Leaves of Grass

By Phillip Herrera

DEALING or THE BERKELEY-TO-BOSTON FORTY-BRICK LOST-BAG BLUES by "Michael Douglas." 222 pages. Knopf. $5.95.

This is a deft little novel--and more. It is a shaggy-dog story about marijuana that will amuse potheads, yet remain palatable to middle-class matrons who wonder why Junior is both amorphous and resentful. In short, a very slick piece of work.

With Michael Crichton as one-half of the author, it should be. Though only 28, Crichton has already found time to graduate from medical school and write two popular books--The Andromeda Strain (scifi) and Five Patients (medical reportage). Unlike most other young describers of the world of grass, he knows the value of clarity and coherence. As a full-fledged (though nonpracticing) doctor, he certainly does not inflate pot; he seems to see it simply as a pleasurable, nonaddictive drug somewhat less harmful than alcohol. Moreover, Michael has a kid brother Douglas, a student with a fine ear for the funky idiom of youth plus patent expertise about marijuana as a commodity and a mystique. Combining their talents under the pseudonym "Michael Douglas," the Crichton boys manufactured Dealing in a matter of months.

Means of Escape. Their narrator-hero, Peter Harkness, is a product of the affluent suburbs, a student at Harvard and a "good head." The story starts with his flying trip to Berkeley to pick up ten bricks of righteous grass. From there, the plot hurtles forward with pace, plausibility and a cast that would do credit to an Ian Fleming thriller. Meet Musty the connection, who regularly runs 2,000 kilos of pot--no more, no less--from Mexico to California; John Thayer Hartnup III, Harvard's richest student and biggest dealer; Sukie, of the long legs and golden tan, whose love scenes with Peter seem cribbed from quondam TV cigarette commercials. Eventually, Sukie is seized with 40 bricks of marijuana in Boston. It all ends as some sort of upside-down revisionist Gangbusters, with the grass-blowing "criminals" in smug pursuit of a narcotics officer.

Peter's tone of voice as he tells the story keeps the plot from lapsing into farce. Melancholy, not revolutionary fervor, afflicts him. Tolerantly, he still laughs at his father's dull jokes and politely listens to his college adviser. Nevertheless, he speaks for ambivalent, marijuana-struck youth when he wryly observes the machinelike aspects of civilization and objects to the meaninglessness of a life in which people become what they are "least afraid of becoming." Given such a context, Peter calculates that pot, with all its drawbacks, provides a means of honest and pleasurable rebellion and escape.

The problem that dominates the book is not escape and enjoyment but mechanical procurement. Even though most people frown on dealing in marijuana --after all, it is against the law--the authors describe passing the stuff as just an exhilarating sport. By treating grass with such lightheartedness, the Crichton boys send a controversial message directly to a wide audience. Dealing, etc., is not really about a flip caper; it is a subliminal plea to legalize pot.

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