The Man Who Wanted More

By Paul Gray

OUTERBRIDGE REACH by Robert Stone

Ticknor & Fields; 409 pages; $21.95

Roughly half of this novel, Robert Stone's fifth, is occupied with putting together the complicated and elaborate house of cards that will spectacularly blow apart during the second half. In less assured hands, such a long swatch of narrative exposition might seem cumbersome, even a little tedious. Not so in Outerbridge Reach. A lot happens in Stone's fiction, especially when nothing particular seems to be going on. The author's laconic prose manages to be both dexterous and sinister.

Stone's task this time resembles the ones he undertook in such previous novels as Dog Soldiers (1974) and A Flag for Sunrise (1981): exposing characters to dangers, external and psychological, that they may be unprepared to handle. Owen Browne, fortyish, a graduate of the Naval Academy who served four years in Vietnam, now sells pleasure boats for an outfit called Altan Marine. Ruggedly handsome -- he appears in company promotional videotapes -- Browne is also by most conventional standards a good person, dutiful, loyal and faithful to Anne, an editor, writer and his wife of 20 years. The Brownes have a comfortable Connecticut house, an island summer retreat and a mildly rebellious teenage daughter. Owen is, in other words, a prime candidate for mid-life crisis. Sure enough, one arrives: "For his own part, he was tired of living for himself and those who were him by extension. It was impossible, he thought. Empty and impossible. He wanted more."

More is what he gets, thanks to the sudden disappearance of Matty Hylan, a flamboyant millionaire who owns a conglomeration of companies, including the one that employs Browne. The runaway entrepreneur leaves behind a crumbling financial empire and the commitment he had made to skipper a new Altan Marine model in an around-the-world sailing race called the Eglantine Solo. Hylan's beleaguered lieutenants scramble for a replacement and find him in one of their own employees, Owen Browne.

Owen, of course, jumps at the chance to get out of his routine, even though his only previous experience of sailing alone was a five-day journey from West Palm Beach, Fla., to New Bern, N.C., during which he fell prey to hallucinations. Anne, at first, thinks the whole idea is crazy: "She was certain she could prevent him from trying it, if she dared. But then there would be the rest of life to get through." So Anne accedes to the plan and talks herself into becoming its cheerleader: "Imagine what kind of a feeling it is," she says. "Making your way across all that ocean. Making your way across the whole world. All on your own savvy and endurance."

This is spoken not to her husband but to Ron Strickland, a documentary filmmaker who had been hired by Hylan's company, in a typically dopey corporate move, to record the millionaire at sea, and who has now inherited Owen Browne as a subject instead. Strickland's modest fame rests on his ability to make people look ridiculous onscreen, and he is, by and large, willing to jettison Hylan and try out his technique on the photogenic and seemingly unassailable Brownes. Looking at some still photographs of the couple, Strickland's assistant remarks that Owen and Anne "don't resemble our usual run of scumbag." Strickland replies, "Trust me."

Stone's elaborate preparations set up a number of teasing, ominous questions. The most obvious: Can Owen survive, let alone win, the race around the globe? A mechanic familiar with the boat Browne will pilot blurts out to Strickland: "My bet would be this -- either he wins or he dies. You pay me either way. If he quits or runs behind, I pay you." It also remains to be seen whether Browne's idealism can withstand the self-enforced isolation of the seas, and whether his marriage to Anne, mired in comfort and mutual tolerance, will outlast the rough shocks of separation. And what of Strickland's film? Will it be an expose of a hollow man and woman? "You're not making fun of us, are you?" Anne asks Strickland, shortly before Owen sets sail. "There's no reason Strickland should want to make me look bad," Owen reassures his wife.

But that is by no means a sure thing. Strickland is in many respects the most interesting person in the book, a spectator whose outward cynicism may mask a hunger for the truth as avid, in its own way, as Browne's. The pleasure he takes in his debunking films seems tinged with bitterness, as if his quest for good, honorable people has once again been disappointed. Strickland thinks that his stammer prompts others to show him their worst sides: "His infirmity seemed to encourage people toward boasting and indiscretion. He had noticed it even as a child. It was they who came to him and impaled themselves." Owen Browne has not yet done this, but Strickland is confident -- and afraid -- that he will: "This is a guy," he says of Browne, "who understands art. He just doesn't know what he likes." Paradoxically, Strickland is the only one to tell Browne, "Don't go. Don't."

To the author's credit, nearly all the answers to the puzzle he creates are unexpected, even though many clues pointing toward them have been inserted in the text beforehand. Anne's behavior, for example, once she has been left alone, takes a shocking turn; yet a cluster of details and insights into her character save this transformation from the realm of the unbelievable.

If there is a problem with Outerbridge Reach, it is not that some of its conclusions appear improbable but that its structure seems a tad too deterministic. Stone, at his highest pitch, is a poet of doom; his characters must confront nothing less than the implacable pattern that fate has handed them. When they think they are most in control, changing the direction of their lives, they are actually exposing themselves to ruin. To be safe is contemptible, to dare disastrous. That Stone makes exciting fiction out of this depressing scenario is the hallmark of his mastery.