Zimzum

Lish ( My Romance ) does love his sentences. Chewing them up, spitting them out, sucking them back, he sends them tumbling over one another in a sort of waterfall of consciousness. In this absurd, comic novel, the sentences pool together into six loosely connected pieces revolving around a character usually unidentified by name but occasionally called Gordon/Gordie/Sissy Lish. The centerpiece is ``July the Fifteenth, 1988''--the story of a man on the edge and in one really bad day. The narrator must get his wife to her important new medical test; he must visit his parents, who are ``acting up'' in their rest home; he must go shopping with his mistress for an intimate appliance; and he must go to work. Or else. ``Or else? Jesus, or else? Everybody is always saying to me or else. Nobody ever has anything for them to say to me except or else. . . . But when is somebody going to come and tell me or else what? Because they never tell me or else what.'' References are introduced, dropped and only later defined, but for readers who can let go and allow themselves to be pulled along through Lish's currents and eddies, Zimzum is a thoroughly enjoyable ride. (Sept.)