In the Village Hollow

TO AN EARLY GRAVE by Wallace Markfield. 255 pages. Simon & Schuster. $4.50.

This hilarious first novel can be enjoyed by the general reader for its grotesque comedy, savored by the insider for its satire on the folkways of Greenwich Village intellectuals. "I raised you from a Middlebrow. I weaned you away from the art films, showed you the difference between the Western as mass myth and mass rite," one character tells another. It can also be read as a seriocomic exploration of the hollowness concealed beneath the vintage sophistication that has long been identified as Greenwich Village at its most intellectually pretentious.

Author Markfield's quartet of intellectuals revolves around the Little Magazines, to which they rarely contribute but wish they did. There is Felix Ottensteen, burly book reviewer for a Yiddish daily, who refers to himself as der Alte and browbeats his sullen son because he is still a student at 27 ("The way Catherine the Great took lovers, he takes courses"). There is Barnet Weiner, a fading poet-critic who remembers peevishly the time when his picture appeared on the dust jacket of New Critics, 1944. There is Holly Levine, who teaches creative writing but keeps a copy of Playboy hidden under the Kenyan Reviews. Composing a review: "He hissed softly, Trilling . . . Leavis . . . Ransom . . . Tate . . . Kazin . . . Chase . . .' and saw them, the Fathers, as though from a vast amphitheater, smiling at him, and he smiled at them." Finally, there is Morroe Ri-off, not quite "in" because he is an organizer and speechwriter for a Jewish fund-raising organization. (By no co incidence, Author Markfield is a publicity writer for the Anti-Defamation League.)

Whisky & Bier. As the novel begins, the intellectual quartet finds itself bereft. Leslie Braverman, a bona fide writer who published more than 100 articles that were read and discussed, has just died of a coronary at 40, and satellites are in a panic. For Leslie held perpetual open house, fed them ideas and patiently listened to theirs. He had integrity--"the way some people have b.o.," remembers one of the survivors emotionally. Leslie's wife also made herself available--and not just for talk.

On a kind of odyssey via Volkswagen, the four intellectuals drive to Leslie's funeral in Brooklyn, a voyage of selfdiscovery. Spouting psychoanalytical jargon, needling one another and everybody else, the Volkswagen men bumble through Brooklyn, pulling at a bottle of whisky, stopping at intermittent bars, where they are worsted by all the local Cyclops and Circes. Finally, they barge into the funeral parlor, snort, giggle and guffaw over the rabbi's sermon--obviously they knew Leslie so much better than the rabbi ever did. They file past the bier, peer in --whoops, the cadaver is not Leslie. Wrong funeral parlor.

Home Trurths. At odyssey's end, the four intellects are, if not wiser, at least candid. They have grown closer than they have ever been, and they may never meet again. Too many home truths have been blurted--the loftily literary Ottensteen, for instance, reveals that he also writes boilerplate for the magazine section of the Yiddish daily under the pen name N. J. Felix. Holly wearily confesses that nothing happens any longer when he writes down the magic words tradition, tragic, committed, alienation. "The word moral looked mean and angry, ailing on the page. And two weeks ago, with the best will, I was unable to pull it through. Dead!" Finally, the three turn on Morroe, whose "moral hypocrisy," they decide, has led them astray, and exorcise him from them in an ancient Jewish ceremony.

But Morroe ultimately comes off best. Beset by his companions, in a drunken peroration Morroe appeals to his dead friend: "Leslie, he begged, intercede for me. I am no big intellect. I am no bargain. I watch too much television. I read, but I do not retain. I am not lost exactly, but I am still nowhere. I am the servant of no great cause. I follow the recommendations of the Consumer's Research Bulletin.

But do me this favor, anyway. Keep them off. For they hem me in from all sides now. They put in my mouth the taste of darkness. They give me queer feelings, they get me all balled up."

And in the end, it is only Morroe who can genuinely cry for Leslie, the man of integrity.

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