Innocence and the Maximum Leader

...Finally, the only important thing is to "follow rules," accept the dictates of the maximum leader who knows best...

...He calls himself "a cardboard soldier," a "rainmaker," and after being successful as leader of his group of "punks," he starts taking more chances than a social worker-psychologist need ever take...

...He had, after all, become "the most influential power over a range of fifty blocks in New York City," and if Baby had only followed his rules . . . There Kremmel's logic breaks down...

...If we cannot condemn him in the end, it is because we don't know the alternatives ourselves...

...Speicher cannot tell us...

...That's what they wants, that's what they is, all they ever gonna be, an if you think we wuz gonna persuade him otherwise . . . you wuz only puttin yourself on...

...When local hood Baby Paradise is arrested for stabbing a kid on the block, Kremmel decides he alone can "save" Baby Paradise, which eventually means turning him over to the police...

...The comedy derives from the realistic situation where humor is the saving grace????the only saving grace????and the amazing thing, as Kremmel's co-worker As-graves puts it, is that there is not more violence and chaos in the streets...

...But at the same time, twisting in pain and sleeplessness, Kremmel knows that he had seen himself "in a principal role, not as a whipping boy...

...The consequences of Kremmel's action unleash forces beyond his control: Ray Jimenez, the opportunistic leader of scar (Spanish Committee Against Racists), organizes against Kremmel and threatens everything the Social worker has constructed in his shabby youth center...

...But the road of rebellion, as Kremmel finds out, is a tightrope with no net below...

...Who would want to kill Amasa Delano...

...They are not...

...Who indeed would want to rebel against the established order, except the exceptional rebel Babu...

...Asgraves sums it up for Kremmel: "The Paradises ain't gonna recognize true self-interest...

...The Blind Man, the self-deluded, rationalizing innocent, is a killer as much as Baby Paradise...

...And neither is Kremmel...

...This is a novel written with great passion, humor and high seriousness...

...Perhaps most extraordinary is Asgraves' ability to maintain his sanity...

...People are generally aware of the implications of their lives and their acts...

...the shipmaster wonders...

...In his well-meaning innocence, Captain Delano is the destroyer, the "maximum leader" who is certain of the rules that society must follow to survive...

...After a disastrous, misconceived rally in Harlem, "his kids" are maimed and killed by the police and the militia...

...Kremmel says to him, "Don't kid yourself, you're one up on me...

...Against madness, what sanity...

...or to take over, become the rainmaker, the maximum leader...

...Camus believed that the only human decision was to rebel, to continue to rebel, to say no again and again, even if, as for Sisyphus, the rebellion provides no ultimate solution...

...Kremmel is another "quiet American...

...In a harrowing last chapter, Kremmel is truly alone, the eternal rebel who cannot be sure "which side of these moral issues the statistician is going to pronounce the winner," and whose "only kick comes from being top dog...

...What he should do and has done is dramatize the agony of rebellion against a society so domesticated that there may be nothing left but to "circle the herd on fast ponies watching for the occasional mad deviate...

...If Baby had followed his rules, he would have accepted the same middle-class standards that Kremmel himself rejected...

...Huck Finn does not want to return to Aunt Polly because she will "sivilize" him, and thus make him a member of an establishment...

...As head of a Youth Board storefront office, Kremmel thinks he can control events...

...He tries to believe that "what I had wanted was best for Paradise, best for his friends, best for the neighborhood...

...nor is it his job to provide answers...

...Is Kremmel's choice only to "quit under fire in this world," a world always "waiting for you to break and run...

...Though he learns to guide himself through a hostile world, he tries to trick himself into believing "the odd thing was that we knew what was happening to us...

...He might even end up like Amasa Delano, Melville's innocent shipmaster, who goes out to save Benito Cereno and ends by killing the Negro Babu, who has threatened his life...

...Kremmel lets himself be called "Blind Man," not only because he affects a cane and dark glasses but also, one suspects, because he realizes he is blind to what is happening to him...

...Against chaos, what order...

...Reviewed by JAMES CHACE Author, "The Rules of the Game" The capacity of the innocent to inflict harm is a traditional theme of American fiction, and the knowledge that his innocence is in constant danger of being corrupted haunts the American hero...

...In John Speicher's impressive first novel, looking for Baby Paradise, Charles Converse Kremmel III, "Lawrenceville and Columbia," is a social worker in Washington Heights...

...Within the chronicle of catastrophes, the book records Kremmel's breakdown and final crack-up...

...By turning Paradise over to the cops, he claims he was "settling for a kind of lesser evil . . . trying to maintain order...

...Is there no solution then...