Compute with menComputerized she prints out menCommingling with me she becomes menComing she is coming is shenComing she is a comrade of minenComrades come all over comradesnCommunists come upon communistsnHi. Hi.nWe are here to complete our fusionnWe are here to create confusionnDo you confuse coming with confession.’nDo you fuel for nuclear compression.’nI’m for funicular ascension.nEither this is failed satire (but who isnhe satirizing, himself.” Bad poetry? Hisnown disjointedness.”) or Doctorow simplyndoesn’t realize how truly awful thisnis. After all, he got away with Ragtime. Ifneverybody tells him that’s great literature,nhow is he to know any different.^nEvidently Doctorow still has a thingnabout computers. Biographical passagesnbegin “Data linkage” or “Computerndata,” a hackneyed device more appropriatento the “Twilight Zone” (and RodnSerling does it better), very much a datednpeeve, vintage 50’s or early 60’s. There’sna curious feeling when reading LoonnLake that one is wending one’s waynthrough a junk store of cliches—clichesnof all shapes and sizes, stylistic, literary,npolitical. Doctorow often writes with littlenpunctuation, with a flow of wordsnmore facile than felicitous that mirrorsnneither thought nor spoken language,nbut that appears to be striving toward thenpoetic, a sort of “E. L. Doctorow, meetnE. E. Cummings.” If he stuck to it consistently,nthis artificial language mightnjustify itself to some degree simply asnhiw own quirky affectation. The amusingnthing is that Doctorow fairly quicklyngives up the enterprise, slipping backninto traditional punctuation, either fornits greater clarity, or because he didn’tnfeel it worth the effort. (In this, ofncourse, he would have been right.) Fromnthen on he takes up the cause of experimentalismnonly sporadically, usually asnhe begins a new chapter, and the attemptnis generally short-lived.nIn this passage, street-wise Joe isncaught breaking into the church’s poornbox: “… the fat priest in his skirtsngrabbing my neck with a hand like pincersn… I twist turn kick the Father hasnballs they don’t cut off their own ballsnthey don’t go that far the son of a bitchn—spungo! I aim truly and he’s no priestngoing down now with eyes about to popnout of his head, red apoplectic face Inknow the feeling Father but you’re nonfather of mine.” Heard it before.” Fatnpriest in skirts, and “you’re no fathernof mine”? Later on Joe bums his way tonLoon Lake, the Adirondack retreat ofnrobber-baron industrialist F. W. Bennet,nand there vagrant and tycoon have anconversation:n’I’ll tell you,’ Bennet said. ‘I alwaysnrespect a man’s decision. Never try tonargue him out of it. You’re not stayingnhere and you’re not going home.nThat leaves you back on the road,ndoesn’t it.’ Back on the Bum. Well Insay why not, if that’s what you want.nBut be sure you can handle it. Just bensure you’ve got the guts.’nSuddenly the fog lifted from Loon Laken. . J mn-it si-intillarini;. moving! experience.”n••rill’ inosi imurishinj;. haimtiiig .’Xnicriciin novel . . . “n”. . . :i fa.scinaiing. lanlaii/.iii^ novfl . . .'”nand I realized that despite all appearancesnI wasn’t sitting at home reading annovel—I was at the movies.nJLhis is a film script, embroiderednand prettied up with all sorts of stylisticndoodads to give it some class, some intellectualncachet in Hollywood. Hell, if itnfools the New York literary types, it’s ancinch to go over with the cocaine crowd.nTo them this is the forefront of the literarynvanguard. They must feel awfullyngratified to be able to understand it. It’snnnright up their alley: the hard-boiled industrialistn(played by John Huston) andnhis aviatrix wife lost over the sean(Amelia Earhart was, for some inexplicablenreason, enjoying a big vogue as anfeminist pop heroine at the time Doctorownwas writing this). She is describednas an ultra-WASP, asexual, thin andntaut with tiny breasts; a Katherine Hepburnntype, or, being more up-to-date,nJane Fonda.nAt one point two lovers are separatednby an earthquake: “The streets werencracking open. I ran back, the city wasnfalling down everywhere, I climbed overnthe rubble, I saw her coming after menwith arms raised, the cobblestonesnheaved, the street broke open, it fillednwith water, I reached her and grabbednher hand just as the earth sank away andnshe fell in, she fell from my hands andnwhere the earth had been there was ansteaming lake.” Can’t you just visualizenit? And with Dolby sound!nAll the refuse of popular culture liesnscattered about these pages; terriblenjokes about cloning (popular with then”Saturday Night Live” contingent), thenpoet who takes instruction in a Zennmonastery with the appropriately eccen-n— Chicaiiii Sun-Timesn— Quest ‘HOn— Sew York Timo.ntrie master (so we’re taken through allnthe tired steps of that old story. DoesnDoctorow think we haven’t heard it allntold, and better, before? Does he thinknhe’s added anything new? But this is thenmovies, remember, whereonedoesn’texpectnanything original, just the samenscenes reshuffled and put in a newnpackage), and the gang rape of the fatnlady at a traveling carny. This last isnsignificant not only for its quality ofnunpleasant deja vu; it is perfectly representativenof a faddish element in con-n9nMarch/April 1981n