Nice People in Glass Houses

By Paul Gray

AMERICAN APPETITES by Joyce Carol Oates; Dutton; 340 pages; $18.95

It was not true during the Victorian age, but it is now, in the midst of the Electronic. Given diminishing attention spans, stupendously prolific authors tend to wear out both readers and reviewers. Here is another book by so-and- so, they mutter, and I haven't yet found the time to get through the last two -- or is it three? Guilt breeds resentment, which in turn fosters rationalization. Anyone who writes that much must be doing a pretty slapdash job of it. And this impression has led to a distinct tilt in contemporary taste and criticism toward "bleeders," those who rasp and file their words meticulously before issuing slim volumes at discreet intervals.

Joyce Carol Oates, 50, has done nothing of the sort. For the past two decades she has produced roughly a novel a year, plus numerous collections of short stories, criticism and essays. She has written plays and even, two years ago, a nonfiction work on boxing. This frenetic production has hardly destroyed her reputation; she is a literary figure of considerable clout, she holds a tenured professorship at Princeton University, and every fall her name is rumored to be on the short list for the Nobel Prize. But there is something of the sideshow about her renown among the general reading public; she is widely recognized as the woman who turns out all those books, less often as the author of a single, unforgettable narrative. Thanks to her own energy, nothing she has written has ever been long-awaited.

Perhaps American Appetites, her 19th novel, will be taken for granted, like some of its predecessors, as just another entry in a burgeoning bibliography. That reaction would be a sad mistake. Oates is here working at the very top of her form, her idiosyncratic virtues eerily in phase with the temperamental excesses for which she has so often been rebuked. Those who want to know what makes her important -- as opposed to merely famous -- could find no better place to begin than right here.

The setting is an upscale exurban village on the Hudson River. Ian McCullough is a senior fellow at a rather grandly named think tank, the Institute for Independent Research in the Social Sciences. He specializes in population studies and also edits a prestigious journal on international politics. Glynnis, his wife of 26 years, has compiled two successful cookbooks and is working on a third, an ambitious survey to be called American Appetites; Regional American Cooking from Alaska to Hawaii. The McCulloughs have a circle of close friends very much like themselves: well educated, well- to-do, well regarded by their professional peers and by one another. They all feel terribly fortunate and sometimes worry about the envy or ill will of the world at large. Glynnis thinks, "Our house is made of glass . . . and our lives are made of glass; and there is nothing we can do to protect ourselves."

In the McCulloughs' case, this is almost literally true. Walls and walls of their house are nothing but glass, and readers who expect something to shatter will not be disappointed. But the source and degree of the destruction are entirely unanticipated. Glynnis finds a canceled check for $1,000 that Ian had made out to Sigrid Hunt, a willowy young woman whom Glynnis had once taken up socially and then dropped. Ian's explanation happens to be factual: Sigrid had phoned him in distress and in need of an abortion. Assuming she was Glynnis' | friend, Ian had offered what comfort he could and a check. But Glynnis will not believe this story. Through a long, tense evening, the McCulloughs drink and argue. Suddenly Glynnis is brandishing a knife, there is blood on the floor, and Glynnis hurtles backward through a plate-glass window. After 18 days in a coma, she dies. Following the funeral and a police investigation, Ian is charged with second-degree murder.

This sudden, inexplicable eruption of violence typifies what many find troubling about Oates' fiction. If the purpose of art is to provide a comprehensible context, an explanatory train of circumstances, for human activity, then Oates certainly falls short. She knows this risk and consistently runs it anyhow. Her obsession remains the untidy world where everyone actually lives, where headlines daily scream out the unthinkable and where nice people find themselves behaving in ways they can barely imagine, much less condone. The McCulloughs' marriage, despite outward appearances, is far from perfect; the author deftly reveals the stresses and fault lines that have built up over the years. But these problems do not lead logically to what Ian calls "this sudden terrible fury that has ruined our lives." These people have not earned and do not deserve their fate.

Building a trustworthy bridge between civilized society and the Grand Guignol is tricky work, and Oates' success has varied from book to book. But American Appetites offers a thoroughly credible version of what is both unbelievable and disturbingly familiar. Her prose is headlong. There are cliches; sentences do not ask to be examined for artful felicities. Pausing seems beside the point. The rush is utterly convincing. Any definition of art that excludes this novel is probably too narrow by far.