Out of The Blue

By R.Z. Sheppard

NATURAL SELECTION

by Frederick Barthelme

Viking; 212 pages; $18.95

Not yet 40, and Peter Wexler is a crank. It has something to do with his belief that everybody is a liar or, as he puts it, "smug and self-satisfied and just close enough to the facts to get by." When young Holden Caulfield complained about phonies, it had the force of discovery. Wexler's grownup bitching sounds more than a little gratuitous. Wife Lily breaks the news sweetly: "These aren't great complaints, you know. They're tired, and small, and self-serving, they're vague -- if I weren't wife-of-wives I'm not certain I'd be charmed."

Perhaps not by Wexler, but certainly by Frederick Barthelme's latest poke at the pale-faced middle class. Barthelme has a laconic style suited to describing low-grade depression, a bland Houston subdivision, and the delicate condition of a marriage. It is as if he had before him the psychological equivalent of paint chips representing the subtle states of being blue.

Peter and Lily are cool about sex, money and raising their nine-year-old son Charles. He can have a hamster only if, says his father, "you'll eat it when you get tired of it." Peter loves Lily but decides he cannot live at home. He rents a house 10 miles away so that "I won't have to feel bad around here."

The luxury of separation brings the Wexlers closer together. They agree to meet for family meals and outings without using dumb phrases like "my own space" or "quality time." This couple is about as normal as it gets these days is what Barthelme seems to be saying. For comparison there are Lily's brother Ray and his girlfriend Judy, whose idea of a reunion is to fornicate in the driveway.

The semidetached family's need for separate housing may be good news for furniture stores but presents problems for the domestic novel, even one as smartly written as Natural Selection. People living together ensure tension and expectation. Apart, there is a sense of exhaustion. Barthelme gets the conjugal entropy just right, but, by definition, he is at a dead end. His resolution is to spring an abrupt and wrenching ending better suited for a short story than a novel. It involves a car chase and could use a warning: sudden stops can cause whiplash.