Fuzzy Allegory

THE MAN WHO MADE FRIENDS WITH HIMSELF (275 pp.)--Christopher Morley --Doubleday ($3).

U.S. readers are always delighted when they find a writer who really acts and talks like one. When Parnassus on Wheels, a quaint little novel about an itinerant bookseller, was published back in 1917, many readers decided that they had found their man. Christopher Morley was clever with a whimsical plot and wrote in the studied, slightly archaic style of another century. The tweedy, pipe-smoke flavor of his looks and books reminded many of the country-squire tradition among English men of letters. With each succeeding Morley work, readers who had cut their teeth on J. M. Barrie's tenderness and Robert Louis Stevenson's romance flocked after a new hero who could give them the illusion of a jovial literary know-it-all in the midst of the noisy, shimmying Jazz Age.

Modified Raptures. Not everyone cheered. Some critics choked on his whimsy, and youngsters just out of college or World War I found their own spirit more faithfully mirrored in F. Scott Fitzgerald. But Morley's faithful coterie held tight to the illusion that a sky-high I.Q. and a sensitive nose for Culture were necessary to appreciate the Old Master's offerings. Readers shivered with delight at his rapid-fire quotations and laborious puns, and reverently slipcovered their autographed first editions. They looked the other way when Reviewer Harry Hansen told them that The Trojan Horse (1937) read "like parody"; even the hullabaloo that thousands of not-so-literary Americans kicked up over Kitty Foyle in 1939 only made them smile wisely and congratulate their hero on his versatility.

Once more their patience has been rewarded--but not so amusingly this time. Christopher Morley's new novel, The Man Who Made Friends With Himself, is a long epigram-studded footnote on the life of Richard Tolman, a literary agent who commutes and ruminates between his Long Island home and his Manhattan office. His story is a memoir found after his death.

Richard Tolman felt a certain uneasiness at finding himself living outside the centuries of his favorite authors, but it was not for lack of physical comforts. Mealie, his Negro housekeeper, saw to his well-being at home, listened patiently to his erudite rumblings, and entertained her employer in dialect that Amos 'n' Andy would consider extravagant. In his New York office, shapely Tally, possessor of a delightful A-to-B cultural range, was in charge. Richard's heart, however, belonged to Zoe Else, a New York psychiatrist whose attractions were heightened by a familiarity with Bartlett's Familiar Quotations that was almost as inclusive as his own. In spite of verbal protestations of physical and emotional fireworks on both sides, their affair never climbed above the level of a quiz contest.

That Man. Feeling out of sorts, Richard decided to begin an indefinite stay at home. Among other things he wanted to consider the case of an unidentified man who had left a sealed manuscript at his office with instructions that it was not to be opened without permission. During the weeks at home, Zoe fortified him with such cryptic postcard messages as "Quit biting your nails" and "I suggest you do more knitting." But Richard was up to more important things: he had finally made contact with That Man, his other self. That Man (also referred to as Mr. Doppelganger) had been troubling Richard for some time. He was the stranger who often walked just a few feet ahead of him on his way to the railroad station--the man to whom Richard always wanted to speak, but never dared. Later Richard suspected him (correctly) of having delivered the mysterious sealed manuscript to his office. After their first formal meeting on Neighbor Sharpy Cullen's terrace, Richard encountered That Man many times--in his home, on his walks, even wearing the cap of a Manhattan taxi driver.

Richard ended his Long Island vacation by returning to New York and Zoe. On their way to meet his neighbors, the Cullens, for dinner at the Grillparzer, they stopped at Richard's office to open That Man's manuscript--only to find that it contained a stack of blank paper with a seven-word title. Zoe was worried when Richard murmured, "So all my life is blank pages," but they went on to the

Grillparzer on schedule. During dinner there, a fire broke out in the kitchen and spread through the imitation Wienerwald. In trying to rescue Sharpy Cullen from the men's room, Richard perished in the fire, too rapidly to round out his life with one last epigram but not rapidly enough to prevent his getting the details of all but his last gasp into the memoirs--presumably by some sort of magic.

The postscript to Richard's story, written by Neighbor Sharpy Cullen, reveals something intended to carry walloping significance for the reader: Richard Tolman's real name was Toulemonde--everybody. It is doubtful that this information will prevent all the survivors of Mr. Morley's withering crossfire of literary quotations, rhymed commentaries, reflections on women and craw-sticking puns from realizing that in the latest Morley novel they have been fed a fuzzy allegory that pretends much and says little.

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