Withdrawal Symptoms

THE SKI BUM by Romain Gary. 244 pages. Harper & Row. $4.95.

The spring of 1963, to hear Novelist Gary tell it, was the time when all the bright and earnest college kids in Europe were high on Pope John XXIII and nuclear disarmament. But Lenny, the ski bum, is not bright and earnest. He is bright and cynical, a young American who sees himself as fallout from the population explosion. On the lam from living, he finds escape only in the purity of the Swiss snow fields, where he maintains himself all winter by giving ski lessons, and sometimes his fair body as well, to rich ladies.

But here comes summer. Compulsive skiing, like any other addiction, has withdrawal symptoms. Lenny is driven down below the retreating snow line to scrounge a living however he can: below 5,000 ft., after all, anything goes. At just this point the novel begins a long, slick schuss into sentimentality, for what goes this time is the sure novelistic cure for male cynicism--a pretty girl. Bright, earnest and conveniently voluptuous, she is upset because her father, a U.S. diplomat, is so absolutely sweet and wonderful but a hopeless drunk. She is further upset when Pope John dies; so, naturally, she allows her new friend to take her virginity. She is still further upset when he tries to inveigle her into gold smuggling. But with entire predictability, she at last saves him from himself, and the book comes to a stop in a soft pink snowbank. The novel is a skillful, showy little exhibition--but a disappointment from an author who has produced such championship performances as The Roots of Heaven and the autobiographical Promise at Dawn.

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