THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, April 14, 1996 TAG: 9604140269
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY PHILIP WALZER
LENGTH: Medium: 71 lines
KRAVEN IMAGES
ALAN ISLER
Bridge Works. 264 pp. $21.95.
Pity poor Nicholas Kraven.
He is unsuccessful in academia, unhappy in bachelorhood and uncertain of his future.
Actually, he's not so pitiful. To be blunt, he is a ponderous lecturer, a sleazy womanizer and an unapologetic liar and plagiarist in Alan Isler's disappointing second novel.
Like his first work, The Prince of West End Avenue, this novel borrows from Isler's own experiences as an English professor at Queens College In New York. But if West End Avenue was a clever, refreshing portrait of a bunch of nursing home residents staging a production of ``Hamlet,'' Kraven Images is a tired, cliche-ridden set piece offering few new revelations about academic life.
Kraven's woman problem exemplifies the problem with the novel: He flits from one to another - eagerly seeking sex, ego-stroking, but no commitment. But the women come and go so quickly that they never rise above caricature.
There's Stella, his longtime mistress, a married, middle-aged neighbor. ``Now in her mid-forties, winter's ragged hand had not defaced in Stella her loveliness,'' Isler writes.
Then comes Diotima von Hoden, a crazed, elderly visiting German professor who forces him to swallow an aphrodisiacal potion.
And, of course, there are plenty of younger women. First, Nimue Berkowitz, a ditzy hippie who brings him her awful poetry to critique. In a pathetic attempt to bed her, he puts on his charm and academic pretensions. After reading her awful ode to her father, he says: ``It takes a courageous writer nowadays to attempt acrostic verse, a difficult device, one usually fatal to poetry. But you've pulled it off.''
Perhaps the most intriguing woman in his life is Candy Peaches, a showgirl who's secretly getting her master's degree in psychology at Yale. Oddly enough, she's also the novel's most potent moral force. Scolding Kraven for his chronic lying, she tells him: ``Break the habit, Nicholas. especially if we're going to be friends.'' But she's not around long enough for us to get to know her.
Kraven left his native England for a teaching job at Mosholu College, a fictional New York school, fired up with idealism: ``How inexpressibly wonderful if he were to become a torchbearer in the dark night of ignorance and kindle the flame of learning in eager young minds.''
He completes the requisite publications: essays like ``Desdemona's Wedding Sheets: A New Interpretation,'' a book titled The Womb, the Tomb and the Loom in Shakespeare's Major Tragedies. (Unfortunately, most of the book doesn't exhibit the wit in this sendup of academic research.) But his teaching has turned stale, and he has abandoned literary criticism for poetic ditties to Stella.
Kraven takes an impromptu visit to England, where Isler brings the novel to a galloping close. His Aunt Cicely complains, upon seeing him: ``I don't feel I know you. It's as if you aren't settled in yourself, as if you are somehow uncomfortable in your own body.''
There's a reason. Turns out Kraven's professional life has been built on false identity. Suddenly all becomes clear to Kraven as he comes to grips with his past. Meanwhile, his romantic life continues to unravel, and his job is imperiled. No matter. The newly self-conscious Kraven declares: ``It seems that I am absolutely free.''
Maybe, but it's all too quick, too unconvincing. It ought to be back to the chalkboard for Isler. MEMO: Philip Walzer is a staff writer. by CNB