Word: berger
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...Feud is further evidence of how deeply Berger remains committed to his marvelously skewed sense of language and the hapless bipeds who use it. The novel is set in the small-town America of the late 1930s, a place and time frequently celebrated in nostalgic memory. It has been said that life was less complicated then and that the Depression bound families to a common cause. Perhaps, but in Berger's small neighboring towns of Millville and Hornbeck, such pretty thoughts do not have a prayer against ornery pride, low animal cunning and the mayhem loosed by the crazed...
Initially, Berger's storyline seems to have been teased out of a W.C. Fields film like The Bank Dick. Hornbeck's Dolf Beeler, "a burly, beer-bellied foreman," enters Bud Bullard's Millville hardware store for a can of paint remover. The dead cigar butt in Beeler's mouth leads to an argument about smoking on premises stocked with flammable merchandise. The appearance of Bullard's cousin Reverton is a piece of unfortunate timing. Rev is a bitter geezer who lies about being a railroad detective and carries a starter pistol to intimidate his enemies...
...characteristic of Berger to endow some of his most unappealing characters with vitality and strength. Rev is a paranoid crank but the only person in the book to take heroic action. To keep matters consistently bizarre, Berger describes the codger's funeral through the eyes of Junior, the teen-age lout: "As he watched the bronze box being lowered into the grave he could not help thinking of that little ditty that went: Your eyes fall in/ Your teeth fall out/ The worms crawl over/ Your nose and mouth. Dying was a lousy thing, and he intended to avoid...
...Feud as a tale is hardly distinguished. Berger's telling is. His language, rich in prewar idiom, is precise and laconic, the perfect foil to his slapstick plot. At first encounter, the characters appear to have been made of pig bladders, but the deeper their predicaments, the more convincing they become. The romance between Bernice and Ernie, a Hornbeck layabout, has the ring of lowlife truth. Says a sincere Ernie after a night of backseat love and a bottle of Rock 'n' Rye: "I'm sure trying to figure out a way to tell you what...
Writers have similar problems of finding the right style. Berger, once again, has found the solution. His work may not win any prizes for the celebration of the indomitable human spirit, but The Feud is an affectionate cheer for all the peeves, itches and dreams that make most people tick...