Books of The Times; Allusions and Subtext Don't Slow a Good Plot
Date: October 2, 1990, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final Section C; Page 15, Column 1; Cultural Desk
Byline: By MICHIKO KAKUTANI
Lead: LEAD: The Music of Chance By Paul Auster 217 pages. Viking. $18.95.
Paul Auster's new book, ''The Music of Chance,'' begins like many classic American novels with the hero leaving an old life behind and setting off to invent a new identity for himself. When Jim Nashe inherits a modest fortune from his father, he quits his job as a fireman in Boston, parks his daughter with his sister, sells his possessions, buys a new car and begins driving the highways. He zigzags back and forth from Oregon to Texas, ''charging down the enormous, vacant highways that cut through Arizona, Montana and Utah,'' then turns around and heads back East. Addicted to the idea of motion, he finds himself reluctant to stop and decides to keep driving around the country until his money completely runs out.
A critic as well as a novelist, Mr. Auster is an old hand at cramming literary allusions into his fiction, and Jim Nashe's odyssey of self-invention immediately brings to mind a variety of earlier books. The reader thinks of Huck Finn lighting out for new territory, of Jimmy Gatz transforming himself into the fabulous Gatsby, of John Updike's Rabbit trying to run away from his family obligations, of Jack Kerouac's Dean Moriarty navigating one of his jalopies on the road. In each case, the hero embraces the idea of freedom as his legacy of the American dream, and in each case he tries to leave the past behind in order to start over again, tabula rasa.
As for Jim Nashe, he quickly runs through most of his money, and he soon realizes that without money, he has no real freedom. It is then that his life takes another unexpected turn: he meets an itinerant poker player named Jack Pozzi, who offers him the opportunity to make some quick and easy cash. Nashe takes Pozzi under his wing, buys him some new clothes and installs him in a suite at the Plaza Hotel. In exchange for the use of Nashe's last $10,000, Pozzi will cut him in, 50-50, on a high stakes poker game with a pair of wealthy eccentrics who live in Pennsylvania. Pozzi has played these men before, he says, and he knows they're easy marks. Their names are Flower and Stone.
When Pozzi and Nashe turn up at the Pennsylvania estate, they are given dinner, a tour of the house, and a rambling account of how Flower and Stone made their millions. It seems the two of them bought a lottery ticket many years ago, won and parlayed their windfall into a fortune. The garrulous Flower used to be an accountant; the bashful Stone used to be an optometrist. Now, freed from the need to earn a living, they spend their time pursuing hobbies. Stone is building a miniature model of an elaborate city on a table top; Flower is collecting objects from around the world. Among his most recent acquisitions are a heap of stones from a ruined castle in Ireland: he wants to use them to build a wall in his backyard.
Although Stone and Flower seem benign, even inept during the dinnertime pleasantries, they turn into ferocious competitors once the poker game has begun. Pozzi's brief winning streak quickly ends, and within hours he's lost all of Nashe's money. Desperate to get back into the game, Nashe allows Pozzi to use his car for collateral. He does and promptly loses it. By the time the evening is over, he and Nashe owe their hosts $10,000.
Instead of allowing them to write an I.O.U., Flower and Stone gently but firmly persuade Nashe and Pozzi to work off their debt: they are to stay on at the estate and help build Flower's wall. It's supposed to take them only 50 days to settle their account, but things quickly take a sinister turn, and Nashe and Pozzi soon realize they are being held captive on the estate against their will.
Writing in brisk, precise prose, Mr. Auster lends these events all the suspense and pace of a best-selling thriller. As his last novel, ''Moon Palace,'' so clearly demonstrated, he can write with the speed and skill of a self-assured pool player, sending one bizarre event ricocheting neatly and unexpectedly into the next. At the same time, he gives Nashe's adventures a brooding philosophical subtext that enables him to explore some of his favorite preoccupations: the roles of randomness and causality; the consequences of solitude, and the limitations of freedom, language and free will in an indifferent world.
Indeed, the reader becomes increasingly aware of the parallels Mr. Auster is drawing between Nashe's story and Beckett's ''Waiting for Godot.'' Pozzi's name, of course, instantly recalls that of Pozzo in the play; and a small boy, much like the one in ''Godot,'' makes a brief but crucial appearance later in the story. In addition, Stone and Flower are described in terms reminiscent of Vladimir and Estragon. They seem mysteriously but permanently bound to each other, and they are compared to Laurel and Hardy: the first is tall and thin; the second, short and round.
Instead of belaboring such analogies, Mr. Auster simply plays with them, working variations on some of Beckett's themes while at the same time creating a narrative that continually manages to elude our expectations. The result: a chilling little story that's entertaining and provocative, resonant without being overly derivative.