Quixote in the Kitchen

By J.D. Reed

REINHART'S WOMEN by Thomas Berger; Delacorte; 295 pages; $13.95

In their latest outings, the three on going heroes of note in American fiction have succeeded in a variety of styles. Philip Roth's Nathan Zuckerman (Zuckerman Unbound) is famous; Updike's Harry Angstrom (Rabbit Is Rich) shuttles prosperously from Toyota dealership to marriage bed; and Thomas Berger's hefty and tenuous moralist, Carlo Reinhart, now 54, has risen above his customary blundering to become an Ohio Quixote tilting at Cuisinarts. Indeed, the redoubtable lummox actually triumphs over fate, women and his amazing girth.

In his eleventh novel--the fourth and best Reinhart volume--the author of Neighbors and Little Big Man propels the huge German American into an early and energetic Gray Pantherhood. This is not the Carlo Reinhart of Crazy in Berlin (1958), Reinhart in Love (1962) and Vital Parts (1970). He has been divorced from the vituperous Genevieve--his wife of 22 years--for a decade. His son Blaine, a mulish, asexual hippie ten years ago, is now a three-piece materialist; and blubbery, myopic Daughter Winona has been transformed into an anorectic fashion model. In the past, the world had always been a bit too speedy for Reinhart. He survived marital and fiscal disasters by waddling through the door to enlightenment before he was really ready. When last seen, Reinhart was scouring a disco called the Gastrointestinal System for his shady boss in an even darker, cryogenic body-freezing scheme. Now, as the slimmed-down chef on a local TV cooking show, his main concern is whether the sliced mushrooms will brown in their lemon-juice bath. At last he can afford to reflect: "The best defense against any moral outrage is patience; wait a moment and something will change: the outrage, he who committed it, or, most often, oneself." The new philosopher soon needs all the patience he can muster.

Reinhart is "housefather" in Winona's luxury apartment, sipping a vermouth cassis--he has forsaken his customary tumblers of bourbon--and garnering a local reputation for the classical cuisine. Hired by high-powered Grace Greenwood to demonstrate gourmet-food preparation in supermarkets, he is shocked to discover that the executive gorgon is Winona's lesbian lover. Blaine's wife has an erotic nervous breakdown in Reinhart's bedroom. Genevieve returns to stage a breakdown of her own. Helen Clayton, his supermarket assistant, bolsters Reinhart's flagging sexuality with motel trysts. A neighbor, Edie Mulhouse, as big as the hero himself, writes manic mash notes. Bewildered, Reinhart observes, "Women in general had grown assertive, had their own magazines displaying naked men and relating filthy fantasies, took out loans from banks, tried murderers, and performed brain surgery. For ever so long now it would have been simple bad taste to buy a broad a rum-and-Coke, kid her along for a moment or two, and then expect to pry her legs apart immediately thereafter in the back seat of a gas-guzzler."

Reinhart's views and vulgarities do not make him any less appealing to the opposition. Even the poisonous Genevieve concedes, "Carl, if you had always been the mean son of a bitch you've turned into in your old age, I'd probably have stuck by you." Over a simple cheese omelet, Reinhart concludes autobiographically: "Food is I really kinder than people." In the end, I his moral palate has become as discriminating as his taste-buds: he lets others settle their own hash.

Fans will still find enough vestiges of the former Reinhart: his sententious liberalism is undiminished; his antique Midwestern vocabulary ("hen fruit," "on the fritz") is intact; and if his optimism is a bit white at the temples, it still goads him on. But Reinhart ultimately comes to believe that life's meaning can be boiled down to the profound couplet: "Nothin' says lovin'/ Like something from the oven." The transformation has affected his creator as well. The tortuous and arcane language Berger displayed in Neighbors has been effectively streamlined. It now breaks for self-examination: "It was ridiculous that I lived almost half a century trying to measure up to the principles of other people ... you change with age. One of the first things to go is the sense of sex as suspenseful... Then you get past thirty, and while time is of course as inexorable as ever, it is very difficult to measure in a credible way. You don't make higher marks on the doorjamb each birthday."

Never on the doorjamb, but sometimes in books. Like his running character, Berger has learned to cut down on adjectives and take it easy on the sauce. When Reinhart returns in his 70s, he may actually be underweight--in everything but entertainment value and insights. --By J.D. Reed

The rented, white frame house in Sneden's Landing, N.Y., is the kind of place even Reinhart would admire. Amid the book-and sculpture-filled sunny rooms, Thomas Berger, 57, and his artist-wife of 30 years, Jeanne, browse through their sizable collection of cookbooks and photography volumes. The kitchen contains a batterie de cuisine that would flatter a cordon bleu chef. "I love to read about food and look at pictures of it," says the author. "I'm so into cooking we rarely go out to eat any more." It is an unsurprising revelation from a recluse who not only shuns TV appearances and parties but waited six years before agreeing to meet his publisher.

At 6 ft. 1 in., 190 lbs., Berger is an imposing presence. His shaved pate-a daily ritual for 16 years-gleams above a dark turtleneck sweater. "Since nature had made me half bald," he explains, "I thought I'd go it one better."

Since Crazy in Berlin, critics and scholars have been trying to make Carlo Reinhart into Berger's alter ego. Retorts the author: "The only thing my character and I share is my Army serial number and a few facts of early life." Like Reinhart, Berger is Ohio-born, his German-French-Irish father was a business manager of the Cincinnati school system. The 105-lb. sophomore played 15 seconds of varsity football for Lockland High when "we were leading about 40-0." And like Reinhart, Berger served in the Army Medical Corps during the Berlin occupation. The aspiring novelist left his Columbia University master's thesis on George Orwell unfinished to marry Jeanne Redpath. During the four years he labored on his Berlin book, Berger summarized the Korean War for the New York Times Index. As a result, "I remember less about that war than any other." In the early '60s, however, Berger used his library skills to stitch the rich Indian tapestry of Little Big Man. Movie options on his novels have supported life in Maine, Manhattan and Sneden's Landing.

"I'm now a lesser celebrity here, thank God," Berger says. "Al Pacino moved into town. So did Ellen Burstyn. An actress came to look at our rented house. I'm so out of it, I didn't know who Jessica Lange was."

Through Berger's work, Reinhart has remained a constant: "He's my friend and he talks to me. When I'm writing him, I can't wait to get to the typewriter and find out what he's going to do. I'm a lot smarter than he is, but on the other hand, he's a lot better than I am." Berger tried to write the fourth book back in 1974 when Reinhart was living in New York, but he never came alive. "He wasn't ready. This time, he gets a good woman at the end. I never know how these things will turn out, but a lot of women have pleaded to let him succeed. I guess he finally wanted to." Berger's recent life has also taken an upswing. Reinhart's Women has been optioned for the movies, Delacorte is issuing the three earlier Reinhart books in a boxed set, and Berger has broken his six-year hermitage to teach a fiction-writing course at Yale. But it is hardly a new era of openness. "When I went around currying literary favor, I was treated shabbily," he recalls. "Now, since I won't talk to anybody, they all want me." Reinhart would understand.

Excerpt

" 'Look, old boy, I have a confession to make,' Reinhart said, clapping his son on the shoulder ... I've got a job. You don't have to worry about me'... Foolishly, Reinhart was stung by the implication that he was lying. 'All right,' said he, 'you just ask Grace Greenwood. I start tomorrow. I'm going to demonstrate food products.'

'You're going to work for Winona's girlfriend ?' Blaine asked incredulously. 'You're trading your daughter to an old dyke for a Job?'

'Remember ten years or so ago, when you were always able to get a rise out of me?' Reinhart asked calmly. 'That was the era for that sort of thing, the baiting of the older by the younger. It was especially offensive because people of my generation had always believed they held nothing more sacred than the welfare of their children. To find that the children disagreed with this conviction was devastating. Now we have come to a time when a son can accuse his father of being a pimp for his homosexual daughter--and the father, shameless as he is, fails even to be insulted by the accusation.'

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.