Simple Waltz Steps

PEOPLE WILL ALWAYS BE KIND

by WILFRID SHEED

374 pages. Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

$7.95.

As a book reviewer of the highest order, and a scorner most subtle, Wilfrid Sheed can light up another man's novel, amuse the children by blowing smoke rings for a quarter of an hour, and then stub out the butt with a gesture so incisive that the wretched author resolves to forswear literature and apprentice himself to a tree surgeon. But Sheed is also a novelist himself, so skilled that a few years ago, in Max Jamieson, he managed to write a strong and eloquent novel whose main character was a critic. The feat was the equivalent of successfully memorializing a dentist, and the decision on all sides was that Sheed was a marvel.

He continues to be one. The central figure of the present book is Brian Casey, a gifted Irish-American Senator who wants, or seems to want, to be President. A peculiarity of the novel is that Casey's character becomes progressively less vivid and distinct as the narration advances, until by the last page he has totally disappeared from view. This is no accident, and, in fact, Sheed may have hit on the perfect literary device to portray the evolution of that strange political subspecies--public illusionists, private delusionists--whose members become candidates for the U.S. presidency.

The technique is extremely tricky, however, and the view here is that Sheed to some extent has fumbled. The novel comes in two sections. The first is a recollection by Casey himself of his school and college years, the second a view of Casey's presidential campaign recorded by a priggish young Ivy League speechwriter who is both beguiled and disgusted by the candidate. The problem with this arrangement is that the speechwriter, Sam Perkins, is not really intelligent or substantial enough to be a good observer. The reader does not want Casey to be explained--at the core of every soul there is an irreducible question mark, and the only difference between politicians and other sinners is that the former's question marks are little neon signs that glow in five colors and blink on and off. The trouble with Perkins is that he shrugs and gives up before he gets to the place where Casey's blinking sign could have been seen.

The title of the novel is taken from Siegfried Sassoon: "Does it matter? --losing your legs? .../ For people will always be kind,/ And you need not show that you mind/ When the others come in after hunting/ To gobble their muffins and eggs." The significance is that Casey, like Sheed himself, was crippled by polio as a boy. It seems to be this affliction that focuses his energy on politics, or, as Sam Perkins eventually sees it, on a compulsion to see healthy people brought to their knees. The novel's main concern, however, is the cloudy question of whether Casey is a very good man or a very bad one. He himself may not know and, since Perkins is so inadequate an observer, the reader, far from glimpsing the answer, barely catches sight of the question.

This is a Catholic novel, which complicates the situation. Tangled spirals of barbed and rusty religion crowd the Manhattan apartment in which Casey lives with his parents as a young man. It does not seem a particularly promising spiritual beginning, and yet Casey's Catholicism marks him in a way that is not necessarily negative. By the end of the novel, Perkins thinks that Casey wants to be God, but the possibility appears to exist that Casey merely and profoundly wants to obey him.

Virility. As a writer, Sheed can easily do a double back flip without spilling the wine in his glass. (He has dismissed book reviewing as a couple of insights and "a few simple waltz steps.") Unlike most stylistic acrobats, he is quite capable of writing a dozen plain sentences in a row if dazzle seems inappropriate. Thus, when he describes the reaction to one of Casey's speeches, it is the scene, and not the author's splendid suppleness, that lingers in the mind: "And when it was over, they exploded with a passion that would have sent Hitler to bed happy. 'My God, he's one of us. He's against the war, but he's one of us.' Casey sat there, head forward, staring at the future, like Churchill. The virility that was too much for a small office, the St. Bernard breathing on your face, was just right for large dining rooms and sports arenas. I found myself clapping too, and grinning at some banker, who was looking around for agreement."

This is an odd, shrewd book, whose quality is suggested by the reader's strong feeling at the end that Sheed's only real mistake was to quit writing about 200 pages short of his natural stopping place.

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