Days of Judgment

By Josh Greenfeld

FERGUS by Brian Moore. 228 pages. Holt, Rinehart, & Winston. $5.95.

Almost 15 years ago, Brian Moore's first novel, The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne, earned for him a niche on the literary landscape. Though each of his five succeeding novels has received fine notices, Moore's highest praises have still been sung subterraneously by a few fond readers and fellow writers who refer his work to each other. For Moore is one of the last of a vanishing breed: the serious seeker who is also a consummate professional.

Fergus shows him at the top of his form. The title hero--like the obviously prototyping author ego behind him--is Belfast-born, Hollywood-drawn and Malibu-quartered. The fictional Fergus is a novelist in the throes of divorce and debilitating screen work. He is also hopelessly involved with a young, free-spirited mistress. So far, so familiar as a portrait of the built-in plights that afflict writer-in-California residence.

On a single fateful day, Fergus finds his past crowding in on him. Dead characters rise again as living hallucinations: his family, old priests, teachers, onetime loves, chance acquaintances, bygone neighbors, boyhood friends--even his boyhood self. Fergus had always justified all of his small sins for the capital gains of his novelistic art. This group of ghostly characters, convened like a kangaroo court, force him to weigh nothing less than the meaning of his life.

Such a judgment-day device is risky, to be sure. In the hands of a lesser writer it could be self-defeatingly simplistic; in Moore's hands it comes off convincingly triumphant. Fergus has recurring moments of flip inner torment: "God, how do other writers deal with these situations? How did, say, Faulkner manage to come out here time after time and take the money and run . . .? The thought of Faulkner steadied Fergus, for Faulkner had endured and prevailed. ... If Faulkner started seeing his dead parents first thing in the morning, he would settle right in and make use of it." Such inscape contrasts sharply with the surface of a Hollywood seen as a satiric set piece. "You done good, like a writer should," says the producer. Indeed, scene after scene, this-worldly and otherworldly, is impeccably revealed through telltale wisps of detail, as opposed to the tattletale shouts of exhibitionistic exaggeration that so often pass for style today.

Josh Greenfeld

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