Books: Volkswagen of Fools

A CHANGE OF SKIN by Carlos Fuentes. 462 pages. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $6.95.

The secret of staying awake through A Change of Skin, the fifth novel by Mexico's Carlos Fuentes, is to approach it as if it were a long, pretentious art movie. It should be read passively, with a relaxed eye toward its techniques, composition, shifts in style. And there should be frequent trips to the popcorn machine. A cheerful open-mindedness is essential because, for all its gothic appurtenances, the novel is a free-swinging romp, a virtuoso performance by an urbane writer who exuberantly deploys a variety of literary tricks—and then plays tricks on the tricks.

Like the best of Fuentes' earlier books, Where the Air Is Clear (1960) and The Death of Artemio Cruz (1964), this one shows the influence of just about everyone the ambitious Mexican ever admired. There are echoes of Dos Passes, D. H. Lawrence, Faulkner, Mailer, Julio Cortázar, Jorge Luis Borges. This time Fuentes also works in some sarcasm about the Mexican ethos, particularly his country's lively relationship with death and all its trappings. Mythology and symbolism are planted in conspicuous places for those readers who relish those forms of mental exercise, and there is enough sexual activity to maintain interest through the long, cold tussles with radical existential philosophy. Once again onanism is used to reflect the spiritual isolation of the age, and sodomy is seen as an important portal to self-awareness.

Hipster-Nihilist. The device that Fuentes uses to launch the novel is as old as Chaucer: a group on a pilgrimage—in this case, figurative rather than literal. It is Holy Week, and packed into a Volkswagen en route from Mexico City to Veracruz are Franz, a Sudeten German who once worked as an architect in a Nazi concentration camp; Isabel, his thrill-a-minute cutie; Javier, a middle-aged dud poet; and Elizabeth, his love-starved (as distinguished from sex-starved) wife. Though each is in search of an intensely personal salvation, each represents a familiar 20th century type. Franz seeks redemption for having played a role in the horror story of the century; Isabel tries to fill the void with new kicks; Javier's quest is for meaning through art; and Elizabeth wants only love.

The book's central conceit is its omniscient narrator, a fortyish hipster-nihilist who attempts to goad the characters into shucking their illusions by confronting them with their impotent squeals. Although the narrator ends his tale with the signature "Freddy Lambert," the key to his identity is,.dropped noisily on pase 371, where he is referred to as Xipe Totec, Our Lord of the Flayed Hide. Xipe Totec is the Mexican god of newly planted seed and of penitential torture. Like the maize seed that loses its husk as it begins to sprout, Xipe Totec gave food to mankind by having himself skinned alive. .In short, Xipe is an Aztec Christ-figure. Messaee: someone always has to be sacrificed before man can move to an other level of awareness.