Buried Instincts

By Paul Gray

RED WOLVES & BLACK BEARS: NINETEEN ESSAYS

by EDWARD HOAGLAND 273 pages. Random House. $8.95.

Most parents regard TV's Sesame Street as a benevolent baby sitter, but Viewer Edward Hoagland, 43, has noticed something more. Animals, he suggests, are now an endangered species in the realm of make-believe. The Muppets are perky humanoids or cuddly monsters; Big Bird is barely the simulacrum of an ostrich. For that matter, Hoagland notes, Bugs Bunny was less obviously a member of the genus Lepus than were such precursors as Peter and Br'er Rabbit.

From these small clues, Hoagland sniffs out a major cultural trend -- "from the ancient juxtaposition of people, animals, and dreams blending the two, to people and monsters that grow solely out of people by way of dreams." Since he has devoted large swatches of his life to observing animals in the dwindling American wilderness, Hoagland is saddened by this further evidence of their decline: "As we drift away from any cognizance of them, we sacrifice some of the intricacy and grandeur of life."

The elegiac note sounds throughout this collection (Hoagland's third) of splendidly diverse essays. Civilization has been bought at the cost of atavism; increasingly, man's only measure of himself is man. Yet Hoagland can examine such melancholy facts without shrillness or sentimentality. Instead, he serves as a patient guide to what remains. He writes movingly about the black bears still extant in Minnesota and the few red wolves at bay in southeast ern Texas. His description of the complexities and nuances of wolf society is enough to make dog owners marvel at the instincts buried in their pets.

No Heroes. Hoagland's reportorial methods are irreproachable. When studying animals, he goes to where they are, attaches himself to the area's acknowledged expert and watches closely.

This empirical bent also governs his approach to his fellow creatures; when he generalizes about the current state of the nation, he does so from experience. A meditation on the lack of heroes in modern life begins with a memory: after noons at the old Yankee Stadium, where young fans were allowed to trot briefly onto the field after the game, beside the likes of Joe DiMaggio. Now, Hoagland notes, the players are shielded from these intimacies and with good reason:

"We kill our heroes nowadays; as too much admiration fixes upon them, a killer emerges, representing more than just himself." He decides, finally, that heroes vividly embody fulfilled aspirations, and we do not have such people because we can no longer agree on what we want.

The coils of introspection frequently lead Hoagland to such downbeat conclusions. Yet, paradoxically, his essays are primers in the simple wonders of existence. "What is most shocking," he writes, "is not how casually we accept the news of an acquaintance's death, unless our noses are rubbed in it, but how casually we observed his life." That is easy to say but hard to mean, and Hoagland clearly means it. He has traveled and thought hard, usually in solitude, without allowing the veneer of his own sophistication to clog his responses. He is unembarrassed by awe and un abashedly thrilled by the panorama of mortal creations that the world provides.

"We forget." he says, "what miracles we are." Red Wolves & Black Bears is an anthology of reminders.

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