Three Miles from a Bad Word

THE LAND OF RUMBELOW by Carlos Baker. 370 pages. Scribner. $4.95.

It is now considered slightly gauche to put four epigraphs on your title page, and Carlos Baker, a Princeton University professor and literary critic who has been smart for a long time, tastefully begins his book with only two quotations, neither from Kierkegaard. But there are subtler sorts of title-page-manship, and Baker uses one of the most telling: the subtitle, or direction for use, of The Land of Rumbelow is A Fable in the Form of a Novel. Baker means to put the reader on notice that the events he describes are not to be taken only for themselves; they illustrate Truth.

It is forgivable, if redundant, to call one's novel a fable if it is in some way fabulous. But Baker's book is merely unendingly pretentious. Its action scenes are written in grunting prose that is supposed to be tough but instead is only sweaty, and its largo passages are flaccid with maundering soliloquies of the hero, a professor of literature who is awakening gummy-eyed from a dark night of the soul. Baker never writes a noun without leashing a seeing-eye adjective to it, never overlooks a cliche, never fails to labor an image ("The windshield wiper describing its captive arc back and forth, back and forth, like that descending knife in the story of the pit and the pendulum").

According to an old British morality play, Rumbelow is a mythical town three miles from hell. For Professor Dan Sherwood, on the run from memory and conscience (a dead wife, a betrayed friend), Rumbelow is Tucson, Ariz. He is stranded there by chance, beaned by a hitchhiker who represents Evil the way Molotov used to represent Russia. Dan is led from what Baker calls the excremental view of life to the sacramental view by the healing Arizona sun, long quiet talks and the love of a good woman. A fair example of the long quiet talks follows. Dan is yaketing about Evil: " 'It opens up under us like earthquake cracks in the ground. Like toads out of the drains. It stinks to Hell.' 'You got it bad, Dan,' Lee said quietly. 'How about another beer?' "

After dialogue like that Mike Hammer might go off and shoot a blonde, but Baker's hero just keeps on talking.

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