Puppy Love

By Paul Gray

THE PLAGUE DOGS by Richard Adams Knopf; 390 pages; $10.95

Like his enormously successful Watership Down and Shardik, Richard Adams' third novel relies heavily on animal magnetism. This time out, two plucky dogs named Rowf and Snitter escape from an experimental station in the English Lake District, where they have been treated bestially by doctors. Freedom means surviving in the inhospitable countryside and dodging much of the British population, which incorrectly believes the animals have been inoculated with plague. On their journey the beleaguered canines are aided by a roguish fox. It is hard to say anything critical about such a heartwarming story.

But not impossible. Even Adams' fervent admirers admit that he can be spotty: at best an artful cataloguer of flora and fauna, at worst a windy sentimentalist. Memorable passages occur only when his imagination roosts among furry creatures or in the mid-regions of myth. Give him anything more difficult to chew on than a bone, and things fall apart. The story of Rowf and Snitter is glutted with just such indigestibles.

For the first time Adams introduces contemporary humans into his fiction. In a preface he distinguishes the ones who are "pleasant" from those who are "unpleasant." This criterion is useful when planning a dinner party but not quite up to the demands of a lengthy novel.

Hard as he is on unpleasant people, Adams lays a heavier hand on things and ideas he does not like. The center that Rowf and Snitter escape from is called Animal Research, Surgical and Experimental (A.R.S.E.). Its acronym hits the level on which every endeavor that does not involve padding about on four feet is treated. The behavior of politicians, scientists and journalists invariably rouses Adams into the kind of jocular sneering that is more fun to write than to read:

"Under fire, Hot Bottle Bill had stood his ground like a good 'un, manfully ensuring that the Parliamentary attacks were invariably answered by one of his junior colleagues, Mr. Basil Forbes (otherwise known as Errol the Peril, on account of his unpredictable imprudence)."

None of this will matter to the legions of Adams' true believers. They have for given him much before and no doubt will forgive him again. The surprising thing is that skeptics who do not want to travel somewhere east of Disney and who cringe at every gaffe and infelicity in The Plague Dogs may also be caught in the chase.

True, Adams overwrites almost every scene, but he manages to turn that fault into a virtue. Length can lull disbelief and make the unlikely seem familiar. Snitter, for instance, has been the victim of mind-control experiments and consequently hallucinates a fair amount of gibberish: "There's a mouse -- a mouse that sings -- I'm bitten to the brains and it never stops raining -- not in this eye any way." The effect of a terrier doing his impression of the fool in King Lear is at first disconcerting. It grows less so with each appearance, and those who stay for the whole show will find Snitter a thoroughly credible talking dog. The transformation is not exactly magical but, given enough patience, it works.

At bedrock, so does Adams' tale. His understanding of the instinctive comes through when it is most needed. His creatures come alive because Adams knows how to convey what they fear and feel, what information can be picked up by a twitching nose. Because they speak, the dogs are anthropomorphic; but they some how speak like dogs. As with most experiences in the wild, much of this novel is irritating and unpleasant. When conditions are right, though, it is worth the expedition.

--Paul Gray

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