Wilderness Course

By Angela Wigan

EARTHLY POSSESSIONS by ANNE TYLER 200 pages. Knopf $7.95.

At 34, Anne Tyler can no longer be called a prodigy; she remains prodigious. Her work is marked by the traditions of the South--but not those of the Southern novel. Her seven books contain none of the classic grotesques or theological underpinnings. Tyler prefers trademarks of her own: a firm sense of region and family and a sure and witty touch with her characters. Her books are advocacies of affirmation; in Earthly Possessions she again demonstrates that profound gentleness and beauty can reside in the plainest of people.

Charlotte Emory is a passive woman who has always longed to go on a journey unencumbered by family or things or even destination. Rooted to the little town of Clarion, where she was born, Charlotte sees her life "rolling out in front of her like an endless, mildewed rug." What she needs, she declares, is a "wilderness course." It is provided by a deus ex machina, played by a prison escapee, Jake Simms Jr., a self-described "victim of impulse." When Simms holds up a bank, Charlotte becomes a victim of irony--a hostage without the walking shoes she has hoarded for her trip. The flight to Florida does not produce the expected liberation. Instead, Charlotte's journey is overshadowed by memories of her childhood, her preacher husband, her children. Freed at last from the trappings of her life, she can only think of what she has left behind.

Rock Lyricism. Earthly Possessions is not Tyler's best book. The annealing human relationships that mark her other fiction no longer dominate. For the first time she has written a novel in the first person, and the filigree light she usually casts on her characters seems dimmed. Simms displays a kind of rock lyricism, but he is a figure without impact. "This person," he says of his girl friend, "is bound to have something to do with me. I mean it ain't love, but what is it? Worse than love, harder to break. Like we had to wear each other through, work something out, I don't know."

Still, Tyler is a natural storyteller, and the standard that she has set is so high that even her secondary works are compelling. The uninitiated might prefer a smoother introduction to the Tyler style, starting with Celestial Navigation (1974), the prismatic story of an artist with agoraphobia, or Searching for Caleb (1975), a Baltimore family's hunt for a long-missing relative. Most of her books will be available in paperback editions this year. For the impatient, her short stories irregularly appear in magazines (The New Yorker, Redbook, McCall's). Like such writers as John Cheever and Edna O'Brien, Tyler is fortunately unable to sit still between novels.

Angela Wigan

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