Terror in Frisco

American Dream Destroys Pursuer

By Don Robertson

Leslie Garrett, a portly ex-Philadelphian who is nudg ing 35, has just written his first novel, a grim and horrowing little thing called The Beasts (Scribner, $3.95). It is an extraordinary book, and it marks the debut of a large and profound talent.

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Its story is simple, relentlessly terrifying. It chroni cles the demolition of a human being, the process whereby a young man named Farley Grimm is stripped first of his dreams and then, inevitably, his humanity. It is reminiscent of Kafka and Nathaniel West, but the diction is Garrett's, and from a stylistic point of view one would not care to see a word changed.

The novel's setting is San Francisco. Farley Grimm, an awkard young man from Louisiana, works as a clerk. He is trying to live The American Dream. His apart. ment is almost pathologically clean, and the end tables are piled with neat stacks of Time and Newsweek. They are there for guests to read. The only trouble is, no one visits the place. And so finally, in an agony of loneliness,

Farley Grimm goes out in search of friends.

THE SEARCH is of course wants to find a nice girl and governed by his dreams. He wants to find a nice girl and marry her. He dreams of a mate to fulfill the suburban ideal-he as successful executive, she a "proper, charming" wife.

waif named Lenore, is neiBut the girl he finds, a ther proper nor charming. Nor is she particularly clean. But she is available, and Farley begins an affair with her. Thus is the first layer of the dream stripped away, The rest of his destruction is inevitable.

He becomes involved with an immensely gross Negro called The Prophet. He gives a party no one attends. He begins to drink. He loses his job. He becomes a thief, then a homosexual and finally an animal that crawls around on all fours for the entertainment of the Prophet's mad and corrupted friends.

All in inevitable, andas Garrett writes the story -all is logical. The fate of Farley Grimm is chilling, but the reader experiences an empathy for him, and this is by no means a novel that celebrates decedance. Rather, it appears to be governed by outrage... against the American Dream and all other such frauds.