Books: Nice People in Glass Houses

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In the McCulloughs' case, this is almost literally true. Walls and walls of their house are nothing but glass, and readers who expect something to shatter will not be disappointed. But the source and degree of the destruction are entirely unanticipated. Glynnis finds a canceled check for $1,000 that Ian had made out to Sigrid Hunt, a willowy young woman whom Glynnis had once taken up socially and then dropped. Ian's explanation happens to be factual: Sigrid had phoned him in distress and in need of an abortion. Assuming she was Glynnis' | friend, Ian had offered what comfort he could and a check. But Glynnis will not believe this story. Through a long, tense evening, the McCulloughs drink and argue. Suddenly Glynnis is brandishing a knife, there is blood on the floor, and Glynnis hurtles backward through a plate-glass window. After 18 days in a coma, she dies. Following the funeral and a police investigation, Ian is charged with second-degree murder.

This sudden, inexplicable eruption of violence typifies what many find troubling about Oates' fiction. If the purpose of art is to provide a comprehensible context, an explanatory train of circumstances, for human activity, then Oates certainly falls short. She knows this risk and consistently runs it anyhow. Her obsession remains the untidy world where everyone actually lives, where headlines daily scream out the unthinkable and where nice people find themselves behaving in ways they can barely imagine, much less condone. The McCulloughs' marriage, despite outward appearances, is far from perfect; the author deftly reveals the stresses and fault lines that have built up over the years. But these problems do not lead logically to what Ian calls "this sudden terrible fury that has ruined our lives." These people have not earned and do not deserve their fate.

Building a trustworthy bridge between civilized society and the Grand Guignol is tricky work, and Oates' success has varied from book to book. But American Appetites offers a thoroughly credible version of what is both unbelievable and disturbingly familiar. Her prose is headlong. There are cliches; sentences do not ask to be examined for artful felicities. Pausing seems beside the point. The rush is utterly convincing. Any definition of art that excludes this novel is probably too narrow by far.