which to put off editors who have authorizednchecks and are responsible toncorporate executives. The CEOs, whonmay be pleased to list these oneiric assetsnbut object after a time to the payingnof so much interest, aren’t Milkens ornKeatings after all—which is not exactlyna compliment: they’re no more scrupulousnbut lack the nerve, the sheer brashnessnof those pirates.nSo I’m all for Brodkey for taking publishersnto the cleaners for as much asnpossible and as long as possible. It’s onlynthat eventually even he had to hand inna manuscript. And they get (and we getnin turn) this . . . first novel actually, anvastly pretentious and even more vastlynboring, tiresome, all but incoherentnhodgepodge that gets respectful treatmentnin the New York Times Book Review,nand prominent space in the NewnYork Review of Books and the Times LiterarynSupplement. In the New York Review,nBrodkey is on page three with anDavid Levine caricature—the other caricaturesnin the issue are Jacques Derrida,nNadine Gordimer and Adrienne Rich,nand Alexander Hamilton, That’s fairlyngrand treatment for what seems essentiallyna prank, a demonstration that tastenis dead and intelligence has turned uponnitself, that, with a sufficiently intimidatingnheadwaiter, one can serve upnwhale slunk, pass it off as milk-fed veal,nand get away with it.nIndeed, the outrageous unreadabilitynof the book is probably a part of its success—thennotion being that art isn’tnmerely entertaining but ought to uplift,nought to be serious, difficult, and, not tonput too fine a point on it, boring. If itnfeels bad enough, it must be—likenchurch, medicine, or aerobic exercise—ngood for you. Thus, in a review in thenTLS that turns out to be finally unfavorable,nGabriel Jospovici feels obligednto register his credentials by makingncomparisons, or invocations, or allusionsnto “the greatest modernist novels, fromnA la recherche du temps perdu to Perec’snLa vie, mode d’emploi and Yaakov Shabtai’snPast Continuous,” which he saysn”have found a means of sailing betweennthe Scylla of plot and the Gharybdis ofntotal plotlessness,”nIs it necessary to trot out all that justnto say that in these 835 pages, there isn’tnany basic narrative? What we have herenis the collected outtakes from Brodkey’snshort stories and has to do one way ornanother with the same Brodkey-like figure,na poor orphaned boy who goes ton46/CHRONICLESnHarvard, discovers women, but thennfinds out that there’s also literature tonscrew around with. To suggest that thisnis an almost incoherent, mostly maundering,noften even ungrammatical booknought not be so intimidating that a reviewernfeels the need to gird himself up,nget defensive, and allude to Perec andnShabtai to let us know that he was, innthe first grade, in the bluebird group ofnfast readers and is still pretty good at it.nThe only other interesting thing to remarknabout The Runaway Soul is its runawaynprice—it is the second novel in thenhistory of American publishing to comenout with a list price of thirty dollars.nThe first, only a few weeks earlier, was,nnaturally enough, Norman Mailer’s Harlot’snGhost. This was noted on the businessnnews pages of the Times, which isnwhere the project ought propedy to bendiscussed. Mailer’s book and Brodkey’snhave a lot in common, actually, fornMailer’s novel is also big, dopey, butngrandly ambitious, and clearly IMPOR­nTANT. It is so big that it doesn’t evennend but only indicates that this is “To BenGontinued,” which is more of a threat,nI think, than a promise. It’s so big thatnnobody at Random House had eithernthe nerve or the energy to edit any of it.nThere is a dangling participle in the firstnsentence that would not pass muster innthe bonehead composition course of anyncow college, and, for the rest of the longnway, we get paragraphs that start outnwith first person pronouns and wanderndistractedly through syntactical thicketsnto end up astonishingly in the secondnperson.nWe might expect of a large novelnabout the GIA a certain degree of politicalnsavvy, some historical background,na sense of what has been going on in thenworld. If Gore Vidal had written such anbook, a good part of the fun of it wouldnhave been in his impish suggestionsnabout which country did what and tonwhom and for what reason. Indeed, ifnJohn le Garre had written such a book,nwe’d have at the very least mordant entertainmentnabout the psychologicalntribulations of spying and the philosophicalnstresses of the bad faith thatnspies not only encounter but are requirednto enact, themselves. These arenambitions that Mailer doesn’t condescendnto acknowledge, let alone fulfill.nWhat he gives us is a father-son story,nan Oedipal farrago onto which he graftsnhis own peculiar (one might also say,nloony) metapsychology of the yin andnnnyang of things that he labels “alpha” andn”omega.”nIt isn’t all dreadful. There are pages,neven whole scenes here and there, innwhich Mailer’s tendentious silliness disappearsnbecause he has latched ontonsome piece of action too good to let go,nand where his eraftsmanly experiencentakes him onto firm narrative ground innspite of the arrant dumbness of thenbook’s grand strategy. I found thesenpassages not only not redemptive butnactually distressing, for I took them asnevidence of what our novelist could havenbeen doing had he any shred left of thenmodesty and humor that keep mostnwriters from making fools of themselves.nThe trouble is that Mailer is smartnenough to have understood that his realnrelation with his audience has nothingnto do with his writing. He can producena good book like Executioner’s Song, orna windy and insane one like AncientnEvenings, and it makes no difference atnall. He gets the same media attentionneither way, achieves the same impressivensales, and thus for his next book canncommand the same hefty advances. Atnthe end of last year, some 185,000ncopies of Harlot’s Ghost had beennshipped, and the newspapers were reportingnthat Random House, althoughnindifferent to the content of the novel,nhad been much concerned about itsncover. The core beliefs of publishing arendiametrically opposite to those most ofnus hold. Lightning always strikes in thensame place, they assume, and onenshould always judge a book by its cover.nTherefore, the rather handsome, darkngray dust jacket with “GIA” as an overallndesign and the author’s name andnthe title in striking embossed white lettersnwas judged by the merchandisers asntoo somber. Another jacket in raspberrynwas whipped up for the Christmasnseason in the hope of greater sales.nThere is no room for any gloss onnthis, and surely no need for one. But Inam reminded of the observation of annold teacher of mine who lives in Washingtonnand finds it depressing to see,neach year, another generation of brightnyoung men and women arrive from collegesnand graduate schools, all of themnfilled with some degree of idealism andnthe wish to do good. They are socialized,nhowever, by the bureaucratic systemnand learn—in the State Department,nthe Justice Department, ornwherever else—not to take any initiative,nnever to incur risks, never to follow theirn