Word: alan
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...novel begins with Alan Casper's Harvard application essay, written from Flint, Michigan, in which he says he expects Harvard to be "the place to which Western culture leads us, men and women nourished by their civilization, sophisticated in life, experienced, witty and at home with their own lust." By the time Alan graduates, he seems to have made great personal strides toward that ideal, having compiled the best academic record at Harvard since 1937, learned 497 foreign languages, and found true and passionate love in the Widener D-level stacks, among other places. Thus equipped, he decides...
...point is that for all his intelligence Alan is very much a young innocent, and it becomes increasingly clear to him that what he is doing in the Peace Corps makes no sense on any level. He came to Qatab to work for peace, and finds himself in the employ of the CIA, which has photographs of him in various compromising positions and can black-mail him into anything. Beyond the cruder forms of imperialism in which he finds himself inexorably involved, though, there is an imperialism of a more basic sort as well. Alan has always assumed that learning...
...Alan, realizing all this, becomes less and less sure that he should be reforming the Xixi, and more and more drawn into their tribal rites. From the beginning, since he is in their village, they regard him as a young member of the tribe; and as Alan's ability to rationalize his supposed role there diminishes, he comes to accept this interpretation too, going through marriage and initiation into the tribe. Americanizing the Xixi is an impossible task, and learning their language is not a thing that can be done with the Widener Library detachment to which Alan is accustomed...
...being witty, in increasingly abstruse ways. At first, the humor of Native Intelligence is a sharp and satirical joy. Sokolov, like his hero Harvard '63, summa cum laude, understands exactly the kind of mind he is writing about, and he portrays intelligence intelligently and with unerring accuracy. All of Alan's foibles--his detachment, his slight scorn for everyone else, his obsessive discovery of sex, in the way he dresses--ring absolutely true. His, and Sokolov's, mind is at bottom unceasingly observant and perceptive, interested in and a little bored by everything, endlessly analytical of self and surroundings. Because...
...portray Alan Casper, Native Intelligence is fine; it is as a real novel that it is hampered by its own wit and restless eclecticism. The materials in the novel run a bizarre gamut from an incredibly difficult crossword puzzle (Sokolov offers to send readers the solution, for a dollar), to a lengthy glossary of the Xixi language, to purported New York Times clippings, to a threatening letter Alan writes President Kennedy. The feeling emerges from it all that Sokolov is playing myriad obscure jokes throughout, that some second satiric meaning lurks behind everything. Is the Xixi language full of esoteric...