Books: Goat-Man

LA VIE PASSIONNÉE OF RODNEY BUCKTHORNE by R. V. Cassill. 243 pages. Bernard Geis. $5.95.

The combination of Bernard Geis's gamy publishing imprint and a hero who copulates to excess (in fact, he suspects that he may die of it) should summon from every throat the cry of ecch. But softly, softly. R. V. Cassill, author of The President, is one of those happy few novelists who see sex as a vehicle rather than a destination and have the wit to take off something more than the heroine's clothes. Rodney Buckthorne is that ever popular fantasy figure, the artist in goat's clothing, who prances irresistibly through several marriages (his own and other men's), countless boudoirs, the stodgy academic community and the massed roadblocks of commercial hypocrisy. Buckthorne's mortal fatigue may be the result of amorous overindulgence. Then again it may just stem from the fact that he seems to have starred in so many recent comic novels. But Cassill's prose is swift, precise and clever, and on the strength of it Rodney may be worth one final evening's visit before he is turned out to pasture.