Reuss creates charming hero

Horace Afoot

Vintage Contemporaries

Reading the first novel of a novice author is always a dicey proposition for the consumer. It takes an adventurous reader to commit the time to exploring an entirely unproved author. It's the height of rarity for a novelist to gobble up, on his first time out, the kind of large readership that encourages purchases by word-of-mouth.

Frederick Reuss is a little-known name in publishing. For his sake, at least, it is fortunate that his debut novel is published in paperback by Random House's consistently admirable and discriminating Vintage label, a mark of distinction which by itself may get Reuss's foot in the door with savvy book-buyers. Oh, yes - it's fortunate for them, as well, because the book, "Horace Afoot," is one of the most charming first novels a reader may run across.

One of the major virtues of the novel is its depiction of the protagonist and narrator, Horace, short for Quintus Horatius Flaccus. He is not the poet of ancient Rome, but the armchair philosopher and designated local eccentric of Oblivion, U.S.A., a place he chose to live in merely for its name.

Horace is well-educated, physically adept and in the prime of his life. Yet, he has no job, choosing to live austerely on the interest from, evidently, an inheritance. As his own and the town's names suggest, Horace is striving for a serene existence as detached from civilization as possible. He is a conscientious objector to much of the modern world - especially cars, his loathing of which inspires the book's title. (As one of his neighbors decrees, "Never trust a man without a car.") The only personal contact he openly courts or seems to enjoy is dialing random phone numbers to ask people what they think about the difference between illusion and reality

And, charmingly and compellingly, Reuss's novel spins the story of how Horace gets drawn into the world against his best-laid plans. It is a process of fits and starts, for Horace is slow to countenance his own emotions and needs, and quick to shrink from the desire for intimacy and connection that he can never fully repress.

The unearthing of Horace's buried humanity is the basis of the story, as well as the struggles with identity highlighted by Horace's habit for changing his name to that of his latest literary avatar. (It used to be William Blake, but by the end of the novel has become Lucius of Samosata.)

"Horace Afoot" has many recommendable qualities: grace, humor, empathy, strangeness, thoughtfulness and linguistic dexterity all come to mind. It does tread a fine line between pleasantly ambling and idly sputtering through its superficially uneventful plot, with occasional stumbles. Also, the first-person narration is sometimes clunky in expressing the arc of Horace's nascent self-discovery; spending so much time alone with Horace's thoughts, readers may find themselves jarred by Horace's infrequent spasms into personal awareness, which never quite seem to comfortably take hold in the narrative. But Frederick Reuss's writing career is a young and promising one, and readers will have done themselves a favor if they can later claim to have witnessed it from the start.

- Jeff Druchniak

03-17-99