Rag and Bone

By Patricia Blake

VERY MUCH A LADY by Shana Alexander Little, Brown; 316 pages; $17.50

Three years after Jean Harris fired four bullets into Herman Tarnower, the case of the headmistress and the diet doctor still has the power to engage our imagination. The public's appetite for details of the murder trial had been whetted by the social standing of the protagonists, as Diana Trilling pointed out in her brilliant 1981 study, Mrs. Harris. But the abiding fascination of the case resides in the story of the high-minded, stylish lady who descended to the depths of self-abasement and violence.

Although outdistanced by Trilling's earlier effort, Journalist Shana Alexander has lavished her considerable reportorial skills on Very Much a Lady, interviewing hundreds of people who knew the doctor and his lover. Alexander has emerged with a portrait of Harris' selfish, hardhearted, authoritarian father that goes far to explain her longstanding tolerance of Tarnower's ill-treatment. The author acknowledges a sense of identification with Harris ("she reminds me of me"). But that partisanship does not prevent her from leading the reader through every squalid stage of Harris' 14-year affair with Tarnower. The Scarsdale physician, the son of humble Jewish immigrants, was a relentless social climber, impressed by the gracious airs and cultivated ways of the classy, Waspish headmistress. Soon, however, he reneged on his proposal to marry her and embarked on a series of affairs. All the while, he kept Harris on the leash she handed him.

As Harris vied with her principal rival, Lynne Tryforos, for pride of place in the Tarnower household, there were some nasty incidents. Harris received mysterious, obscene phone calls. She telephoned Tryforos every night for a month. The women alternated in sharing Tarnower's bed and left their belongings in his bathroom. Harris repeatedly tossed out Tryforos' curlers. A favorite dress of Harris' was found smeared with excrement. Harris whined and wheedled as her feelings fluctuated between jealous rage and obsessive dependence. By the time she entered the doctor's bedroom for the last time, a gun in one hand and a bunch of flowers in the other, she had truly descended into what Yeats called "the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart."

Alexander's most provocative discovery concerns Harris' mental state. She was diagnosed as psychotic after the killing, but her condition had long been aggravated by large daily doses of Desoxyn. Tarnower had prescribed the amphetamine for her even though the manufacturer warns against its long-term use because of the risk of psychosis.

Alexander argues persuasively that the failure of Harris' lawyer, Joel Aurnau, to plead "extreme emotional disturbance" was one in a series of wrong decisions that resulted in a hopeless case for the defense. Aurnau declared that he would settle for nothing but acquittal on the ground that the killing had been a "tragic accident." The jury remained unconvinced.

Essentially, Alexander sees Harris as a victim of circumstance. Indeed, the writer's gift for vivid reportage has made her subject's past exploitation and present plight (a 15-year minimum prison sentence) extremely compelling. Still, Alexander's unforgettable description of the shooting serves as a reminder of another victim. Whether Harris' killing of Tarnower was accidental, unintentional in her conscious mind, or willful, as the jury decided, remains a tantalizing mystery. But it is a mystery with real bullets and a real corpse. --By Patricia Blake This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.