Dialogues with Death

A FINE AND PRIVATE PLACE (272 pp.) --Peter S. Beagle--diking ($3.95).

Although the 20th century has perfected abundant death to match its abundant life, it is deficient in literary spooks--apart from Thome Smith's thanatipsy Topper. In a first novel that is both sepulchral and oddly appealing. Author Beagle sets out to make good the omission. His tale is a muted, wistful love story that takes tone and title from Andrew Mar-veil's wry lines To His Coy Mistress: The grave's a fine and private place, But none, I think, do there embrace.

The hero is a small, grey pharmacist named Jonathan Rebeck who took fright at the world 19 years before and hid out in a Bronx cemetery. Dodging caretakers and sleeping in a mausoleum, amusing himself by reading and working out chess problems, he has found armistice, if not peace. Jonathan Rebeck sees and talks with ghosts, but his only live companion is a truculent raven who steals food for him, and whose conversation runs more to "The hell you say" than "Nevermore." As the book opens, Rebeck is gnawing a baloney the raven has liberated ("Damn near ruptured myself," the bird complains), but his meal is disturbed by a funeral procession. When the mourners have left and the newest ghost has learned to free himself from his coffin, Rebeck explains to him what he knows of being dead. A ghost cannot touch or feel, grow tired or hungry. His human form and personality persist for a few weeks until he forgets the substance of his life--first, perhaps, the sound of a subway train, then his address, finally his name. The ghost, who was a professor named Michael Morgan until his wife (as he claims) poisoned him. vows noisily to cling to life. Then he realizes in terror that Rebeck is right--he has already forgotten Swinburne.

As the novel progresses. Morgan slowly comes to accept death, while Rebeck once again accepts the fact of life. The plot tends to unravel, rather than unwind, but even the spectral characters are vivid, and their collisions are often touching and funny--particularly when women are involved. Morgan entwines with a shade named Laura, who has left her body behind with relief, while Rebeck meets a sensible Brooklyn widow, who tries to lead him back to reality, if that's what Brooklyn can be called.

Author Beagle, 20. has written a wry dialogue with death that may contain no large lump of wisdom but offers a fair selection of small ones. Except for an occasional lapse of taste (a coffin is a "worm Automat"), his ectoplasmic fable has a distinct, mossy charm.

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