Skewed Wonders

By John Skow

126 DAYS OF CONTINUOUS SUNSHINE

by GERALD JAY GOLDBERG

215 pages. Dial. $6.95.

When his mood is benign, Gerald Jay Goldberg regards the world through skewed lenses and produces wonders: "Martin Fogle was growing up, as in the background his aging parents disappeared into their shoes." Slightly nutty, but marvelously accurate; this is exactly what the aging parents of a 15-year-old body builder would do. A bit further on in the same story, the reader learns of Martin's father that "Once an idea occurred to him, he would hold on to it like an umbrella in a high wind." Not so nutty, but definitely skewed, a vision to be proud of.

The idea held most fiercely by Martin's father, a printer, is that his huge son should get an education. Summer school. Not a chance, says Martin. No. Enn-oh. His father berates him as he hulks placidly over his body-building scrapbook. No notice. His father pinches his vast upper arm. Nothing. Finally, driven round the bend by love and exasperation, Martin's father thwacks him with a rolled-up newspaper.

Instant action! Calamity! Martin flinches a giant's flinch, falls off his chair and bangs his face against the metal leg of the kitchen table. He breaks off two teeth. The last sentences of Goldberg's story are these: "Slowly, leaking out of every muscle in his body, the tears gathered. Rushing forward, the little printer took his trembling son in his arms and, caressing him like an infant, cried triumphantly for all the world to hear, 'You're a good boy, Martin. You're a good boy.'

"Some time later, when Mrs. Fogle arrived, her cart as filled as a Christmas stocking, she was surprised to find her son, the student, looking drawn and tired, his shoulders bent over a large book with small printing. Her husband quickly put a finger to his lips and motioned her to him. Arm in arm, they stood over the boy and, nodding and smiling, together they welcomed the new generation."

A wonderful story, and there are one or two others in this collection that approach it. But the rest of Goldberg's stories conform to a pattern that is be coming tediously familiar these days. Goldberg follows the form skillfully enough. Like Donald Barthelme he demonstrates not by fantastic apparitions but by a series of warped mundanities, that the familiar world is totally mad. The effect is like the disorientation of a sour dream.

Insights can come from sour dreams. But after several such stories the reader may rebel at the some what mechanical process by which the dreams are triggered. Once learned, it is the same trick every time it is done. Barthelme used this single effect to transmute himself with rapidity into a brilliant bore, and it would be a shame if Goldberg repeated that wasteful performance.

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