The Joker
Potpourri
by .Double-day, $3.95.
M. Malaquais’s hero, a salesman of cosmetics, suddenly finds himself east adrift from his identity; he has lost his signature, his wife, and his home. One gathers, presently, that he is in effect being liquidated by the City, a baleful entity which invisibly exercises total control over its citizens. As Javelin struggles to get back to reality, he plunges deeper and deeper into nightmare.
Javelin’s encounter with Dominique a lustful hysteric in whose apartment a metronome keeps ticking - and with the sinister Dr. Babitch. recently promoted from blowing wind up women’s skirts to “psychologician ”; the visit to the magazine which has never known the whereabouts of its circulation department; the birth certificate which is taken to be a certificate of death; the mysterious telephone calls and the general sense of menace closing in — all this is strongly reminiscent of Franz Kafka. At his best, Malaquais’s nightmarish effects are worthy of Kafka, but his novel as a whole demonstrates the importance of being Franz.