The Delectable Mountains: Or, Entertaining Strangers Book

Not worth revisiting.

The Delectable Mountains is one of Michael Malone's earliest novels--and it shows. It shows in that the book is not very good. And it shows in that there are themes, structures, and traits he would develop to better effect in later books.

Malone has a bumptious writing style, and it is on display here, in the person of Devin Donahue, the protagonist, and very much a Southern character (in a Western setting.) Devin recognizes that he is a character, playing a part--which is unsurprising, given that this book, like may of Malone's is interested in the stage, and it's metaphors.

Obviously, there are elements here that would be used in the much better Foolscap. There are also elements of (what I think of as) Malone's best work, Dingley Falls: Malone wants not just o tell the story of Devin and his funny adventures, but encompass the entire town of Floren Park, Colorado. It's hard to do, though, because the perspective is limited by what Devin can know--rather than the omniscient narration of Dingley Falls--and because the town is so small that any secrets feel false, anybody not already knowing another person unlikely.

What balances the boisterous language and voice of Foolscap and Dingley Falls is the recognition of real characters underneath the pose, the moments of truth. (Foolscap was probably harder to pull off, for all that I like Dingley Falls better, since Malone gave himself less room, fewer characters, and a limited range of moods in which to work.) Here those moments of truth are incredibly rare, only one or two--such as when Devin admits he still felt like he was at home, and couldn't quite jibe his midnset with the place.

Otherwise, Devin, and through him most of the other characters, feel hollow. The poetical rhapsodies and sidelights that make Dingley Falls feel alive, and weird, here just feel like more poses.

(The scene telling the story of the first play using Devin's settings is funny, though.)

The story is about Devin, a shiftless North Carolinian just out of Harvard who heads off with a friend to work at a small theater in a small Colorado town, run by a high-school sweetheart, the adventures he has there, the oddball characters he meets there, and his eventual decision to return home and do something small to better the world.

Malone solved the problem of bumptiousness differently in his Cuddy and Justin novels, by wedding the outrageously literary talk and blue-streaks of cursing to stories rooted in a recognizable world--so that it was possible for the reader to build a bridge between the characters and the fictional universe. Here, though, setting is both too small and too unrealistic, so often decorated by either false-sounding characters or stereotypes that cannot break free of the trappings in which he imprisons them.

So, skip this one, and read one of his better, later novels.