OCTOBER LIGHT

Serious comedy, or tragical-comical-historical-pastoral farce, poem unlimited, metaphysical hijinks, and a triumph of Vermonter Americana. And the story of the "unlocking" (earth-thawing) of the frozen heart of elderly James Page, a miserly, stooped, rock-poor, tragedy-ridden farmer from Prospect Mountain ("Time had shifted gears, or was leaking, like energy from the universe. . ."). The corruption of America by television ("the filth of hell made visible") hits James' farm when his octogenarian sister Sally moves into his living room with her TV. He watches the simpering, pandering machine for two weeks, then loads his shotgun and blows the screen to hell, "right back where it come from." Sally angrily takes to her bedroom while James rages below. This standoff—between Sally's principled hunger strike and James' costiveness—is the marvelously improbable but realistic plot of the novel, whose primary theme is the tyranny of inflexible beliefs. Upstairs Sally reads a "comic blockbuster" paperback about marijuana smugglers, most of which is printed as a philosophical counterpoint to the big quarrel. These potsmoke pages are merely skimmable. In fact, much of the main novel seems adrift in its riches; some arguments are spoken through unconvincing mouthpieces; two symbolic bears and many allusive quotations add aspiration without uplift. Mostly though, his powers are hoppingly electric, his Godforsaken October moods—closest to Nickel Mountain's weathers—scatter your heart.