Follow the Sun

BRILL AMONG THE RUINS by Vance Bourjaily. 354 pages. Dial. $6.95.

Vance Bourjaily can be a very good writer. See, for example, the best parts of The Man Who Knew Kennedy, The Hound of Earth or even his first book, The End of My Life, a work that helped rank him up with the Capotes and the Mailers after World War II.

But this time Bourjaily fumbles sadly, delivering the important though stale news that the U.S. is in trouble: America-in-transition is sloppily represented by an Illinois lawyer named Robert Brilla sort of Hemingway-reject hero. Brill qualifies as a case of vanishing American manhood mainly by shooting ducks, going on 80-hour drunks, and snarling boozily at Progressgas pipelines and defoliating chemicals. At the same time he sheds 90-proof tears for the Old Verities: small farms, unpolluted streams and 19th century motherhood. Finally, he takes off for Mexico with a girl who can "turn herself from earth to ether and back again."

Playing amateur archaeologist among the Aztec ruins, Brill tries to poke home the author's moral: Look at what becomes of people who worship gold, the "sun's excrement," instead of the sun. Alas, Bourjaily's real message is this: Nobody is likely to become extinct faster than American novelists trying to rework Lost Generation formulas in the age of Aquarius.

-Melvin Maddocks

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