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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Not One of Wylie's Best,
By
This review is from: Opus 21: Descriptive Music for the Lower Kinsey Epoch of the Atomic Age (Hardcover)
In his commendable biography of Philip Wylie, Truman Frederick Keefer concludes that Opus 21 is one of Wylie's three best books. While I am a considerable fan of Wylie, I must sadly disagree. Without having read all of Wylie's novels, I cannot safely say this is his worst. I can say that Opus 21 is the worst of Wylie's novels I have encountered and a massive disappointment, considering how highly my expectations were raised by Keefer's recommendation. The events in Opus 21 takes place over a three-day weekend, when the character Philip Wylie is in New York to have a biopsy taken of a possibly malignant growth he's discovered in his throat. The novel begins on Friday and ends on Monday with his growth diagnosed as a benign anomaly. Wylie spends most of his time at his hotel, trying to cut down a serial he's written for a magazine, as he's interrupted numerous times by several characters whose lives he becomes entangled in. Opus 21 was published two years after Wylie's nonfiction book An Essay on Morals, his ambitious attempt to explain instinct, religion and human behavior using Jungian principles. The book was poorly received. A great deal of Opus 21 is occupied with Wylie the character restating the gist of Essay on Morals to various characters or through internal monologues. Unfortunately, these statements aren't expressed with greater comprehensibility than they were in Morals, and they become repetitive and tiresome. The reader feels that he is being hectored by a fanatic. The various characters Wylie depicts, including himself, are schematically drawn and their psychology is often implausible. There is a notably unpleasant episode where a personable preacher visits Wylie, hoping Wylie will agree to address his parishioners. The preacher, who is rather broad-minded and seems open to liberal ideas, debates Wylie and ends up hammered, a victim of Wylie's hatred of organized religion. Rather than pursuing an opening for what we today would call a constructive dialogue, Wylie the character merely uses the visit to win a debate and prove that the preacher doesn't understand the ideas of Wylie's he initially professed an understanding of. By far the best parts of Opus 21, which are all too brief, are two dreams Wylie has, which are described as short stories. In the first, clouds spell out obscene words in the sky. In the second, Jesus magically appears on one of the B-29s on its way to A-bomb Japan, attempting to persuade the crew to turn back. Too bad Wylie never finished those stories.TIME magazine, one of his nemeses Wylie lashes out at in the beginning of this book, sarcastically titled their review of Opus 21, published on Monday, May. 23, 1949, "Degeneration of Vipers." The unsigned reviewer wrote, "He (Wylie) feels `lonelier than God,' exhausted by his `endless efforts to put a simple idea in some form that would perfuse skulls hardened against it.' This fantastically bad novel is built around a single, anguished theme--Author Wylie's teeth-grinding grief that the world turns its back on his views. In Generation of Vipers, where his views made a little sense, however overstated they may have been, Wylie was impressive for his stark anger at the course of U.S. civilization. In Opus 21, he buries a few pinheads of truth so deep in bad taste and bad writing that his message, if any, is lost in the muck, and his jeremiad itself is silly." Sadly, I really can't disagree. This edition of Opus 21 (which I suspect is produced using print-on-demand technology) is very overpriced, even for a new hardcover. I can find used hc copies in good condition for much less.
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