MORGAN'S PASSING by Anne Tyler; Knopf; 320 pages; $9.95
Flamboyant, full-blown eccentrics (Ahab, Henderson, Major Major Major) have become rare in U.S. fiction. Contemporary novelists are seldom content simply to portray people; characters must also be accounted for, their anguishes sorted into symptoms, their mannerisms traced back to unhappy childhoods, bad genes or misfiring chemicals. This process emphasizes clarity at the expense of wonder; nothing can kill magic faster than an explanation. In Morgan's Passing, Novelist Anne Tyler bucks the current trend by offering a hero who is greater than the sum of his neuroses. Morgan Gower exhibits an amiable screwiness...
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