rev. of Looking for Fred Schmidt by Seymour Epstein
It's no lie that the American novel is in deep trouble. Especially the "serious" novel, which is to say the story that by all the available ways and means of craft aims to offer a sensuous affective experience, the first condition of a work of art. It's true that, compared to non-fiction, to all kinds of "popular" manufactured books and non-books, the good novel, even at its most successful, is a modest enterprise, a very modest part of the literary marketplace. More so than ever before, though no time in this century has been what anyone would call a
good time for serious fiction. Many of us were fooled by the abrupt and marvelously just rediscovery and transformation of the reputations of largely unknown artists — Faulkner and Fitzgerald, for example; for that matter, also, older names like James and Melville — in the bright years immediately following World War II. All of which should have been salutory for the novel. All of which seemed to prove the possibility of some justice, some changes for the better in our time. Justice and changes for the better, these are things Americans want to be able to believe in. It is clear already, however, that none of us is likely to live to witness anything like that remarkable episode in our literary history, a genuine revolution, again. And so the novel, after a brief remission, goes on . . . "dying." But novelists — good ones, lucky ones, the toughest ones — go on writing, not so much concerned about these explicit difficulties as with the essential, unchanging challenges of the craft.
The form of the American novel is predicated on faith in the truth of certain things, among them: the possibility, at least, of human freedom and of human change, the possibility of some sort of justice, however rough and ready, and hence the possibility of reasonable relationships (not really cause and effect) within the outer process and the inner sequences of human lives. In short, the American novel depends upon, even as it asserts, a kind of meaning, that an ordinary human story can
matter. Faced with an age which, practically and intellectually, denies these possibilities, even as it denies the validity and vitality of the human imagination except as something, on a brutal and simplistic level, to be aroused or manipulated, most of the successful American novelists of our generation have preserved themselves and something of their honored craft by a series of shrewd surrenders and deft compromises. Some have followed the eager trend and settled for the stories of extraordinary individuals, heroes and anti-heroes, celebrities and criminals. Some have turned to the celebration of extraordinary events by various kinds of journalism, new and old. Some have built upon fantasy and fragments, the only form of coherence being that of the author's inex-haustible voice in the wilderness, the only character with the least dimension and slightest interest being that of the author himself.
None of the above applies to the work of Seymour Epstein.
There are a few true magicians left who fortunately possess the skill and courage needed to preserve and protect the large, deep art of the novel. Seymour Epstein is, without question, one of the best of these few. It is his particular triumph to prove, again and again, that the magician's hat is itself more wonderful and mysterious than the sum of all the doves and rabbits which may be freed from it. His skill is so great that it is simply taken for granted, as he wants it to be. His courage and integrity are so firm and so sound that they become almost secret qualities. He does not need tricks because he deals in real magic. It's an art of restoration and renewal.
His new novel
Looking For Fred Schmidt, is his best work so far. They are all good books, but he keeps growing and refining, not exploiting or abusing, his skills. The stories grow and change with him. This one is built solidly around character. It happens to be the story of middleaged Joe Weiler and the people of his life, family and friends and enemies. I have no intention of rehearsing the story (read it and enjoy it) except to say that it takes Weiler through a series of ordinary, identifiable (and very real) crises in his life and the lives of those around him, all these crises being constantly overshadowed and affected by a larger inner crisis, something happening within Joe Weiler, a new and dangerous form of awareness which could, at the very least, lead him into great follies. Which, in fact, allows him to move through and around folly towards wisdom. Weiler is somebody, not a saint or victim, not an artist lightly disguised. He is mature, decent, humane, intelligent, honest, often very funny and often
troubled. His story is the living proof that you don't need (if you happen to be Seymour Epstein) pyrotechnical camouflage, elaborate charades and fueled injections of sex, violence, madness, and Baroque surprises to tell a strong contemporary story that maintains constant interest and unflagging suspense. There is not a dull page or paragraph in this book. The surfaces are real and familiar (that is, meaningful) ones, accurately sensed and elegantly articulated. The characters, other than the protagonist, partake of his dimensions and shadows, and are fully realized. From and through these surfaces, coming to us through Weiler, we are moved, in winks and with a slight and saving nudge of irony — which is an inherent characteristic of Weiler and not at all the usual condescension of author and reader to oafish character — into much less familiar depths of being, no less "real" than the continually shared experiences and sensations of the here and now. In the context these depths
become increasingly familiar to us, become recognizable; and because that is so, the very surface of outward and visible signs, the world we "know," is transformed. And without losing anything, not even its originally perceived shape. This story is a whole experience, complete; and by the end we know Joe Weiler, with his foibles, virtues and mysteries, like a brother. From the beginning we can believe in him and believe he is worth knowing. By the end we are glad to know him. And at the end we find that we are believing in the possibility of human freedom and human change, the possibility of reasonable relationships within the mysterious consequential fragments of a human life.
The best I can do, the just thing, is to trumpet a sort of "blurb" for this fine book.
Looking For Fred Schmidt is a book for those few who still read novels, hoping always, against the evidence of things seen, for the real, distinguished thing. It is also a book for those intelligent readers who have turned away from the novel, out of boredom at best, who will find in this one something they have been missing. After the experience of
Looking For Fred Schmidt, they will be well advised to go back and read Epstein's other, earlier books while waiting for the pleasures of the next one.
