LOON LAKE by E.L. Doctorow; Random House; 258 pages; $11.95
Author E.L. Doctorow's Ragtime (1975) Author E.L. Doctorow's Ragtime (1975) was one of the cultural happenings of the past decade. The novel received largely rhapsodic reviews; its fictional use of such historical figures as Henry Ford and J.P. Morgan prompted reams of analysis. Commercial success accompanied the critical welcome. Paperback rights went for $1.9 million, a record at the time, a film deal was struck, and Ragtime became a bestseller. As the cash register continued to jingle, though, a number of literati began backing and filling from their earlier praise. If Doctorow is that good, so the argument ran, how come he is making so much money? The question is flawed, of course; the fact that many bad books sell well does not mean that all good ones are quickly remaindered. But having prospered a trifle too handsomely in the eyes of the purists, Doctorow created a skeptical, show-me audience for his next work of fiction.
That is too bad, because the author's new novel demands some patience and cooperation from readers before its effects begin to take hold and grip. Gone is the spare, metronomic prose that made the inventive plot of Ragtime so accessible and entertaining. The written surface of Loon Lake is ruffled and choppy. Swatches of poetry are jumbled together with passages of computerese and snippets of mysteriously disembodied conversation. Narration switches suddenly from first to third person, or vice versa, and it is not always clear just who is telling what. Chronology is so scrambled that the aftereffects of certain key events are described before the events occur. Such dislocations are undeniably frustrating at first, but they gradually acquire hypnotic force. Reading the book finally seems like overhearing bits of an oddly familiar tune.
Doctorow is indeed playing a variation on an old theme: the American dream, set to the music of an American nightmare, the Depression. Much of the book's plot is generated by a single gathering of characters in 1936. A group of gangsters and their girlfriends travel to Loon Lake, the 30,000-acre Adirondack retreat of their host, Millionaire F.W. Bennett. The Mob runs an industrial service, which actually means spying, strikebreaking and union busting, and Bennett has been having more than a spot of trouble with the workers at his Indiana auto-body plant. workers at his Indiana auto-body plant. The two sides make a business agreement, and the head crook generously gives his moll Clara to Bennett to sweeten the bargain.
Also present at Loon Lake are Bennett's wife Lucinda, a world-famous aviator, and Warren Penfield, a drunken poet whom she keeps on as a pet and confidant. And an uninvited guest arrives: a young hobo named Joe, who wanders onto Bennett's property and is nearly killed by a pack of vicious dogs. As he recuperates, a young woman employee on the estate explains his accident: "Those are wild-running, those dogs. It's the fault of the people who own them and can't feed them any more. And then they go off and forage and breed wild and hunt in packs."