By balloon to the North Pole

Press, 25 August 1979, Page 17

By balloon to the North Pole

The Balloonist. By Macdonald Harris. Penguin, 1979. 255 pp. $3.30.

“The Balloonist,” at one level, is a straightforward tale of scientific adventure in the late nineteenth century. It would stand comparison with Jules Verne at his best as three intrepid explorers set out for the North Pole in the whispering silence of an open wicker basket hung from a hydrogen balloon. An ingenious arrangement of sails and valves gives them some ability to steer their strange contraption. Primitive radio helps their commander forecast winds

and weather as they drift towards the place where there is nowhere to go but south.

At least two of the three, however, are not what they seem. As the expedition commander unfolds his narrative it becomes an exotic (and erotic) exploration of human passion and deception. The white world takes on the air of a renewed virginity, an escape from the sleazy salons of Paris. In the end the commander discovers “machines are really of use to us only when they work deceptively.” He decides to ‘‘let Nansen or Lieutenant Peary have the honour of handing to the human race the navel of their planet.” If the expedition is triumphant, its success is of the spirit. “Some of us are tired of our bodies at 20, some at 90, but we must al, tire of them jn the end,” the meticulous, mad, Swedish scientist-narrator tells the white world that finally engulfs him, — Naylor Hillary. __