Twilight for Leander

THE WAPSHOT CHRONICLE (307 pp.)--John Cheever--Harper ($3.50).

This is a brilliantly written first novel, vastly (and sometimes sadly) amusing. So far, Author John Cheever, 44, has been content for a quarter-century to write excellent short stories, most of them about New Yorkers whose fears, despairs and inadequacies assail them in weary moments of truth. But now he has tackled the Wapshots, infinitely bigger game demanding stronger writers' weapons. Cheever has them.

The Wapshots are a once-virile New England family rapidly outliving both their affluence and influence. Like the town of St. Botolphs where they live, they once drew their power from the sea. Time was when Wapshot boys got their baptism of life by sailing round the Horn, their baptism of sex on some Pacific island. Now the shipbuilding yards are silent and old Leander, head of the family, is reduced to ferrying trippers in a worn-out tub of a boat. His world is gone and frequently he has to take refuge in dreams of his lustier youth, but Leander still sails the old Topaze like a Viking, still values a pretty woman in the way she likes to be valued. The Wapshot Chronicle is the story of Leander playing out his life as he sadly but not bitterly sees the rules being changed all about him.

Zanies. The book is also a remarkably delicate story of the ups and downs in the lives of Leander's two sons, who find that their gentle mother and vigorous father have not exactly prepared them for the world beyond St. Botolphs. Lastly, it is a book peppered with ribald good humor and peopled by some absurd zanies.

There is Cousin Honora, a whimsical skinflint who counts out the pennies to Leander's family and moves with haughty assurance from painting to the piano to whatnot, casually giving them up in turn and winding up in her old age as a Red Sox fan. But not even Honora can stay in the same league with old Cousin Justina, who is richer still (she married a five-and-dime prince) and dominates the lives of a little circle of pathetic hangers-on who are dependent upon her charity. When she discovers that Leander's son Moses is making nightly trips across the roof of the huge house to her ward's bedroom, she lets fly with a shotgun.

Advice. The book does not depend on its gamey moments and archaic oddballs for its best effects. Essentially it is a victory of writing, each sentence surely pointed toward its purpose. Author Cheevers rueful love of his characters touches every page of the book. But perhaps he liked Leander best, Leander who left this "Advice to my sons'" in a copy of Shakespeare:

"Never put whisky into hot water bottle crossing borders of dry states or countries. Rubber will spoil taste. Never make love with pants on. Never sleep in moonlight. Known by scientists to induce madness . . . Never wear red necktie. Provide light snorts for ladies if entertaining. Effects of harder stuff on frail sex sometimes disastrous. Bathe in cold water every morning. Painful but exhilarating . . . Eat fresh fish for breakfast. Avoid kneeling in unheated stone churches. Ecclesiastical dampness causes prematurely gray hair. Fear tastes like a rusty knife and do not let her into your house. Courage tastes of blood. Stand up straight. Admire the world. Relish the love of a gentle woman. Trust in the Lord."

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