SLOUCHING TOWARD BURGER KING
Berger, Thomas
SLOUCHING TOWARD BURGER KING REINHART'S WOMEN by Thomas Berger Delacorte Press. 295 pp. $13.95. Newcomers to Thomas Berger's Reinhart series—Crazy in Berlin (1958), Reinhart in Love (1962), and...
...Radically unsuited to business by his aesthete's temperament and lack of aggression, Reinhart withdrew from the world and became a sort of epicurean monk, stirring his white sauce and meditating on the world's folly from the height of his—no, her—penthouse apartment...
...Now you can see why I have submerged myself in cooking," Reinhart tells his priggish hippie-turned-stockbroker son...
...As social criticism, Reinhart's Women allows Berger to toss more satiric darts at the pompous zeppelins of contemporary cant...
...Genevieve reappears, as ready to emasculate as ever...
...Newcomers to Thomas Berger's Reinhart series—Crazy in Berlin (1958), Reinhart in Love (1962), and Vital Parts (1970)—couldn't pick a better time than now to meet one of contemporary fiction's most impressive creations by one of our most gifted writers...
...his neighbor Edie Mulhouse is almost Victorian in her lack of assertiveness...
...Berger's subtlety, as opposed, for instance, to the heavy-handedness of a Joseph Heller, makes his satire resonate...
...Tell me about yourself," Reinhart says...
...It was humanity's way to suspend the rules of courtesy when speaking of food or art," worries Reinhart...
...Oh, gee, I'm twenty-four," she replies...
...Reinhart's Women, full of such food for thought, deserves a four-star rating...
...their taste is adulterated by flash-frozen tacos, their minds are atrophied by drugs and television...
...He takes a job with Grace's company peddling gourmet foods in supermarket aisles...
...Yet he is tolerant of his daughter's sexual bent, but not because of deference to a stylish cause (Reinhart abhors most causes, especially those which require public discussion of what he sees as private matters...
...His failures in marriage and in business have taught him well: Nothing bungled is alien to Reinhart, and he understands too well how fleeting are life's pleasures...
...As Reinhart moves back into the world, he brings with him, besides culinary skill, a finely tuned sense of decency and a jeweler's eye for the mendacity and smallness of his fellow man...
...Reinhart's epicurean manner is analogous to the modern painter's withdrawal into "pure" color and reminiscent of Oscar Wilde's desire to "live up" to his blue china...
...His coworker Helen Clayton is as earthy and straightforward as Reinhart is skittish and circumspect...
...When Winona says she plans to move in with Grace, Reinhart sees that he must rejoin the world...
...Gatsby's hope was figured by the beckoning green light at the end of Daisy's dock...
...His lines tickle the mind at odd moments and nag and tease us as we slouch toward Burger King to be fed...
...Reinhart and his daughter, Winona, have been living together since Reinhart's divorce from his shrewish wife Genevieve some ten years before...
...Considered from any perspective, Reinhart's Women will dazzle...
...Given this recipe for the good life, it is perhaps inevitable that the fast-food generation gets nothing but brickbats in Reinhart's Women...
...From then on, Reinhart finds himself reluctantly drawn in ever-multiplying vectors to a number of memorable women...
...Reinhart is part of a widely noted trend in the modern novel toward "heroes" who are more often acted upon than acting, more observer than prime mover...
...For Reinhart, gastronomy allows a thrice-daily escape from the mass mind as well as mass food...
...At dinner one night (almost all of the novel's key scenes are built around meals), Winona tells her father that she has been having an affair with Reinhart's new girl BOOKS friend, Grace Greenwood...
...But he has something of that elusive magic which Nick Carraway found in Jay Gatsby—that "extraordinary gift for hope," that "romantic readiness" for new experience...
...As a prose achievement, the novel suggests what might have seemed incredible after Neighbors (1980): Berger seems to have become an even better writer than he already was...
...he is a prophet of the palate crying in a wilderness of "King of Burgers," "Chinky Chow Mein," and "mall-banal" eateries...
...To Reinhart, most people under forty are brutal, crass, and single-faceted...
...And there is Marge, creator of a most heavenly chili, who spurs the unworldly Reinhart on to dream of success as a restaurateur...
...The roadside cafe with a surprisingly real Irish stew, the unassuming lunch counter sporting a well-chilled Guiness: such chance encounters renew Reinhart's faith in life beyond the apartment lobby...
...Reinhart, the questing gourmet, believes in the serendipitous moment as well...
...Reinhart's son Blaine, a former hippie, is a poor advertisement for the endurance of the values of the 1960s as he blasts his sister's lesbianism with Falwel-lian fervor...
...The Reinhart world view is in part a sophisticated outgrowth of the 1960s cliche, "You are what you eat...
...But Reinhart's Women is solemn only in fits and starts...
...Mercer's note to Reinhart, left after she disdained an elaborate Reinhart dinner, is unpalatable: "Went out for burgurs" (sic...
...He is a frequent reviewer for The Dallas Morning News...
...His daughter-in-law Mercer seeks an escape from her gilded cage into alcoholism and insanity...
...Wit, warmth, intelligence, insight, compassion—it's hard work to ask a novelist or a novel for more...
...And as public service, the novel returns to readers one of the most engaging, most civilized characters in modern fiction, Carl Reinhart...
...More of the time it is hilarious, one of the best comic novels to come along in years...
...The most perfectly sketched minor character is the glib Debbie Howland, hostess of a happy-talk morning television show, who gives Reinhart his "break" into prime-time cooking...
...Food is really kinder than people...
...As a comedy, this novel will have readers laughing all the way, often to keep from crying...
...The vacuous Edie Mulhouse fares no better at Berger's hands...
...Chris Tucker (Chris Tucker teaches literature at Brookhaven College in Texas...
...Thomas Berger and Reinhart's Women demonstrate all these qualities in abundance...
...Reinhart is escalope de veau, souffle, Grand Marnier...
Vol. 46 • February 1982 • No. 2
