contemporary life in comic action.nAnd he lacks O’Connor’s ability tonkick the reader in his literary stomach;nthe novel is devoid of the metaphysicalnhilarity that makes us laugh at herncharacters while we are aghast at theirnfate. Nor does Towers—or any othernwriter today — possess Faulkner’snOlympian vision of the myth andntragedy implicit in the Southernnexperience.nStill, no less a writer than EudoranWelty has complained of the problemnof settiing down to write her “delta”nfiction only to be haunted by thenshadow of Faulkner’s mountains loomingnon the horizon. Ernest Hemingwaynused to describe writing as a kindnof boxing competition, of putting onnthe gloves with the likes of Turgenev ornStendhal, and Towers undoubtedlynknew what he was taking on in ThenSummoning. In fact, the ghost ofnSouthern fiction past—especially thenexample of Faulkner—is one of thenspirits the novel explicitly attempts tonexorcise, even as the author inevitablynevokes it.nJean-Paul Sartre once comparednFaulkner’s vision of the world to “thatnof a man sitting in a convertible lookingnback.” Only the past is real. At onenpoint early during his visit to Ole Miss,nHux — in his role as foundationnexecutive—uses one of the “FaulknernWeekends” held regularly there to reverenand exploit the author’s name asnan occasion to ridicule the Southernntendency to dwell on what is lost.nSeated next to a visiting Faulknernscholar, Hux adopts an exaggeratednMississippi accent to taunt the professor’sninfatuation:nI’ve just been proposing . . .nthat sump’m ought to be donenabout Bill Faulkner’s body . . .nthat they ought to exhume it,nand then hire a team of expertnmorticians to touch it up so’snthey could exhibit it. Younknow, jus’ like Lenin’s, only innthe parlor at Rowan Oak ‘steadnof the Kremlin.nBy mocking the adulation of Faulkner,nTowers is trying to escape fromnthe shadows still cast by the giants ofnthe Southern Renaissance. Yet it isnnnHux’s own idolatrous worship of hisndead friend’s memory and his ownnsense of lingering guilt from the pastnthat has provoked his own quest fornrevenge and redemption.nBut the past does not mean fornTowers what it meant for Faulkner, fornin the end Hux does leave his pastnbehind, convinced that his murderednfriend won’t “come back that waynagain.” And in spite of the author’sneffort to avoid the stereotypicaln”Southern” novel, the familiar figuresnand themes are all here, if sometimesndeveloped with a new twist. The fundamentalistnevangelist who convertsnHux to his own firebrand religion bynrecounting his own sins and then offeringnthe possibility of rebirth—“I thatnwas dead am now living”—is nevernrevealed satisfactorily as either charlatannshowman or divine instrument.nThe depiction of the maverick RooneynLee, though, suggests that Towers isndeveloping a more complex approachnto the “Southern problem” of racialnguilt, one rising above the simplisticnhair-shirt of racial guilt. But the customarynsmall-town Southern charactersnabound—especially Dr. Hcrnenand his spinster sister. And the cityn(Memphis, in this case) is painted innthe usual colors of sinister corruption.nThe occasional lapses into caricaturenand stereotype do not, however,nobscure the author’s genuine talent. Innits virtues and its faults. The Summoningnmight put the reader most in mindnof Robert Penn Warren, as novelist.nLike Warren, Towers is an expatriatednSoutherner. Over his last five or sixnnovels, Warren—transplanted to Yalenand Connecticut—has shown a progressivelynless-sensitive “feel” for thenpulse and soul of his regional material,nand his Southern voice seems increasinglynstrained. Towers is strugglingnwith the same problem. The Summoningnis marked by a great deal of documentarynrealism—descriptions andnreferences to Memphis and northernnMississippi will be familiar to anynreader who knows the lay of the landn—but the familiarity is uneasy, andnthe novel lacks that un-self-consciousnuse of natural resources that the readernis more affected by than aware of Butnlike Warren, Towers is willing to takenon large themes with intelligence andnskill, no mean feat in today’s literarynclimate.nJULY 1986/27n