The Square Triangle

SALT (3 18 pp.)--Herbert Gold--Dial ($4.95).

Novelist Herbert Gold, 39, has as cruel an eye for human foibles as Hieronymus Bosch, but his heart is awash with love of the world. At his best, this has made him a kind of romantic poet turned pitchman for the seamy side of life. Miraculously blending hip talk, shop talk, tough talk and the rumpled jargon of half-educated America, Gold often makes fun of the grotesques--con men, carnival barkers, sleazy hotel managers--who are his favorite characters. But he never treats them as victims of society. Their small limbo worlds take on the likeness of the great world; their cowardice, their courage, their need for love loom as vast as anybody's.

When Gold tries to move from the fringes of society, however, to the mainstream of successful American life, his rush of eloquence falters. The Optimist, a novel which plumbed the past of a rising young politician, was a muddled nearfailure. Salt is a dreary near-disaster which recounts the triangular love trials of three well-heeled squares in Manhattan. Apparently, Gold is trying to say that up-and-coming Americans, tormented by a sense of futility and lack of purpose, try to make love make up for everything else. In the process, they poke and prod and worry it almost to death. So, alas, does Gold.

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