Missouri Weltschmerz

THE CHOIR INVISIBLE (311 pp.)--Marianne Mauser -- McDowell, Obolensky ($3.95).

The hero of this novel ferries forth on the river Styx as matter-of-factly as if he were boating at a church social. Floyd Walker is a handsome, 32-year-old bank teller--and sparetime choirmaster--who has leukemia. With apologetic hems and haws, the town doctor of Ophelia, Mo. announces the sentence: three months, more or less, to live. In sleepy little Ophelia (pronounced "afailure") the drama of life has no acts, only intermissions, and Floyd is scarcely prepared for center stage in the town's morbidly engaged affections. He makes only one promise to himself: "From now on I shall try to please nobody, save my Maker."

He does please nobody. When Floyd tries to recruit some beer-guzzling publicans for his choir, he scandalizes the pastor, who is devoted to muscular Christianity ("Yes, Christ is alive today, out in the field batting for us"). When Floyd laces into his choirwomen for turning the house of prayer into a den of cake sellers, the outraged ladies sing like hornets. Bank Teller Floyd has always regarded his life as a deposit for his wife and three kids, but when he fails to expire on schedule ("I wish he'd die and have done with"), they up and leave him.

Left with little more than the small change of his existence, Floyd spends it on the minor characters with whom Author Hauser has rounded out her novel. Among them: a booze-prone church organist who bikes his empties out into the country rather than stash the incriminatory bottles in his ash barrel; a lady reincarnationist who believes she once dined with a Pharaoh; the town's Mary Magdalene with whom Floyd finds it sweet to sin. These and other forlorn rebels form a kind of Freudian chorus attesting the ego-twisting power of convention.

The most forlorn is Floyd, until he improbably makes it up with his wife and Ophelia, ready to live happily ever after on his borrowed time. This is like preparing the reader's palate for hemlock and serving him Postum. Author Hauser has symbollixed up her main character so thoroughly that it is never clear whether he is the old Adam, the fool-in-Christ, or just plain fool. Author Hauser has a sharp eye and sure words for the homeliest of scenes, e.g., "an empty clothesline strung with rain pearls." Her novel is best when her people are worst--sparrow-agile before the flung bird seed of gossip, and vulture-ugly as they pick clean the bones of a reputation or a life in whispers.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.