Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 11, 1993 TAG: 9304090437
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: F-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Reviewed by ROBERT RIVENBARK
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
`OUTERBRIDGE REACH' AIMS HIGH, SINKS IN SWILL
OUTERBRIDGE REACH. By Robert Stone. HarperPerennial. $12 (trade paper).Robert Stone's novel "Outerbridge Reach" preaches a poor sermon about the decline of middle-class American values.
Protagonist Owen Browne is a copywriter for a New York yacht manufacturer. Once a crack Vietnam-era Navy fighter pilot, he now wastes his talents promoting boats he has never sailed. At home his wife, Anne, sips wine day and night to ease her uncertainties about the future.
The problem in the Browne household? They've lost their passion, their courage, their will to succeed.
"Our lives are soft in this country," Owen informs us. "In the present day, a man can live his whole life and never test his true resources."
The book abounds in self-pitying pronouncements like this, cribbed from the pages of Hemingway, but with none of the power of his style.
When Browne's company president disappears to escape from creditors, Browne fills in as an entrant in an around-the-world sailboat race. It is his last opportunity to reclaim his manhood.
Enter Ron Strickland, a cynical filmmaker hired to make a documentary about Browne's voyage. Strickland has nothing but contempt for the "squeaky-clean world of the Brownes." For him, they embody the moral rot plaguing Republican-dominated America. Nevertheless his lust for Anne Browne prompts him to seduce her while Owen Browne is off sailing.
Meanwhile, the rigors of the sea are driving Browne mad. He can't possibly win the race; his boat is slowly disintegrating because of poor construction. Here we are subjected to some heavy-handed symbolism, in which the vessel stands for Browne's ailing soul, cast adrift in a Darwinian universe presided over by a God who favors only the strong.
Browne transmits false coordinates over his ship's radio to convince the world he is winning. The guilt of this self-betrayal feeds his madness. Without giving away the surprise ending, Anne Browne unexpectedly - and unbelievably - redeems herself in the last chapter.
Stone is reaching for Big Book status here. But his novel merely confirms the old saw that a big book is a big bore.
Robert Rivenbark is a Blacksburg free-lance writer.