Lackluster Life

ADVERSARY IN THE HOUSE (432 pp.) --Irving Stone -- Doubleday ($3).

Lust for Life, an excitable biography of Painter Vincent Van Gogh which sold enormously on both sides of the Atlantic, launched Irving Stone on a career of pseudo-biography in 1934. In succeeding biographies (notably in his stories of Jack London and General Fremont's wife), Stone has been more & more bent on improving the stories of his subjects by embroidering on their lives, by reporting conversations that were never spoken or at least not overheard, and by writing in a kind of jerky, fictional journalese. Any good historian must be doubly offended by what Stone does to U.S. history, and what he does to the English language.

Adversary in the House is Stone's lackluster life of U.S. Socialist Eugene V. Debs. Transforming the sharp drama and vigorous action of Debs's colorful life into a ponderous bore is a feat, but Stone has brought it off.

There is certainly a story to tell: of how Debs wrecked his own American Railway Union by leading his men out in sympathy with the Pullman strikers in 1894; of how he helped organize the Socialist Party and was its presidential candidate five times; of the martyrdom he suffered for an antiwar speech in 1918 (he was sentenced to prison for ten years, received 919,799 votes for President in 1920, when he was Convict No. 9653 in the Atlanta federal penitentiary).

In Adversary in the House, Author Stone fuzzily skirts Debs's ideological motivations and development, flattens the shrewd organizer into a near-caricature of the simpleminded do-gooder. The adversary is Debs's wife Kate, who is pictured as a conservative who wanted to see her husband drop socialism and become a go-getting businessman. Sample:

"She saw that her argument had jumped the tracks before it left the yards. She slipped her arms about his waist. . . .

" 'Oh, Eugene, why do you have to consort with those horrible men?' "

About three years ago Biographer Stone, in a reply to critics, laid down the yardstick by which his work ought to be measured: ". . . Is the thinking deep and true? Are the characters recognizable and understandable? Does the writing have passion, rhythm, mood, humor, richness in approach? Is the story closely interwoven, are all segments of it held together in the hand of the writer? Is the reader swept along by force and the movement of the story? Does he feel pity and terror, does he experience profound sympathy, does he emerge satisfied, exalted, enriched?" The answer is no.

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