Books: The Portable Abyss

(3 of 3)

Despite such touches, Bullet Park is an experiment for Cheever, a thrusting out from rational story telling to the presentation of linked fragments of life which, both in themselves and as symbols, must compel the reader. On that level the book is outwardly crude, yet mysteriously provocative. Its theme suggests sources as far back as the story of Abraham and Isaac, with a youth seen as a sacrificial lamb. Readers who care, moreover, may read into Hammer and Nailles either two parts of one American character or two opposed aspects of commercial, ceaselessly mobile U.S. society. Perhaps, too, Cheever is invoking the endless confrontation between the simple, orderly, unimaginative and fruitful of this world, and its articulate, nervous, itchy, deadly and driven personalities who seem now to be in the ascendant. Cheever offers sympathies—but no final answers about the outcome. It is clear though, that he feels that order and simplicity stand in perpetual peril, and seem today singularly ill-equipped to defend themselves.