Speaking About the Unspeakable

By R.Z.Sheppard

GOOD AS GOLD by Joseph Heller; Simon & Schuster; 447pages; $12.95

Joseph Heller gets more miles per novel than any other American-made author. Consider the phenomenal efficiency of Catch-22, a book that continues to run on one joke. It is the old switcheroo, best expressed by Doc Daneeka when he tells Yossarian "that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions."

Eighteen years and one angst-guzzler later (Something Happened), Heller re-styles old reliable. Daneeka's catch-22 is now Potomac newspeak and the Doc himself is reincarnated as Ralph Newsome, a presidential aide who attempts to lure Bruce Gold, Ph.D., into Government service. Gold, a college professor, has caught the President's eye by favorably reviewing the Chief Executive's book, My Year in the White House, You can do and say anything you want, says Newsome, "as long as it's everything we tell you to say and do in support of our policies, whether you agree with them or not. You'll have complete freedom."

Gold is hardly shocked. He is no stranger to doublethink. A literary hustler whose interest in Government is a sham, he does not even vote, a fact "he could not disclose publicly without bringing blemish to the image he had constructed for himself as a radical moderate."

The image does not con everyone. His father treats Gold as if he were a delinquent child; his daughter nails him as a philandering skunk; and his wife seems to feel he is not worth getting excited about. All three are correct. In Washington, however, Gold is hailed as the coiner of the phrase, "You're boggling my mind," and that innovative answer to journalists' questions: "I don't know."

Yet beneath the family squabbles and Art Buchwald routines, Good as Gold is a savage, intemperately funny satire on the assimilation of the Jewish tradition of liberalism into the American main chance. It is a delicate subject, off limits to non-Jews fearful of being thought anti-Semitic and unsettling to successful Jewish intellectuals whose views may have drifted to the right in middle age.

Heller, who is neither a Gentile nor a card-carrying intellectual, goes directly for the exposed nerve. Invite a Jew to the White House (and You Make Him Your Slave) is the title of an article Gold planned to write before receiving his own invitation to Washington. Once there, he is constantly reminded of his background. Take this exchange with a Connally-type Texan: " 'Now, Gold. Everybody here is a somebody, and I don't know why you're being so captious about who it is you are. He is the Spade, she is the Widow, I am the Governor and you're the -- ' 'Doctor!' yelled Gold in time to ward off a crushing repetition of that denunciatory term."

Even Harris Rosenblatt, raised with Gold in Brooklyn and now a homogenized bureaucrat, gets in a lick. "I used to be Jewish, you know," says Rosenblatt. "I used to be a hunchback," says Gold. "Isn't it amazing," says Rosenblatt, "how we've both been able to change!"

Gold, in fact, does not change, despite Heller's facile attempt to conclude the novel with a hint of cultural reconciliation. Which is just as well. For Gold works best as a caricature in a burlesque about hypocrisy, jealousy and status lust.

The trouble with Good as Gold is that Heller is never content to stay with Washington as Kafka Komix. He insists on ventriloquizing bleak pronouncements on the state of the union: "Gold knew that the most advanced and penultimate stage of a civilization was attained when chaos masqueraded as order, and he knew we were already there." Or, "No society worth its salt would watch itself perishing without some serious attempt to avert its own destruction. Therefore, Gold concluded, we are not a society. Or we are not worth our salt. Or both."

It is well to remember that this comes from a character who does not even vote. In addition, pretense to imaginative fiction is frequently dropped for ad hominem attacks on real people: Irving Kristol, Sidney Hook and Henry Kissinger, for example, are branded as men "of limited mentality and unconvincing motive."

The unfortunate effect of such invective is to obscure Heller's strength as a connoisseur of absurdity. When his novel is as good as gold, it is a stinging satire etched in acid. The rest of the time, it is only a polemic finger-painted in bile.

-- R.Z.Sheppard

Excerpt

"'We considered beginning you as a press aide, but one of the first things the boys from the press would want to know would be where does someone like you come off being a press aide. Would you like to work as a secretary?'

'It's a far cry from what I had in mind,' said Gold stiffly. 'I can't type.'

'Oh, not that kind of secretary,' Ralph laughed. 'I mean--' he groped--'what do you call it? The Cabinet. You wouldn't have to type or take shorthand. You'd have girls... to do that for you. Would you like to be in the Cabinet?'

Gold was more than mollified. 'Ralph, is that really possible?' he asked incredulously.

'I don't see why not,' was Ralph's reply. 'Although you might have to start as an under.'

'An under?'

'An under is a little bit over a deputy and assistant, I think, but not yet an associate. Unless it's the other way around. Nobody seems sure any more.' "

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