Words Without Music, for Sure

By Paul Gray

TITLE: BODY & SOUL

AUTHOR: FRANK CONROY

PUBLISHER: HOUGHTON MIFFLIN; 450 PAGES; $24.95

THE BOTTOM LINE: A novel about a pianist's rise to glory is long on sentiment but never quite manages to score.

After Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus, the names of other memorable novels about musicians or composers do not come trippingly to mind. This dearth may have something to do with the ineffable nature of music. It is a language of pure sound that stubbornly resists translation. Descriptions may register in the mind, but they invariably miss the ears. Or, as Claude Rawlings, the pianist-hero of Frank Conroy's Body & Soul, puts it, when asked to explain the nature of his genius: "The higher you get, the harder it is to put into words, actually. Eventually it gets pretty mysterious."

When he says this to his rich girlfriend by her parents' Long Island swimming pool, Claude has already come a long way from humble beginnings. Conroy's novel first shows the protagonist as a young boy in the early 1940s spending long hours alone in a basement apartment near Manhattan's Third Avenue El while his mother, the rawboned, boilermaker-swigging Emma, drives a cab. Fortunately for Claude, the cramped living quarters contains an old 66- key nightclub piano, a memento from Emma's past life on the vaudeville circuit. The boy begins plinking away and eventually seeks advice from Aaron Weisfeld, the owner of a nearby music-supply store.

Suddenly, and rather sentimentally, Claude's life is transformed. Weisfeld arranges for him to spend regular sessions at the Park Avenue apartment of "the maestro," practicing on a magnificent Bechstein piano. When the maestro dies, Claude inherits the instrument, which is crammed into Weisfeld's shop for Claude's exclusive use. Luminous pianists line up to give the lad free instructions. Fellowships to a posh East Side prep school and then to a select liberal arts college effortlessly materialize. Claude's heart is dented by the rich Catherine, but he goes on to marry her cousin Lady, who confides in passing that she has a trust fund worth $5 million.

Somewhere along the course of this narrative, as Claude's triumphs on the concert tour follow one after another, as the music world's most eminent performers clamor for his accompaniment, a reader may become jaded with unalloyed success. What is the point of going on? Aren't there any problems in this book? Unfortunately, the only serious trouble to visit Conroy's story occurs when Claude is at the keyboard. Here is what happens when he sits in on a jazz session: "G minor C seventh, A-flat minor D-flat seventh, A minor D seventh, B-flat minor E-flat seventh, and then a quick little half-tone figure to come out exactly right on F dominant seventh. It was so exciting . . ."

Conroy's much acclaimed autobiography, Stop-Time, was published in 1967, when he was 31. Body & Soul, his first novel, lacks much of the nerve, verve and audacity that impressed readers of that earlier book. Its plodding, chronological course never swerves or jolts; it sadly lacks the sound track it cannot have.