A Bundle of Tricks

...Which brings us to another of Bourjaily's pet devices, a conscious use of bad writing: The opera at the center of the action—about poker players in a Georgia construction camp—is horrendous...

...Less successful, yet often skillfully employed, is cinematic scene juxtapo-sitioning—having the action or dialogue switch back and forth between two periods of time or sets of characters...

...to denote speech he merely gives the character's name followed by a period...

...Indeed, we are given to understand, the search for a modern Canterbury Tales is over —and modern is better...

...Nothing like this has ever been written," declares a wholly serious press release from Dial, whose editor-in-chief is quoted as saying that Now Playing at Canterbury is "one of the most important books Dial will ever publish...

...And since there does not appear to be any legitimate stylistic reason for the graphic games, the inevitable impression is that the publisher's packaging has been allowed to move too far into the realm of literature...

...Unfortunately, this can degenerate into near chaos, so that parts of the novel seem to be modeled after Easy Rider, with all its jumbled banterings...

...in fiction, that is supposed to be a function of the story...

...the purist will rankle at the spectacle, viewing it as perhaps mildly interesting but mostly as demeaning the venerable notion that good writing, not showmanship, is the compelling force in literature...

...All conversations in the tale are encased in cartoonist's bubbles (without the cartoons), giving the entire section an eerie, Roy Lichtenstein-like appearance...

...Vance Bourjaily should remember that only a circus has something for everyone...

...Both ploys are ultimately purposeless, for bad writing and silly tidbits are like bad singing and babbling—funny and inoffensive for a second, but afterward merely tiring...

...At this point, the serious reader feels cheated: He is no longer reading a novel...

...His earlier novels, like Confessions of a Spent Youth, reveal a truer voice because the projected readership is better defined...

...He also includes long digressions on such topics as castrati...

...In his case, however, the novelty consists mainly of rather empty technical devices designed to add freshness to his story and style...

...Reviewed by L.A.Walker Reviewers are instinctively wary when a publisher makes extravagant claims for a novel...

...Yet Bourjaily's final faux pas is deadly...

...It is Bourjaily's flair for the cinematic, in fact, that leads him to silliness and prompts the feeling that his innovation is sheer gimmickry: He makes some pages look like the Sunday morning comics, some like manuscripts complete with proofreader's marks, and some like scraps from notes and letters...

...Each of the individual tales is in essence engrossing and unique: the drag-racing sequence, the tale of the old woman who lives with dozens of cats, the story of lost innocence...

...It is one more trick, a deceitful one that plays upon the reader's sympathies for no reason except to attach a melodramatic finish to a confused book...

...The Chaucerian connection, of course, is Bourjaily's doing...

...As in Chaucer, the tales are alternately humorous, serious and off-color, and are told by stereotypes (albeit quite up-to-date ones—a gay, a bubble-headed young actress-singer, a black with identity problems, a humble Japanese) . A final resemblance to Chaucer is Bourjaily's striving for innovation...

...For example, the author effectively eliminates the word "said" in rendering dialogue...

...he is experiencing an extension of the broadcast media...

...The yarns themselves have a good feel for the nature of contemporary American life and make for pleasant reading...

...He should have ended the book with the scene that has the opera's director riding out of town on opening night with his true love, who tells him the fates of the rest of the cast...

...His lapses in judgment aside, it should be stressed that Bourjaily is an accomplished craftsman...

...Bourjaily has attempted to do the same...

...The Canterbury Tales, as every college freshman knows, included a number of firsts...

...The television addict or pulp-fiction fan who might be amused by the print pyrotechnics will not appreciate the weighty thematic allusions to Chaucer...

...Instead, we are suddenly thrust into another tale, of the young stage manager, a woman whose cello-fingering hand has been permanently damaged: She is killed by the American bombings on Hanoi on Christmas, 1972...

...In newspapers, headlines are meant to arouse interest...

...Instead of a pilgrimage, though, his entourage is preparing the premiere of an opera (a very bad one, incidentally) that will open a midwestern university's performing arts center...

...Novel" means new, and one should by no means reprove Bourjaily for the experimentation he began in Brill Among the Ruins...

...The device is simple, unobtrusive and dramatic...

...And Vance Bourjaily's Now Playing at Canterbury bears all three burdens: oversell, pretentious literary allusions and a phony newness...

...The event—undeniably tragic—has absolutely nothing to do with Now Playing at Canterbury...

...The strangest use of graphics comes about when the brilliant but naive Japanese composer tells the story of his formative years in America...

...Like the original, his novel is about a group of people working toward a common goal...

...But they become most defensive when innovation?generally a desirable quality in fiction?turns out to be gimmickry...

...Each of the participants relates a .story about his life to some of the others, with the present and the opera popping in from time to time...

...Ironically, the frantic contemporary air about the book is likely to cancel out its readership...

...They are even more suspicious when the work being touted blatantly invokes classic literature...

...Still, in searching for ground-breaking effects in Now Playing at Canterbury he is trying to play to too many people...

...Admittedly, some of the techniques have merit...