Dyad

Brodsky ( X in Paris ) is among a handful of American novelists--Kathy Acker, William Burroughs, Gilbert Sorrentino come to mind--working consistently in an avant-garde vein. In his seventh book he tells the story of a dying father bent on understanding the disaffections of an artist son. The father hires the narrator, a young urban drifter, to shadow his son in hopes of uncovering the source of his filial contempt. What results is less a detective story than a bitter indictment of authority in which the paternal figure is but one ogre in a universe of oppressors. Unaccountably, the narrator is the most totalitarian force in the book, his voice invading all the characters, converting them into foot soldiers in his doomed campaign of the self. Disbelief in the power of language to convey the experience of being is dispiriting fare, and such propositions are contentiously pressed. One wonders how long failure, unrelieved by humor or compassion, can continue as the occasion for Brodsky's art. (Nov.)