All in the Family

By Paul Gray

THE SURFACE OF THE EARTH

by REYNOLDS PRICE 491 pages. Atheneum. $10.95.

Reynolds Price's first novel, A Long and Happy Life, appeared in 1962, the year of William Faulkner's death. The coincidence was not lost on litterateurs. Ever since, Price has been the odds-on favorite of those who believe that the U.S. must always have a Southern writer-in-residence whispering of dark doings behind the magnolia. This dreadnought of a family saga (Price's fourth novel) proves that he has earned the title. It is also strong evidence that the post is obsolete.

Despite its prodigious length, respectful traditionalism and grim high seriousness, The Surface of the Earth is so much shadowboxing with the ghosts of a gothic past. Price assembles as pallid a clan of relatives as ever sipped juleps on the veranda. The Mayfields and the Kendals are first yoked together in 1903, when young Eva Kendal elopes with Forrest Mayfield, her high school Latin teacher. Piqued, Eva's mother commits suicide and leaves her a nasty letter. A son, Rob, is born, and Eva trots back home with him to care for her father in North Carolina. Forrest stays in Virginia, feeling sorry for himself and looking for his own runaway father. Years later, of course, Rob must search for Forrest, and then Rob's son must repeat the process.

Dawdle and Mope. Away from the hunt, they also stand and wait. And wait. The novel contains enough pregnant pauses to fuel a year of TV soaps: "considerable," "sizable," "baffled," "stupefied" waits. But then, there seems to be no reason to hurry. Tended by a small army of admiring blacks, the Mayfields and Kendals have nothing much to do except dawdle and mope. "I am 55 years old this month," says Forrest at one point. "Never say 'Time flies'; it has seemed like forever."

So it does, so it does. Clearly, Price loves these people and cherishes the suffocating orneriness of extended family living. What he does not do is demonstrate that this collection of etiolated creatures deserves anybody's attention but its own.

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