Lost in The Fun House

By R.Z. Sheppard

DECEPTION by Philip Roth; Simon & Schuster; 208 pages; $18.95

In his previous book The Facts: A Novelist's Autobiography, Philip Roth tried, not for the first time, to settle the confusion about how he transforms his unexciting life as a writer into lively fiction. Deception replays the subject yet again in a novel composed entirely of dialogues. The central conversations are between a New Jersey-born, London-based writer named Philip and a married Englishwoman. The setting is the writer's bedless studio, where the talk is about their love affair, family and work. Nonverbal communications apparently take place on desk, chair or floor.

The cozy exchanges are contained in Philip's notebook. Eventually he has to convince his wife that this pillowless pillow talk is between him and an imaginary mistress who appears in a novel in progress. The wife does not buy it. She insists that the woman in the notebook is the living, panting model for her husband's creative effort. His exasperated explanation: "I have been imagining myself, outside of my novel, having a love affair with a character inside my novel."

More tricks. It has been ages since Roth wrote missionary-position fiction. When he did -- Goodbye, Columbus; Letting Go; When She Was Good -- he got into trouble outside his novels. He was accused of being a self-hating Jew, of having had an unnatural relationship with his baseball glove, of betraying friends. The conventional novel proved too damned intimate; Roth's talent for making life fizz up on the page was too convincing for comfort. Since then, he $ has developed a feisty art of self-defense -- and the defense never rests.

As in the past, Roth does it with the literary equivalent of fun-house mirrors. The Roth-like character in Deception is a distortion of Roth, the man in the book-jacket photo whose intense gaze can penetrate 18 inches of solid Philistine. Readers attempting to nail the real Roth end up with a tinkling of broken images.

These academic distractions can ruin the entertainment. The lovers' talk is smart, witty and direct -- an eavesdropper's fantasy. The posterotic mood is sophisticated; the mature pair give each other plenty of latitude and genuine affection. There are other voices in other rooms: a Czech woman and her husband, who accuses Philip of making him a cuckold. More confusion and explanations.

Unsurprisingly, famous Philip's interests dominate the conversations. He has problems with his novel, with his readers and the casual style of British anti-Semitism. Overly sensitive, testy and ever the self-conscious ironist, he confronts life as a series of misunderstandings.

The talking-head format allows Roth to play to his strengths of critical intelligence and pitch-perfect ear. Few writers can touch him when it comes to the illusion of natural dialogue or the comic possibilities latent in high- mindedness. Deception is not a full orchestration of Roth's abilities but a chamber version. Stripped of narrative, the voices are free to play off each other. They may also offer the most delicious deception of all. Could this skeletal novel be just loosely stitched exercises from Roth's notebooks? Mirrors, mirrors on the wall, who's the falsest of them all?