The Antic Vein

THE BRITISH MUSEUM IS FALLING DOWN by David Lodge. 176 pages. Holt, Rinehart & Winston. $3.95.

"How different it must be," muses Adam Appleby as his day begins, "the life of an ordinary, non-Catholic parent, free to decide--actually to decide, in calm confidence--whether or not to have a child." But the Roman Catholic Church, to which the Applebys adhere, and the rhythm method, to whose uncertain discipline they reluctantly submit, allow no such latitude. Their first child arrived nine months after the wedding, followed, at similar intervals, by two more. And now, dabbing queasily at the breakfast bacon, Adam's wife congeals his spirit with the announcement that they may have lost another round of Vatican Roulette.

By motor scooter, Adam transports this burden of anxiety to the library of the British Museum, where he is vetting a doctoral thesis on sentence structure in the modern English novel. But his overcast mood easily distracts him from the academic chase.

A series of implausible events leads to the bedroom of a 17-year-old seductress with a powerful allure: the unpublished novel of an obscure ecclesiastical essayist. Adam prefers the manuscript to the girl, who presents herself to him unexpurgated and not even in a plain wrapper. It should be a funny scene, but, like most of the situations, it flags quickly.

The trouble with this "modern Catholic novel" by Britain's David Lodge, is that its antic spirit, though rich, is also overbearing. Like a TV situation-comedy writer, Lodge tailors his story and his characters to fit a loose collection of gags. The suspicion rises that he thought up the gags first. It is funny, of course, to see firemen swarm through the museum library on a false alarm, hosing down the stray scholar's pipe. But they are dispossessed figures like TV actors left standing on the studio stage while the scenery is being shifted for the next guffaw--in full view of the camera.

Museum can be thoroughly enjoyed for belly laughs, but Novelist Lodge, 31, really belongs at a loftier level than that. He has an assured literary style that is wasted on slapstick, and a natural wit that lacks only a better sense of direction.

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