Horsebackwards

CAUSE FOR WONDER by Wright Morris. 272 pages. Atheneum. $4.50.

In one of Wright Morris' lesser and funnier novels, Love Among the Cannibals, some American tourists are marooned in the boiled-water area of Mexico when their great, gaudy auto breaks down. The natives do not bother them, but each morning there is less of the ridiculous vehicle left. The door han dles and the four wheels go first; a day later the sparkplugs, carburetor and windshield; finally the engine block, dashboard and radiator.

A similar melting away occurs in the author's new novel, but what dwindles in this case is the reader's sanity. At first, all seems expert and ordinary. A novelist hears of the death of the eccentric owner of an Austrian castle whom he knew 30 years ago, and decides to make a sentimental journey to the funeral. The reader settles back comfortably, expecting to be soothed by a savagely ironic dissection of American life, or of Austrian eccentrics. But irony is not particularly evident here.

Scenes, character and incidents shrink from one another like people trapped in an elevator trying not to inhale. A large part of the book is amusing, fragmented, pointless reminiscence by the writer. Another part is solemn bosh about time and reality. One character is admired for having escaped into the past, apparently because he lives (he is not dead after all) in a troll-infested castle. Another runs a progressive school in which the past is ignored on the ground that if it had any value, it would not be past. People go around saying things like, "I can't believe I'm really here. Wherever here is." A comic madman who lives in the castle paints cars, owls and house guests white.

At one point (never mind why) a character is riding a mare through a snowstorm. He feels his saddle slipping and rides "like an Indian ducking rifle fire. Was he on her or beneath her? Was it the mane or the tail in his face?" There you have the book. The reader enjoys the ride, then feels himself slipping. A mutinous suspicion arises--does the author really know mane from tail?

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