ALL ABOUT H. HATTERR by G.V. Desani. 287 pages. Farrar, Straus & G/roux. $5.95.
Some books make the reviewer want to shout; others, to weep; still others, to pontificate. All About H. Hatterr makes one simply want to point at the words on the page. When a novel speaks for itself with such a bizarre and delightful voice as this one does, to paraphrase would be travesty. What can be said in mere critical language, for example, about the following passage, which ends the book?
"I carry on. Meanwhile, and regardless, I am putting questions to fellers: and regardless of the unanswerable what is truth? . . . Maybe, damme, all humans —the Shem, Ham and Japheth—just like you say, come from one branched-off source: our Grand-dad chimpanzee, our gorilla grandma, and the orang-patriarch. O.K. and granted. But sans sense, primates, and progeny of puny primates! Why bite one another now, though your ancestors might have? Répondez s'il vous plait! man hunting man! Ach, mein Gott! are human beings fools or what? In the interim . . . while I wait, and you tell, mach's nach, aber mach's besser, viz., carry on, boys, and continue like hell!"
Cultural Carpetbagger. In his unique and cheerful way, Author Desani is a one-man tower of Babel, a cultural carpetbagger who hawks the flotsam and jetsam of at least five civilizations and three continents, with odd lots of Latin, Shakespeare and the Bible thrown in. His peculiar comic note derives not only from this exotic mixture, but also from his sweet-tempered narrative of sour experiences. The punning jumble that results might be called a cracked hymn to the Joyce and sorrows of life.
Desani's hero, H. Hatterr, is an Anglo-Indian and a "true spiritual devil-may-care." In seven symmetrical chapters, he seeks enlightenment from some sages of India, then sets out to the countryside to apply his new-found wisdom. Each adventure turns out to be a con game, with somebody else working the con and Hatterr as the game. Attempting to exorcise the mystical fit of an itinerant bard, he is himself accused of being possessed by a spirit and is nearly burned alive on a pyre. "Damme," he says, "this is Life and contrast for you!"
Contrast is Desani's key philosophical concept. Make no mistake. All About H. Hatterr is a philosophical novel that deals, however obliquely, with such eternal conundrums as love, free will and appearance and reality. Its protagonist formulates no doctrines. But without ever quite losing his innocence, he does arrive at a visionary acceptance of all mortal matters as so much moonlight on the Ganges. "To hell with judging!" he concludes. "I have no opinions, I am beaten, and I just accept all this phenomena, this diamond-cut-diamond game, this human horseplay, this topsy-turvyism, as Life, as contrast."