Books: Suffering for Others

SAL SI PUEDES by Peter Matthiessen. 372 pages. Random House. $6.95.

Every modern saint can be seen as a more than worthy character in search of a more than worthy author. In Peter Matthiessen, Mexican-American leader Cesar Chavez would seem to have found the perfect biographer. As a novelist (At Play in the Fields of the Lord), Matthiessen has a proven taste for mystics, especially from Latin America. As a naturalist (Wildlife in America), he has shown true indignation at the greedy exploitation of man and nature. Small wonder that in this book he begins by investing Chavez's selfless fight against the California grape growers with vast moral significance. The title means "escape if you can." And Matthiessen sees Chavez, not merely as a dedicated labor organizer but as a moral reformer and Salvationist, holding up a warning sign to a whole assembly-line culture. It reads: MAN MUST COME FIRST.

So far, so good. But in doing this, Matthiessen ends by transforming his book into an elaborate parable of soul-and-soil survival. The result, alas, is a peculiarly frustrating failure of excellence. The richness of Matthiessen's qualifications and subject have worked against him. In his attempt to do justice to all the possibilities of his theme, he has turned himself into an author wearing too many hats.

Besides Moralist Matthiessen, there is Labor Historian Matthiessen, sketching in the miserable background of the migrant farm worker. Ethnic Historian Matthiessen scrambles to provide a brief study of Chicanos (Mexican Americans) practically back to the time of the conquistadors. On the scene in the summer of 1968, Reporter Matthiessen gets down the local color, checks out some picket lines, balances his story by interviewing some of the biggest growers, and even manages to quiz a few bystanders. What does the waitress at the local dairy freeze think of it all? No comment.

But after all this, Biographer Matthiessen is still left with the biggest puzzle of all: Who is Cesar Chavez? Here is where Matthiessen might have recouped. Here is where he finally loses.

He cautiously humanizes Chavez as a man with a weakness for Diet-Rite Cola who cannot spare enough time from the cause for his wife and eight children. But that's about it. Clues to Chavez's character and motivation lie scattered all through the book. Perhaps the most provocative is the "martyr's shelf" behind his desk at the headquarters of the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee, which includes photographs of Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, as well as busts of John Kennedy and Lincoln.

Conspicuous Poverty. The motif of purification and self-sacrifice runs through Chavez's life beyond any possible requirements of political strategy. He turns down all personal awards. He keeps himself in conspicuous poverty. He has given up smoking and drinking. Even when he designs buildings for his organization, they take on the look of the old Franciscan missions he loves.