ILLUSION AND DELUSION

Press, 9 April 1977, Page 17

ILLUSION AND DELUSION

The King's Indian. By John Gardner Jonathan Cape. 285 pp. $9.25. (Reviewed by Carole Acheson)

Ini this provocative collection of stories, ranging in scene from a medieval monastery to a modern London pub, John Gardner invites the reader to join him in examining the seductive subtleties of language, and the ease with which we can be deluded by rhetoric. If there is a common theme to Gardner’s stories, it is that of a quest: for faith, truth, freedom, reality, self-knowledge. Most of the protagonists narrate their own tales; as educated men they are conscious of the necessary limitations of their perceptions, but not always so conscious of the skill with which they can rationalise their motives and actions.

In “Pastoral Care” for instance, a young American minister preaches radical sermons in an attempt to stir his ultra-conservative middle-class congregation. Stimulated one day by the presence of a long-haired student, he speaks with revolutionary fervour. Later a bomb wrecks the local police station. The minister does not know if there is a connection and is not anxious to find out. Confused and guilty, he attempts to redefine his role as priest, only to find that such

definition lie' outside his control in the needs and expectations of others. The major work in the collection. “The King’s Indian", is a witty novella. The narrator is a shrewd Yankee ancient mariner, drawing blithely on material from Coleridge. Poe and Melville in his description of a hoax. Despite his resolution — “No mystic voyage for Jonathan Upchurch, says I to myself" — he is taken on board a Nantucket whaler. Mysteries abound, and Jonathan sets out to discover why the crew should include a young girl, Negro slaves and a blind prophet, and w'hat lies behind the captain’s fascination with the icy south. Finally he finds he is involved in an elaborate illusion; but then our narrator has portrayed himself as an accomplished liar. Is his tale of a hoax actually a hoax on his reluctant guest — and the reader? Layers of illusion accumulate, and the author intervenes like Swift to point a path through the shifting sands: “you are real, reader, and so am I, John Gardner the man that, with the help of Poe and Melville and many another man, wrote this book.” Ultimately the challenge is thrown to the reader, as indeed it is throughout this intriguing and intelligent collection.