Word: wards
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Speak of the devil, and up pops John Updike. In an introduction to a new anthology called Soundings in Satanism (Sheed & Ward; $6.95), Updike-a childhood Lutheran who became a Congregationalist-even turns into something of a devil's advocate. Speaking disapprovingly of the widespread disbelief in God's opponent, the novelist observes: "We have become, in our Protestantism, more virtuous than the myths that taught us virtue; we judge them barbaric. We resist the bloody legalities of the Redemption; we face Judgment Day, in our hearts, much as young radicals face the mundane courts-convinced that acquittal...
Forced out of the preacher's household because of his romance with the churchman's ward, Ivan turns to running dope for a living. When he attempts to rebel against the strictures of the ganga trade--which lives under the protection of a corrupt government--the penalties grow heavy. Dope brings in high profits for certain middlemen; low wages are paid to the growers, and to the runners as well, who move the stuff between the countryside and the cities...
ALAN SEVERANCE, whose name, through some pedantic trickery of language means "Harmony Interbreaker," is the protagonist/antagonist. He embodies Berryman's own tremendous ego and frightful delusions. Outwardly self-contained, he helps the hopeless alcoholics in his ward by dominating group therapy and confronting their inadequacies. But he rarely reaches into himself; he is blind to his own shortcomings. He is something of a Cain-figure, lost in a psychological maze of anger and nurtured rejection. Severance, a Pulitzer Prize winning scientist, art critic, and pop intellectual, feels that his status as a celebrity is the source of his troubles. Here...
...twelve steps are here, although some recovered notes printed in the back of the book indicated that Berryman had planned two more sections. Of what is written, Alan Severance remains the key figure. Other characters are roughly sketched. A series of epiphanies of the more dramatic moments on the ward, of the personal breakthroughs and all too frequent relapses, lend a sense of the real powerlessness of the alcoholic...
...Ward W's regimen is rather like a crash course at Esalen. Privacy, leading as it can to evasions and delusions, is not esteemed. Public confessions are required. Severance admits to "23 years of alcoholic chaos, lost wives, public disgrace," indignities unspeakable, yet spoken. When his fellow patients unravel their histories, Severance listens intently. Few in Ward W can share anything like the scope and depth of his interests, but he must make his peace with them before he can return to his pregnant wife and small daughter...