Shaggy Dog Bites a Novelist

By Don Robertson

That terrible affliction, The Second Novel, has just about knocked out a young man named John Weston. Fortunately, however, he has a substantial talent, and there is every reason to hope he will come back stronger than ever when his third book is published.

A year or so ago, Weston made his debut with a novel called "Jolly." It received marvelous reviews, and they were deserved. The book was a study of the reluctant coming-of-age of an adolescent boy, but it managed to avoid most of the coming-of-age cliches, especially sentimentality.

It was tough, grainy, unblinking and funny, and its critical success was honestly earned. No panderer, this Weston, no soft-soaper.

BUT NOW comes Weston's second book, The Telling (McKay, $4.50). Again there is no sentimentality, but unfortunately there is an abundance of cliches and the book is pretty bad. Frankly, It reads as though he wrote it before he wrote "Jolly.' There is nothing particularly unusual in this. Many second novels are actually first novels excavated from a trunk.

John Weston

The Telling is about a number of wretchedly maladjusted schoolteachers who come to a small southwestern town at the beginning of a fall semester. One is a homosexual; one is a nymphomaniac who dabbles in a little incest; one is a clodhopper of a failed athlete;

one is a pretentious and superficial "artist."

Mix these misfits and their with a dreadful hang-ups

strange Indian boy who is supposed to represent The Noble Savage, plus a frustrated principal, plus a rather cryptic murder and an inconclusive almost shaggy-doggish ending, and there you have the substance of the book.

Unfortunately, Weston cannot make us believe either the protagonists or the inci. dents. The book is too short; there is not enough time for a satisfactory examination of whatever is supposed to be happening.

On the credit side, Weston does display a fine ability to draw a quick scene. Here and there, when he takes the time, he really captures the flavor of the little town. But, by and large, the book is far too perfunctory for whatever it was he was trying to do.