Unmasked American

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31500, 14 October 1967, Page 4

Unmasked American

The Arrangement By Elia Kazan. Collins. 445 pp.

The trouble with dreams is that they come true. The morning after, as drug-takers frequently testify, can be alarming. The man whose innocent gullibility is rewa. ied with the nightmares of disillusion will wish to remain asleep; the world as it was is not easy to re-find. But in the minds of the bored and the hopeful the dream continues to exercise its appeal, and those who have experienced It remain the subject of envy and the target of ambition. Perhaps the most potent of all drugs is the Great American Dream, the cherished promise of fame and fortune in the land of opportunity. Sam Arness left his log cabin in Armenia and migrated to a successful business in New York. Evsngeleh, bis son, a seedhd generation American, is thoroughly naturalised and apparently successful. He is the vice-president of a Los Angeles advertising firm, the owner of three cars, a bouse in Beverly Hills and a devoted wife. His father and uncles are delighted; Ms acquaintances respectful. He is made.

Unfortunately he wakes from his sleep, and finds the dream has turned sour. Life had become a series of con-

ditioned responses'. Somewhere along the line Evangeleh'a personality had been lost and he had become immersed in the mindless sea of upper - middle class suburbia. He acquired possessions he did not need, he told his clients the appropriate lies of his profession, and went home to the suitable recreations of • a Wasp businessman with the assumed name of Eddie Anderson. He had organised

himself a mesh of phony arrangements. Eddie does not sort this all out in a sudden blinding flash. At first it seems that his eccentricities are caused by nothing more serious than a middle-aged roue’s first serious passion—for Eddie had kept himself going, drugged so as not to wake to his folly, with a series of amorous skirmishes. But as Gwen pulls aside the thin shroud of significance with which he had clothed himself, he becomes desperate: he has been unmasked. He resigns his job and leaves his wife. Pursued by her honest and solicitous pyschoanalyst, and his dishonest and uncomprehending father, he runs blindly, and with growing insanity, in search of anonymity and simplicity. This novel is altogether absorbing. Mr Kazan already enjoys a formidable reputation as one of America’s leading film and theatre directors, and he has done nothing to lessen it We see the story through Eddie’s eyes, and share his frustrations. This is not in itself remarkable, but the subtlety with which the tone changes from confidence, through doubt and despair, tn the final catharthic humility is brilliantly managed. There are occasional moments of exquisite tragi-comedy where the reader feels himself fully in sympathy with Eddie, and yet throughout there is no descent to lampooning of his pursuers. It is a tragedy without villains, a fine example of modern fiction that has deserved its enormous popularity. Perhaps the greatest measure of Mr Kazan's success is that so many of his readers, regarding themselves through a glass, darkly, are anxietyprone Americans.