Kirillov's Complaint

By Melvin Maddocks

LYING, DESPAIR, JEALOUSY, ENVY, SEX, SUICIDE, DRUGS, AND THE GOOD LIFE

by LESLIE H. FARBER

232 pages. Basic Books. $10.

That quintessential 19th century optimist W.E. Henley--who can ever forget or forgive him?--wrote the unflappable lines that still seem to embroider a motto on his age: "I am the master of my fate;/ I am the captain of my soul." The world, it appeared in those innocent times, belonged to the romantic individualist with a whim of iron. Even pessimists like Schopenhauer and Nietzsche celebrated the indomitable will. Not to mention Horatio Alger Jr.

Then along came Freud. The concept of "will" went out as the concept of "libido" came in. Where does this switch leave the poor 20th century chap with 19th century memories who cannot decide whether he is stoutly at the helm--or down in the brig, manacled to a rusty old neurosis?

Pretty well lost at sea, according to the analysis of New York Psychiatrist Leslie Farber. In this collection of essays, Farber dubs our times the age of the disordered will and he proceeds to draw a wickedly accurate and amusing portrait of contemporary Everyman, caught between his twin illusions of total potency and abject impotence.

Take sex, for one of Farber's examples. Nobody has more effectively satirized the solemn absurdity of the Masters and Johnson laboratory ("I'm Sorry, Dear") or more wittily staged the gauche bedroom farce of the puritan turned hedonist ("My Wife, the Naked Movie Star"). But Farber is not content to do one more clever number on middleclass, middle-aged America sweating and puffing toward its Utopian orgasm. What sets him apart is an uncynical pity for the angelic apes squirming at the chain's end of lust, even as they proclaim their liberation. Patiently, with a certain relentless compassion, he demonstrates that one can will to eat but not to be hungry, to lust but not to love.

Demonic Notion. The wrongheaded assumption that no possibility lies beyond the conscious will is, Farber convincingly suggests, the central and tragic mistake of the American Dream. People who actively pursue happiness practically doom themselves to lying, despair, jealousy, envy and the rest of the punishments on Farber's marquee.

The drug addict, Farber proposes, may be the prototype for all willful Americans hooked on the "demonic notion" that by chemistry or stubbornness, one can have what one wants, right now. As for suicide, Farber refers the reader to Dostoyevsky. "I will assert my will," says Kirillov in The Possessed--just be fore he commits suicide.

What is the cure for Kirillov's disease? Perhaps to accept that there is no cure. Beware, says Farber, of the sort of "truth" that promises that "once you find it, you can have it wrapped to go."

These essays are profoundly reflective circlings, full of doubt and sanity. The question is whether, in a marketplace full of the apocalyptic saviors he warns against, Farber's quiet voice will get the hearing he deserves. Melvin Maddocks

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